[Flash] The Last Train

She boards the last train home at 11:47, the one she has missed fourteen times in six months, and this time she is on it, this time she made it, and she sits in the third car from the back because that is where she always sat when she was nineteen and it felt like that might matter. The train is almost empty. A man in a high-vis vest sleeps across two seats. A woman texts with both thumbs moving so fast they blur. Someone has left a newspaper folded to the crossword, three clues filled in, the rest waiting. She looks at the crossword for a while. She picks it up. She fills in *ESTUARY* and then *LIGHTHOUSE* and then, after a moment, *PATIENCE*, which she is not sure about but which fits. She leaves the crossword on the seat when she gets off. The train takes it somewhere. She walks home under the yellow lights and thinks: tomorrow she will not miss the last train either, and the day after that, and eventually this will just be what she does, this will just be how she gets home, and she will not think about it as an achievement. She lets herself into the flat. She makes a cup of tea she doesn't finish. She goes to bed. It was, by any reasonable measure, an ordinary night. She falls asleep still grateful for it.