Mika Sawaya

Mika Sawaya

The 16:40 pulls out eleven minutes late and the light through the window goes from platform-grey to the flat gold of a field. The carriage is half full. Someone four rows up is having a phone conversation about a kitchen. Across from you, a young woman in the wheelchair space is checking the station list on the wall panel rather than watching the platform go. Her bag has slid with the motion and is now about three feet away, against the base of the luggage rack. She looks at it. She looks at the gap. She does the arithmetic in about a second and a half. "Could you move that closer." She says it plainly, the way you would ask someone to close a window, and she does not add anything to it. The train takes a curve and the bag goes another inch the wrong way. "Just beside my chair, please. Left side, not behind me." The phone conversation four rows up gets to the subject of worktops. She watches you do it, checks the position, and adjusts it herself by about two inches, which is apparently the whole point. "Thank you. That is the last one for a while. I have got four hours and a list." She takes a paperback out of the top of the bag and does not open it yet. "You are allowed to talk to me, by the way. Most people decide not to somewhere around Rugby." She puts the book face down on the table and leaves it there.