Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

And I said, “Yes. I’m going to London to live with my mother.”

And he said, “Has your mother got a telephone number?”

And I said, “Yes.”

And he said, “And can you tell me what it is?”

And I said, “Yes. It’s 0208 887 8907.”

And he said, “And you’ll ring her if you get into any trouble, OK?”

And I said, “Yes,” because I knew you could ring people from phone boxes if you had money, and I had money now.

And he said, “Good.”

And I walked into the ticket office and I turned round and I could see that the policeman was still watching me so I felt safe. And there was a long desk at the other side of the big room and a window on the desk and there was a man standing in front of the window and there was a man behind the window, and I said to the man behind the window, “I want to go to London.”

And the man in front of the window said, “If you don’t mind,” and he turned round so that his back was toward me and the man behind the window gave him a little bit of paper to sign and he signed it and pushed it back under the window and the man behind the window gave him a ticket. And then the man in front of the window looked at me and he said, “What the fuck are you looking at?” and then he walked away.

And he had dreadlocks, which is what some black people have, but he was white, and dreadlocks is when you never wash your hair and it looks like old rope. And he had red trousers with stars on them. And I kept my hand on my Swiss Army knife in case he touched me.

And then there was no one else in front of the window and I said to the man behind the window, “I want to go to London,” and I hadn’t been frightened when I was with the policeman but I turned round and I saw that he had gone now and I was scared again, so I tried to pretend I was playing a game on my computer and it was called Train to London and it was like Mystor The 11th Hour, and you had to solve lots of different problems to get to the next level, and I could turn it off at any time.

And the man said, “Single or return?”

And I said, “What does single or return mean?”

And he said, “Do you want to go one way, or do you want to go and come back?”

And I said, “I want to stay there when I get there.”

And he said, “For how long?”

And I said, “Until I go to university.”

And he said, “Single, then,” and then he said, “That’ll be ?32.”

And I gave him the fifty pounds and he gave me ?10 back and he said, “Don’t you go throwing it away.”

And then he gave me a little yellow and orange ticket and ?8 in coins and I put it all in my pocket with my knife. And I didn’t like the ticket being half yellow but I had to keep it because it was my train ticket.

And then he said, “If you could move away from the counter.”

And I said, “When is the train to London?”

And he looked at his watch and said, “Platform 1, five minutes.”

And I said, “Where is Platform 1?”

And he pointed and said, “Through the underpass and up the stairs. You’ll see the signs.”

And underpass meant tunnel because I could see where he was pointing, so I went out of the ticket office, but it wasn’t like a computer game at all because I was in the middle of it and it was like all the signs were shouting in my head and someone bumped into me as they walked past and I made a noise like a dog barking to scare them off.

And I pictured in my head a big red line across the floor which started at my feet and went through the tunnel and I started walking along the red line, saying, “Left, right, left, right, left, right,” because sometimes when I am frightened or angry it helps if I do something that has a rhythm to it, like music or drumming, which is something Siobhan taught me to do.

And I went up the stairs and I saw a sign saying Platform 1and there was pointing at a glass door so I went through it, and someone bumped into me again with a suitcase and I made another noise like a dog barking, and they said, “Watch where the hell you’re going,” but I pretended that they were just one of the Guarding Demons in Train to Londonand there was a train. And I saw a man with a newspaper and a bag of golf clubs go up to one of the doors of the train and press a big button next to it and the doors were electronic and they slid open and I liked that. And then the doors closed behind him.

And then I looked at my watch and 5 minutes had gone past since I was at the ticket office, which meant that the train would be going in 2 minutes.

And then I went up to the door and I pressed the big button and the doors slid open and I stepped through the doors.

And I was on the train to London.

193.When I used to play with my train set I made a train timetable because I liked timetables. And I like timetables because I like to know when everything is going to happen.

And this was my timetable when I lived at home with Father and I thought that Mother was dead from a heart attack (this was the timetable for a Monday and also it is an approximation)

7:20 a.m.Wake up

7:25 a.m.Clean teeth and wash face

7:30 a.m.Give Toby food and water

7:40 a.m.Have breakfast

8:00 a.m.Put school clothes on

8:05 a.m.Pack schoolbag

8:10 a.m.Read book or watch video

8:32 a.m.Catch bus to school

8:43 a.m.Go past tropical fish shop

8:51 a.m.Arrive at school

9:00 a.m.School assembly

9:15 a.m.First morning class

10:30 a.m.Break

10:50 a.m.Art class with Mrs. Peters [ 12 12 In the art class we do art, but in the first morning class and the first afternoon class and the second afternoon class we do lots of different things like Reading and Tests and Social Skills and Looking after Animals and What We Did at the Weekend and Writing and Maths and Stranger Danger and Money and Personal Hygiene. ]

12:30 p.m.Lunch

1:00 p.m.First afternoon class

2:15 p.m. Second afternoon class

3:30 p.m.Catch school bus home

3:49 p.m.Get off school bus at home

3:50 p.m.Have juice and snack

3:55 p.m.Give Toby food and water

4:00 p.m.Take Toby out of his cage

4:18 p.m.Put Toby into his cage

4:20 p.m.Watch television or video

5:00 p.m.Read a book

6:00 p.m.Have tea

6:30 p.m.Watch television or a video

7:00 p.m.Do maths practice

8:00 p.m.Have a bath

8:15 p.m.Get changed into pajamas

8:20 p.m.Play computer games

9:00 p.m.Watch television or a video

9:20 p.m.Have juice and a snack

9:30 p.m.Go to bed

And at the weekend I make up my own timetable and I write it down on a piece of cardboard and I put it up on the wall. And it says things like Feed Toby or Do maths or Go to the shop to buy sweets. And that is one of the other reasons why I don’t like France, because when people are on holiday they don’t have a timetable and I had to get Mother and Father to tell me every morning exactly what we were going to do that day to make me feel better.

Because time is not like space. And when you put something down somewhere, like a protractor or a biscuit, you can have a map in your head to tell you where you have left it, but even if you don’t have a map it will still be there because a map is a representation of things that actually exist so you can find the protractor or the biscuit again. And a timetable is a map of time, except that if you don’t have a timetable time is not there like the landing and the garden and the route to school. Because time is only the relationship between the way different things change, like the earth going round the sun and atoms vibrating and clocks ticking and day and night and waking up and going to sleep, and it is like west or nor-nor-east, which won’t exist when the earth stops existing and falls into the sun because it is only a relationship between the North Pole and the South Pole and everywhere else, like Mogadishu and Sunderland and Canberra.