Chapter Two

The clanging became more insistent. ‘I have to get out of here,’ Lacey thought. Suddenly, her eyes flew open. Heart thumping; her eyes roamed wildly, searching for the source of the ringing. She alighted on the illuminated device on her bedside table. It was 7am.

It was a dream. It had all been a dream.

Frantically, she threw herself out from under the covers and began pulling out garments from drawers and cupboards. A rush of dizzying nausea washed over her and she slumped back onto the bed for a moment, regaining her centre. She continued with her morning routine, slipping into her shirt and trouser suit, which she had ironed and pressed the night before. Her mother, a nurse, had already left for work, leaving Lacey alone in the house. Her head throbbed as anxiety and panic gripped her. Doing her best to ignore it, she shouldered her handbag and retrieved her portfolio from the dining room table.

‘I’m going to get this job. I’m going to get this job.’ She repeated her mantra the whole way down the road, inwardly buoying herself along as she made her way into the train station.

Plugging her headphones into her iPod she stood back as the train roared into the station. Joining the crush of people flowing on, she squeezed herself into a space and leaned against the seats of the train carriage prepared to just immerse herself in the music. No such luck, at the next stop an inordinately rude girl stepped onto the train. Lacey tried not to listen as she spewed profanities and verbal abuse into her mobile directed at some poor sod who was apparently at home and thereby unhindered by the affliction of rush-hour tube travel. Phone call over, angry girl then turned her fury on some poor fellow standing in front of her. Blasting him for his McDonald’s-own coffee breath and abject proximity to her in such a small and confined space; she muttered that situations such as this explained how people were convicted of ABH. Lacey exchanged an alarmed look with the lady standing opposite. Coffee breath tried to explain there was little manoeuvrability for him as angry girl pointed out some space behind him. To her irritation he refused to move into it. She huffed and puffed until the train finally pulled into Finchley Road where to everyone’s relief she alighted – Lacey assumed to wreak havoc for the community of the Jubilee Line.

A deluge of people replaced angry girl and others who got off and the train continued forward on its journey. A few minutes after departing the next station, the train heaved to an untimely stop somewhere within the tunnel. Most people didn’t particularly notice this fact, engrossed in morning headlines and assorted literature. Then the lights went out plunging the train into darkness. Lacey looked up at the carriage ceiling, expecting the overhead beams to come back on. But nothing happened. Trying to ignore the unease tugging at her consciousness, she studied her fellow passengers in the muted light. People on top of people. Bags pressed into the backs of others. Sighs of irritation. The hands on so many watches ticking down the minutes as they stood and sat in unfriendly silence, willing the train to move forward so they could attend to appointments, meetings and other working commitments.

The driver’s voice crackled through the intercom. It sounded alien and far away.
‘Sorry for the delay to your journey Ladies and Gents, I’m just waiting to hear what the problem is but hopefully we’ll be on the move again soon.’ A murmur of discontented grumbles passed through the carriage. Lacey tried to peer out, beyond the double layered windows into the tunnel but recoiled at seeing the red brick of wall mere inches from the train’s exterior. Breathing heavily she fished in her bag for the bottle of Rescue Remedy she had plucked from the bathroom cabinet before leaving the house. Her trusty aid for the nerve-inducing ordeal of the interview; she slipped a few drops onto her tongue now, relishing the taste of the calming ingredients as they dissolved in her mouth.

She swallowed and shifted slightly on her 4” black Louboutin heels. Discomfort was beginning to settle on her limbs as the time passed, slowly.