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inconsiderate and how he worried etc.  She had told him that she didn’t need a wife, given him curlers and a rolling pin to brandish and had followed him around for days making irreverent clucking noises until he almost decided to go to work.  She still referred to him occasionally as “Mother hen”, but she had taken the point which was all that really mattered to him.  He even thought that, deep down she was rather gratified to have someone who would worry about her.
    He wished that he could get the face of the pale skinned man from the nightclub out of his mind. He had a bad feeling about him.  If only she had talked to him about it; it was not like her to be uptight; it only made him even more nervous about the situation. Whatever the situation was.
    The dreams had been getting worse too; he would have liked to talk to her about that as well.  He wondered if the white faced man was the mysterious ‘He’ who was apparently coming.
    He glanced at the clock; it was now almost four days since she had left. She had to be in trouble.
    Well, he knew where she had gone; he would just have to go after her and try to trace her.  To hell with the premonitions of doom, he was not getting anywhere trying to work it out anyway; he just did not have enough to go on.  Action, that’s what he needed, to do something.
    He grabbed a jacket, his wallet and a phone and stalked purposefully out of the flat; he got as far as the outer door when he turned back to get his shoes only to realise that he had forgotten his key.
    He had picked up quite a few skills in the last year including opening locked doors with a credit card.  The only problem was that Denny did not command the kind of salary that permitted having a credit card.  He had a video club card, but, unfortunately, it was cardboard.  He tossed it on the floor in disgust and kicked the door in.  In a testament to shoddy workmanship, the door fell off its hinges in one smooth movement.  Denny hoped that it was not a bad omen that he would be starting his journey with a foot full of splinters.
    He had hobbled halfway to the station before he gave in and hailed a cab.  The driver was disgusted at the small fare (only two streets) and by the fact that Denny spent the journey with his shoes off picking bits of wood out of his toes and bleeding all over the seat.  Denny gave him a tenner to appease him.*
    *[ Denny was the sort of wimp who never complained in restaurants, even if there was a rat in his salad.  And he had not even ordered a salad; he was strictly a steak and chips man.]
    * * *
    The station was closed; well it was two O’ clock in the morning. ‘Damned one horse town!’ 
    He supposed he had not really thought this through; he had been carried away up to this point, and now he was stalled – for the next four hours until the station opened.  The sensible thing to do would be to lamely slope off back home and wait, but he could not bring himself to do it; it would be such a letdown, like taking a step backwards. He sat down on a bench to wait.
    * * *
    By the morning, he had collected quite a bit of change; taking off his shoes had earned him even more. He only wished he had had a violin case or even a scruffy hat.  Still he had made more than enough for a return ticket.
    As the train pulled away, he did not notice the creeping darkness spreading over the streets he was leaving behind
     
    After about ten minutes, Denny’s brain woke up, and he realised that he was travelling in the wrong direction; he must have got on the wrong train. ‘Damn!  Oh damn and hell and – bugger – bugger – bugger.’
    He panicked, what the hell was he going to do?  Without thinking, he pulled the cord marked “Emergency Only” and, in much smaller letters, the injunction “Improper use will result in a fine”
    As far as Denny was concerned, this was an emergency.  The train lurched and shuddered to a halt halfway through a tunnel.  Still operating on automatic