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the passenger door swinging open as the gradient pulled it forward. The rain poured in on her, as she fought to lift the handbrake. It wouldn’t move.
    ‘Leonard!’ she shouted, her voice sounding absurdly weak against the roar of the rain. ‘Leonard!’
    She looked up just in time to see the surprised look on his face as he turned, slipped on the wet road and then vanished beneath the wheels of his beloved car.
    Of the woman in the road there was no sign.
    c) South Wimbledon Tube Station, Merton High Street, London
    Five o’clock in the morning and Sonia Finnegan wished she was anything but awake as she trudged along. The road offered sluggish commercial traffic, most of the shops were closed except for the cab company where a bored-looking Sikh sat in front of his radio and dreamed of his bed. A van dumped bundles of today’s papers outside the newsagents, the driver lost within the sounds of his iPod, tinny drum rhythms seeped out from the earbuds like water from a leaking pipe.
    London never truly slept but, like any city, it hit an early morning lull, the winter darkness draped across it, chilly and inhospitable, where the only people still moving feel adrift in their own worlds.
    Sonia was no different as she ran through the programme for the day ahead and wondered whether Sir James was going to be in a good mood or not. He was a good employer, better than many she’d worked with, but he was a man of moods, most especially at times like this and she considered it important to try and second-guess them. She hadn’t got where she was today without being able to anticipate the needs of those she worked with. It was, as she often told her three-year-old son, her superpower. He tried to look impressed when she told him this but made no bones about the fact that it would be way cooler if she were able to be invisible. In a way, she tells him, that’s exactly what she is.
    She entered South Wimbledon Tube station, offering a distracted smile at the bored-looking guard in the booth who was staring into his flask of coffee as if it held the secret to happiness.
    She pressed her Oyster card against the reader, passed through the barrier and made her way down the escalator to the platform.
    There was no one else there. She wasn’t surprised. The only people travelling into London at this time were people aiming for trains or planes. It would be another hour or so before things got busy.
    She sat down on one of the benches and glanced up at the electronic sign jutting out above her head. The first train would be along in five minutes. It felt like five minutes she could better have enjoyed in bed but she fished her papers out of her briefcase and ran through the itinerary of meetings.
    She was lost in distracted, sleepy thoughts when, all of a sudden, her mobile buzzed. She pulled the mobile out of her coat pocket and tapped in her passcode. The text message appeared on the screen, a strange mess of what looked like undecipherable smilies. Suddenly, the phone grew hot in her hand and, unable to stop herself, she flung it away. It skimmed across the tiled floor and dropped over the edge of the platform.
    ‘Oh shit,’ she sighed, angry at herself. She put her papers back in her briefcase and walked over to the platform edge.
    She squatted down, grimacing as her hands touched the dirty floor. Stretching out over the edge, she could see the phone, its shiny black surface glinting in the sooty dirt of the concrete beneath the rails.
    She glanced up at the electronic sign. Only one minute until her train was due. Not that she thought she would be stupid enough to climb down and get it. The track was electrified and, as much as she couldn’t bear the thought of admitting she’d been so clumsy as to hurl her phone under the tracks, it would be better to be embarrassed than to be dead. Maybe there was time to ask the guard to help?
    Just as she decided it was worth running up the escalator to ask, water began pouring down on