Chapter 5

At home, Alicia got a text from Simon, her boyfriend. "Cant make it 2nite, srry" he texted.

Alicia huffed. She'd been looking forward to their planned night in. Pizza and a vid. Now she was stuck on her own, feeling a little hurt. The dampness that still lingered between her legs also reminded her to feel slightly guilty.

It wasn't until she crawled into bed and set her alarm that she had time to think about the train ride home. Even alone in the dark, the memory of what she'd done - what she'd shown a complete stranger - made her cringe.

The whole thing felt like a dream or a scene from a particularly filthy foreign film. Idly Alicia wondered about the staring man. Did he do that often? Did women respond to it? Did they do what she had done?

She tossed in her bed restlessly. Her head full of visions of all sorts of women - young, old, fat, thin, trendy, sophisticated - spreading their legs for the strangers gaze. Her imaginings only made the restlessness worse.

Then, when she thought she was almost ready to drop off, a final, horrible thought struck her. Did he take that train everyday? Alicia tried to remember if she'd ever noticed him before. The idea that she might run into him again, on the same train, gave her chills.