The Station Garden

Text 1: The Green Platform, by Mira Colbeck

An original novel extract.

Leena almost walked past the old station. Honeysuckle had narrowed the iron gateway, and beyond it the booking hall was gone. In its place stood a timber shelter beside six raised beds. Labels on short wooden sticks named mint, beans and marigolds. Bees worked busily among the flowers. The only timetable was chalked on a board: Watering, Tuesday and Friday.

She stepped onto the platform. Its red bricks were warm beneath her palm, and suddenly she was eight again, waiting for her mother to finish her shift. Doors slammed. Whistles shrilled. Porters called to one another above the growl of engines, while passengers poured over the footbridge in dark, impatient streams. Through the ticket hatch, her mother would lift one hand and smile.

There were no tracks now. Between the platforms, apple trees stood in a long strip of soil, their thin branches fastened to wires where signals had once stretched. The waiting-room wall had become a patchwork of painted tiles: trains, faces, suitcases, birds. Leena found her mother's face among them, no larger than a postage stamp.

A child ran past and pulled the cord of the restored station bell. One clear note travelled through the garden. It was not the old roar, but it was not silence either. Leena touched the painted face once, then followed the path between the apple trees.