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Helen:Already tried. Can’t find any users with his name on Instagram. I don’t think he uses social media :-(
Elle:Okay well what info on him do we have? Other than his name?
Helen:I have this?
Helen re-sent the screenshot she had taken of Brody’s profile on Connex. She felt a twinge in her heart as his square-jawed face, and lopsided smile, appeared on her screen.
Chapter 9
Helen was on the 08:27 to Paddington. In the first ninety minutes she had already demolished the two tasteless bread wraps she’d bought for the journey that morning. Her body felt flat and her mind grey and foggy. She leaned her head against the window as she passed by Dawlish, where the ocean waves crashed onto the line. It was always the same. She was always alone. She noticed a couple ahead of her in the carriage, the man leaning in to kiss the woman’s forehead, and Helen looked away sharply like she’d just seen an accident.
The thought ‘I really want to feel better’ passed across her mind, as she wrapped her jumper around her like a pair of arms. She impassively gazed at her iPhone hoping by some miracle her screen would light up with Brody’s name. Of course it didn’t. The high pitch notes of Helen’s anxiety had dulled overnight. Now, tired after yet another night of bad sleep, her anxiety had retreated to a gentle background pressure in her head, the feeling of wearing a heavy coat she had to drag around all day.
She’d refreshed all her apps, read the news, and favourited a lot of items on Etsy, but the dull feeling wouldn’t budge. She decided to eat something, knowing full well that the pit in her stomach wasn’t hunger. Helen began the process of unloading her tray onto her lap, flipping up her tray, and exiting the hard aquamarine seat by successfully slinging her leg over the comatose man beside her, who was clutching an empty Ginsters wrapper in his hand.
The air in the carriage felt stale and humid. Students heading back to uni after Easter break, who had run out of seats, cluttered the floor in between the carriages; and seemed impervious to moving as Helen tiptoed past. Making her way to the buffet car she made a mental note of which loos were out of order/lacking loo roll/or had a student using them as a makeshift hot desk. This journey was always grim.
By the time she reached the buffet car she had already added a Twix to her mental wish list of food, as compensation for not only heartbreak, but a really oversold train service. The air felt clammy in the carriage, like she could catch all sorts of viruses by inhaling, so she dug her chin into her roll neck. Her yoga pants also felt sticky on her legs, and she promised herself a long shower when she got back to her studio apartment in Haggerston.
At the front of the queue was an elderly man counting out coins to pay a nervous looking server. Behind him was a glamorous looking blonde woman with a veil of poker straight hair. She was wearing a fedora hat, an expensive looking cream camise, and jeans that Helen could not get away with wearing. Helen also made a mental note that she should try to wear more jewellery. This woman had trendy thin gold bands asymmetrically spread out over three of her fingers that grasped a bright red dog leash.
Helen’s heart skipped a beat: at the end of the leash was a fluffy grey Dachshund, with bottle blue eyes peering up anxiously from the side of her ankle boots.
The dog looked exactly like … it couldn’t be. Helen opened up her one picture of Brody, clutching what looked like the exact same dog.
‘Oh what a cutie!’ Helen announced awkwardly.
The blonde woman turned around. She had patrician features: a gently sloping nose and large grey eyes. Her lips broke into a smile – she was an orthodontist’s dream.
‘Thank you, he’s lovely, isn’t he?’ Where was her accent from? She wasn’t Cornish.
‘Do you mind if I take a picture for Instagram?’ Helen winced as the words came out. If this was Brody’s dog she was pretty sure it was behaviour like this that would blow it.
And if it was his dog, who was this woman?
The woman knelt down to hold the dog steady, as Helen squatted down to take the shot.
‘Thank you! Does he have an Instagram I can tag him in?’
‘Not anymore.’ The woman’s smile cooled, so Helen slipped her phone away, and made a point of turning her attention towards examining the different flavours of Pringles stacked on the counter.
She stumbled back to her seat, holding a hot chocolate in one hand, a mini tub of sour cream Pringles in the other, and a Twix in between her teeth. She messaged the picture to Queens xoxo:
Elle:Babe there’s probably A LOT of dogs that look like that.
Helen:@Elle it’s not a Labrador!! It’s some extra rare Dachshund, I remember Brody telling me how he bought it as a puppy. That dog has done modelling campaigns for Burberry!
Elle:Yes BUT Brody wasn’t with the dog, so it can’t be his.
Also why are we still talking about Brody
Sophie:@Elle because it’s important to Helen and we’re not giving up hope yet!
Helen:I don’t know – maybe I’m hallucinating.
Sorry guys just feeling really down right now.
Sophie:Did you get a picture so we could compare/contrast?
