I can see your house from my train

I’ve been taking the same 8:09 am train to work every day for the last 7 years now. I know, this sounds lame, but I love a rigorous routine; it brings me a sense of stability and control in a progressively unstable world.

Every morning South-Eastern service takes me from sleepy Woolwich right into the heart of London, where cladded in glass skyscrapers are running on high-tech innovations and human souls; where billions of pounds are made and lost every single day. My job is important enough for the company I work for, but not important enough for me or this story. I just kind of fell into it right after college and quickly got used to the financial comfort it provided. I spend my days doing math, writing code and training artificial intelligence systems. At 5 pm I am already out of the building and usually on board the same train back home at 5.24 pm.

It took me some time to find my perfect seat on the train. Two seats opposite two other seats - that’s not for me. What if someone opposite me wants to have a conversation? About the everchanging British weather? Or, god forbid, about politics? Or sports? That would surely be a train trip ruined.

With trial and error, I figured that the last seat in the carriage, on the left side in the morning and on the right side in the evening, will be my seat of choice. Not enough leg-room to be desirable for other passengers, but close enough to the open window and the emergency exit in case we crash. Fooled you: I don’t care about the exit, ‘cause I don’t think we’ll survive derailing, people rarely do.

33 minutes to London Bridge station, give or take. Just enough time for my fellow passengers to scroll through their social media feed and fill up on the latest dreadful news. That will surely cripple their day ahead. Chaos and suffering are addictive when they happen to someone else, preferably in a faraway land, right?

I keep my phone hidden in my bag, silenced and shamed into docile obedience. I don’t like that thing; it is constantly trying to distract me from my internal dialogue and the world around me. And from writing this story.

4 stops after the start is my favourite part of the journey. The track splits and the train has to slow down to make the right turn at the junction. We are passing the area of Greenwich Park and Maze Hill and there is this one house that I really love seeing every morning. One of the few remaining Victorian-era houses, it stands proud amongst the modern monstrosities that those greedy developers keep erecting all around my favourite city. “Gentrification” is the term.

The train track is slightly elevated here so from my window I can see the whole back garden of the house. There is a luscious palm tree, spreading its wide leaves further towards the fence. Beautiful red and yellow rose bushes cover most of the left side, so the red brick wall is barely visible. My favourite bit is the flower bed filled with marigolds, bright orange and yellow, sparkling like little Suns, bursting with life and providing such stark contrast to the mostly slate grey bleakness of the nearby tower blocks. I feel like I am a weary traveller going through a never-ending desert and this one garden is my oasis.

I pass this house every day at around 8:25 am. An old lady is usually in the garden, tending to her flowers. She looks small and frail, but also determined, with her grey hair carefully tied up in a bun and her green plastic watering can flying around the flowers. In my head, I started calling this lady Emma, ‘cause she reminds me of my granny and her garden days.

When the train is slightly behind or ahead of schedule, I miss the watering procedure. Instead, I can see Emma and her husband (I called him Michael, just like my grandpa) sit outside on the little wooden bench, sometimes reading their books, sometimes just holding hands and watching the world spin around them.

Emma and Michael started playing an important part in my life, they were a constant in the whirlwind of my twenties. They couldn’t see me, clueless about their role. For them, my train was probably just noise they got used to after years of living in their house; just some poor souls travelling to and from the concrete jungle. I imagined how Emma always made sure that her favourite teacups were evenly spaced in the cupboard, so they don’t rattle and break every time a train would pass by.

Years went by and the world became heavier to carry around in my head. The more I learned about current affairs and history, the more depressed I became. Ignorance is bliss - this is truly the case in the XXI century.

Work was boring as hell, and most days I felt like a half-awake caffeine-fuelled creature lurking in the shadows of a flickering computer screen. I didn’t have many friends, I guess in my head I was always much more outgoing than in real life. It is hard to have friends in London because most of the time they are busy working 60-hour weeks just to make ends meet. London is expensive, and everyone is always busy, worn out by the rat race and depressed by the rush hour. Those who used to be free on the weekends managed to quickly ruin that by having kids. Now it was all about “the miracle of parenthood”, diaper changing techniques and the best nurseries money could buy.

I was drifting further into my shell when I met Paul at a corporate event. He was charming yet awkward, quirky and smart. We liked the same books and horror movies, enjoyed listening to Nirvana and reminiscing about the pre-Internet days of blissful ignorance. It was love at first sight - and he moved in with me shortly after.

For the first time in my life, I felt I had a purpose. I was eagerly waiting for that clock to crawl to 5 pm, just so I could rush back home and give Paul a cuddle, make some popcorn and watch Netflix.

On my way back the train was usually jam-packed and I had to stand. Sometimes I would be able to get a glimpse of Emma and Michael in their garden, drinking tea or reading the newspaper. I looked at them differently after I met Paul. I cherished their togetherness even more. They looked happy and I felt happy too.

One humid summer day Paul and I were walking along the shore in Brighton. He was acting weird and twitchy all afternoon. It was just like a scene from a 1990s soap opera when we stopped to enjoy the sunset, he lowered on one knee and popped the question. I was shocked as I wasn’t planning any of this, but I said yes - any other answer would be quite awkward.

We got married the next spring and went to Tenerife on our honeymoon. For the first time in my office life, I took all 28 vacation days in one go. When we were back I found myself quite excited to return to my usual routine.

There was a change in Emma I could see from a quarter-mile away. She was no longer smiling, her hair was messy and some of the marigolds withered away. Most mornings the garden stood empty. In the evenings, I could see Emma sitting on the bench, with a single cup of tea on the round garden table. There was no sign of Michael.

When I finally realized that he won’t be coming back, I wept, with tears ruining my make-up and making other passengers on that morning train quite uncomfortable. I guess people these days prefer to weep in the privacy of their homes.

Summer came and went. Paul had a very active social life and I found myself attending numerous bachelorette parties, weddings, and birthdays of people I barely knew. I was fine with that as long as Paul was happy. He liked to show me off, and I guess it made me feel pretty and desired.

So when in early September Paul came back home from a business trip and told me he had cheated on me with a colleague of his, it came like a lightning bolt on a cloudless day. I was shocked, disgusted, and amazed all at the same time. He was saying something about me being withdrawn and cold and blah blah blah… I couldn’t believe he was trying to blame his affair on me - and doing so with a very straight face, without a hint of remorse in his blue eyes.

That awful September evening I took the South-Eastern service to Maze Hill and walked around Greenwich Park, which looked like a Monet painting through the veil of my tears. At some point, I found myself on the street where Emma and Michael lived. I saw their house from the front for the first time - and it didn’t disappoint: rose bushes along the path, marigolds near the porch, pretty little wrought-iron gate. I probably spent an hour or so trying to find the courage to go and ring the bell. What would I say to Emma? What if her name is not Emma? It is definitely not Emma… And her husband died after they’ve been together for decades. My husband is still alive and well - and sleeping around...

I returned home that night drained of any emotions as if they all flowed through and out of me in the form of tears. There was a note from Paul explaining that he moved out into a hotel and will send someone to pick up his stuff shortly after. My marriage was in shambles.

I did what many people do when they get their hearts broken: I drank at random dingy bars downtown, hooked up with random strangers, and woke up in random places, feeling lost for words and in a battle with myself and the world. There was no truth at the bottom of the bottle, I’ve checked thoroughly. I picked up smoking as well, ‘cause I’ve heard that’s what freshly divorced women approaching their thirties are supposed to do.

Work became my only way of escape - I’ve worked long hours now, because I couldn’t bear coming back to the flat, tarnished by my ex-husband. I dreamt of a Victorian-era house with a garden full of marigolds - and I could afford to move, but found no willpower to do so.

I still remember that Monday. It was just after the long Easter weekend. I was in my usual seat, clenching a cup of vile-tasting corner-shop coffee. It has been a while since I last saw Emma - the garden stood empty for weeks. I was hoping to see her again that day, but instead, there was a bunch of rose-cheeked builders in dirty overalls, stomping around the garden, with no consideration for the flowerbeds. My heart sank. Where is Emma?

On my way back I squeezed past the businessmen and their briefcases and managed to get to the window. The house, which stood there for probably close to 150 years, was gone; reduced to a pile of crumbled red bricks by a small bulldozer, victoriously parked in the garden, where the marigolds used to be.

A shiny new slate grey apartment building grew out of the ground in 6 months, as if it was fuelled by potent magic beans. Construction workers reminded me of ants, always busy on their anthill. Another 6 months later - and all the windows of the new house had curtains.

Today, on my usual journey to work, I was passing the house and noticed a couple on a balcony. She was watering her marigolds, planted in a pot that hung from the railing. He was sitting in a foldable chair with a newspaper. They were both probably in their 70s, their matching grey hair moving with the wind and their cardigans buttoned neatly. They looked happy.

I think I am going to call them Emma and Michael.

London, August 2021