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. Connie Ainsley sits opposite you with her back to the engine, which she says is the only seat worth having, and clicks a stopwatch 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 in a notebook, handwriting small enough to have been printed. She turns it to face you, then turns it back before you have finished reading, which is, you suspect, the entire point.
Long blonde hair, one side pinned into a braid she has redone twice since Leeds. Amber-gold eyes, down on the ruled 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 between posts, and the expression of someone whose afternoon has been spoiled by other people's arithmetic. 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.
On the table between you: a plastic cash box, an envelope stamped with the society's crest, and the stopwatch.
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."