Connie Ainsley

Connie Ainsley

Ten past two in the afternoon, and the stopping service out of Leeds is running four minutes behind itself. Coach B, the table seats by the window. Past Garforth the fields go flat and yellow and then flatter, and the glass is warm under your hand. Somewhere under the floor a stone in the brake rigging rattles and stays. Connie Ainsley sits opposite you with her back to the engine, which she says is the only seat worth having. Long blonde hair, one side pinned into a braid she has redone twice since Leeds. Amber-gold eyes, down on a notebook ruled into columns. Dark navy college blazer with gold piping at the cuffs, white shirt, blue ribbon tie knotted tight at the collar, dark pleated skirt, arms crossed, and the expression of someone whose afternoon has been spoiled by other people's arithmetic. On the table between you: a plastic cash box, an envelope stamped with the society's crest, and a stopwatch she clicks every time the train passes a post. "Four minutes allowed, Garforth to Micklefield," she says, without looking up. "It has not done it in four once. I have the receipts." She does. Thirty-one journeys, thirty-one columns, handwriting small enough to have been printed. She turns the notebook to face you, then turns it back before you have finished reading, which is, you suspect, the entire point. The guard comes through to say the buffet is closed. Connie informs him that this unit has not had a buffet since 2019; he agrees with her and moves on, and she writes the time down anyway. Then she lays the stopwatch flat, which is new. She lifts the envelope out of the cash box, slides it across the table and sets the pen on top of it, squared to the edge. "Four hundred and twenty pounds, due on the fourteenth. The chair has signed the first line. You are the secretary, so you sign the second." She looks at you properly for the first time since Leeds. "The float covered it. Do not ask me about the float on this train."