The Sleeper Read Online Free PDF

They’re feeding me. It’s all fine. Off to work in a min. Will call you later. xxx
    Then I do my best to wash with the flannel the train people have given me, and apply a liberal amount of deodorant. I get dressed in the skirt, blouse and jacket I carefully hung up last night, and, since there is no chance of washing and drying my hair, I stand in front of the mirror and spend twenty minutes fastening it into a chignon type of affair, with the many hair grips I brought along for this purpose. I do my make-up the way I used to do it, when I was a Londoner. Finally I add the finishing touch: my work shoes. I have kept these for years, and they are probably officially ‘vintage’ by now. They are high, classic Mary Janes of the sort that a secretary from the fifties might have worn on a night out. They are dark red and I adore them. I step into them and into an abandoned, semi-familiar persona.
    I smile at the mirror. I am the right Lara. There have been many over the years, and this, I can now see, is the one I liked being the best. The busy one. The successful one. The polished one. The one who is fucking brilliant at what she does.
    This is the selfish one: this is the single one.
    It is seven o’clock. I step off the train directly behind a woman who is, I think, in her fifties. She, like me, is dressed for work, and she has dealt with the hair problem by putting on a wide hairband, the sort of thing people wear on the beach. It is pale green, the same colour as her outfit, and she makes it work.
    ‘Morning,’ she says with a grin, turning on the platform and waiting for me. I like her instantly. If this woman was in a colouring book, I would colour her in orange and red, with benign flames shooting happy things at the people around her.
    ‘Good morning.’ I feel a bit shy, but the sudden surge of camaraderie makes me smile.
    ‘Straight to work?’ she asks, eyeing my outfit. ‘Or are you grabbing a coffee first? I always think the station ones are so much better than that shite they give you on the train that it would be criminal not to knock one back. Since they’re free. Or not free. You’ve paid for it in the hefty cabin fare. It’s already yours. You have to take it.’
    ‘I was going to go straight to work.’ I look at the old-fashioned clock on the wall in front of us. ‘But it’s my first day and I would only have found the nearest Costa and waited it out in there feeling nervous. So I might grab one, actually. If it’s going to be a half-decent one, even better.’
    I stop for a second to savour the London air. It is dirty here, and dusty with the mechanics of the station. I love it.
    The woman flashes me a wide grin, and I follow her through a door and past a uniformed man sitting at a table reading a paper, waving my ticket at him since she does. The room is filled with tables and chairs, a screen high on the wall playing silent, subtitled television. The woman heads straight to the coffee machine. We both take large white cups on saucers that remind me, with a jolt, of a cup Sam sometimes uses at home.
    ‘First day?’ she says, as we sit together at a table. There is food here, pastries and bananas and biscuits on big plates, but, like the woman, I do not take any. I sip the coffee. She is right. It is perfectly acceptable. ‘What does that mean? Have you been on maternity leave or something?’
    Again, everyone wants to talk about babies.
    ‘Nope. It’s a long story. Moved to Cornwall with my husband. I gave up work. He had a job down there.’ I hesitate, reluctant to share our full story with a stranger. ‘He still does. I was offered something like my old job back on a six-month contract, and we needed some funds, so here I am.’
    ‘Weekly commuting for six months?’
    ‘Yes. Is that what you do? Weekly commute?’
    ‘Pretty much. Not all the time, but essentially you’ll see me most Sunday and Friday nights. There’s a few of us. We sometimes go for a drink in the lounge.