It is seven in the morning, or thereabouts, and I am sitting in the backseat of a car. It's a standard 5 seater, and in it are 8 people: This kid's mother is in the drivers seat, and in the passenger seat the kid sits on another boy's lap. In the back, one girl is perched on top of my numbing legs, another on someone elses. Jamie sits in between us, complaining that he feels sick. The boy in the front is smoking, the frosted windows are all wound up. I can still smell alcohol. I second Jamie's lurching stomach.

Once I'm at the bus stop, alone, I don't feel half as bad anymore, or even half as tired; actually, it's a wonderful day - it's a wonderful, brand new day. My favourite thing about this brilliant new day is that it signals the end of Last Night, and the morning after Last Night I always enjoy more than the night itself, because I have the entire day to look forward to, and a long journey, alone, to kick start it. And I like long journeys, and being alone.

I step off of the bus and into Richmond station with a spring in my step, my music lifitng my mood, and my mind racing. I am in the toilets, washing my hands, my music paused, when I hear his voice. It's loud and brash, and he's standing right outside. Fuck. I don't want to see him - he'll want to travel home with me, we're going back the same way, and he'll ruin my plans and he'll dampen my mood. I lock myself inside a cubicle, stand and listen for a moment. I'm sure it's him. I was with him the night before, of course, he's a good friend, but in this moment, I hate him. No, I loathe him, the sound of his voice, the way he laughs; I can picture him standing there, everything about him, and he makes me feel physically sick. Is he talking to someone? Perhaps I can hear another voice, too. Perhaps they're waiting for a girl - perhaps she's in here, now, outside of my cubicle door. The train leaves in 10 minutes. Wait it out. Wait for them to go.

Ten long minutes. Ten minutes crawls by when you're standing in a cubicle of a train station toilet, listening, just listening, convinced that you can hear voices of people you know, and desperately want to go away. I hate them. Hate them all, hate people, and their stupid wants and expectations, and all I want them to do is leave me alone. Ten minutes come and go. They're still there.
Or, perhaps they're not. Perhaps you're imagining them. Perhaps no one was really there, and you're just paranoid, and it's all in your head.
Twenty minutes.
Deleting all of the messages on my phone, one by one, just for the sake of something to occupy myself with. Every single message, that I treasured and kept to read over, deleted, because now they're only words on a screen and they're worthless, and I'm begining to see the faults in the people that sent them, searing and bright and consuming: she's pretentious, he's immature, his words are hollow.
Half an hour. They're still there.
The train left 20 minutes ago, rationality murmurs softly. They've gone. But they've not gone, because I can still hear them. Not his voice anymore, but the girl, and the other one, and why won't they go? Why are they still here? Their train has left -
They're not there, and they never were. It's all in your head. You're making it up.
Thirty five minutes.
He's back. He's laughing now, laughing, and I loathe him, and now I'm deleting all of my photos - pictures of him, and of her, and of anyone, anyone and everyone because I hate them all and they're worthless, they mean nothing to me, and I'm going crazy, I must be going crazy -
Forty minutes.
Forty five minutes.
They're not there. They wern't ever there, and they're not going to be there when you go outside. Coffee. Go buy yourself a coffee, and calm down.
Fifty minutes.
I push the door open, scan the room. Nobody. Nobody except my own reflection staring back at me, eyebrow raised in question at my bizarre bought of horrendous paranoia, and then laughing, soundlessly. I blink back, then step outside. He isn't there. None of them are. Keeping an eye out, I make my way up the steps to the coffee stand. People watch me on the way down, or perhaps they don't. Someone's calling my name. Shit, shit, shit, someone's calling my name. I spin round. There's no one there.
I am standing in the middle of a busy train station. It's 9am. I'm spinning around with my eyes wide, convinced that I can hear someone calling my name, and there's nobody there.

There is something greatly comforting in the warmth of a coffee cup, and the metronomic rumble of a train. The familiarity of the newspapers and the death sprawled all over their headlines, and the unawareness of the commuters around me. They're all absorbed in the black and white horrors of some foreign country they'll never visit, and they all look the same. I stand alone at the end of the carriage, watching them, and I sip my coffee, and I calm myself back into euphoria.