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

And then the train stopped and a lady with a yellow waterproof coat came and took the big suitcase away and she said, “Have you touched this?”

And I said, “Yes.”

And then she went away.

And then a man stood next to the shelf and said, “Come and look at this, Barry. They’ve got, like, a train elf.”

And another man came and stood next to him and said, “Well, we have both been drinking.”

And the first man said, “Perhaps we should feed him some nuts.”

And the second man said, “You’re the one who’s bloody nuts.”

And the first one said, “Come on, shift it, you daft cunt. I need more beers before I sober up.”

And then they went away.

And then the train was really quiet and it didn’t move again and I couldn’t hear anyone. So I decided to get off the shelf and go and get my bag and see if the policeman was still sitting in his seat.

So I got off the shelf and I looked through the door, but the policeman wasn’t there. And my bag had gone as well, which had Toby’s food in it and my maths books and my clean pants and vest and shirt and the orange juice and the milk and the custard creams and the baked beans.

And then I heard the sound of feet and I turned round and it was another policeman, not the one who was on the train before, and I could see him through the door, in the next carriage, and he was looking under the seats. And I decided that I didn’t like policemen so much anymore, so I got off the train.

And when I saw how big the room was that the train was in and I heard how noisy and echoey it was, I had to kneel down on the ground for a bit because I thought I was going to fall over. And when I was kneeling on the ground I worked out which way to walk, and I decided to walk in the direction the train was going when it came into the station because if this was the last stop, that was the direction London was in.

So I stood up and I imagined that there was a big red line on the ground which ran parallel to the train to the gate at the far end and I walked along it and I said, “Left, right, left, right…” again, like before.

And when I got to the gate a man said to me, “I think someone’s looking for you, sonny.”

And I said, “Who’s looking for me?” because I thought it might be Mother and the policeman in Swindon had phoned her up with the phone number I told him.

But he said, “A policeman.”

And I said, “I know.”

And he said, “Oh. Right.” And then he said, “You wait here, then, and I’ll go and tell them,” and he walked back down the side of the train.

So I carried on walking. And I could still feel the feeling like a balloon inside my chest and it hurt and I covered my ears with my hands and I went and stood against the wall of a little shop which said Hotel and Theatre Reservations Tel: 0207 402 5164in the middle of the big room and then I took my hands away from my ears and I groaned to block out the noise and I looked round the big room at all the signs to see if this was London. And the signs said:

But after a few seconds they looked like this:

because there were too many and my brain wasn’t working properly and this frightened me so I closed my eyes again and I counted slowly to 50 but without doing the cubes. And I stood there and I opened my Swiss Army knife in my pocket to make me feel safe and I held on to it tight.

And then I made my hand into a little tube with my fingers and I opened my eyes and I looked through the tube so that I was only looking at one sign at a time and after a long time I saw a sign that said Informationand it was above a window on a little shop.

And a man came up to me and he was wearing a blue jacket and blue trousers and he had brown shoes and he was carrying a book in his hand and he said, “You look lost.”

So I took out my Swiss Army knife.

And he said, “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa,” and held up both his hands with his fingers stretched out in a fan, like he wanted me to stretch my fingers out in a fan and touch his fingers because he wanted to say he loved me, but he did it with both hands, not one like Father and Mother, and I didn’t know who he was.

And then he walked away backward.

So I went to the shop that said Informationand I could feel my heart beating very hard and I could hear a noise like the sea in my ears. And when I got to the window I said, “Is this London?” but there was no one behind the window.

And then someone sat behind the window and she was a lady and she was black and she had long fingernails which were painted pink and I said, “Is this London?”

And she said, “Sure is, honey.”

And I said, “Is this London?”

And she said, “Indeed it is.”

And I said, “How do I get to 451c Chapter Road, London NW2 5NG?”

And she said, “Where is that?”

And I said, “It’s 451c Chapter Road, London NW2 5NG. And sometimes you can write it 451c Chapter Road, Willesden, London NW2 5NG.”

And the lady said to me, “Take the tube to Willesden Junction, honey. Or Willesden Green. Got to be near there somewhere.”

And I said, “What sort of tube?”

And she said, “Are you for real?”

And I didn’t say anything.

And she said, “Over there. See that big staircase with the escalators? See the sign? Says Underground. Take the Bakerloo Line to Willesden Junction or the Jubilee to Willesden Green. You OK, honey?”

And I looked where she was pointing and there was a big staircase going down into the ground and there was a big sign over the top of it like this:

And I thought, “I can do this,” because I was doing really well and I was in London and I would find my mother. And I had to think to myself, “The people are like cows in a field,” and I just had to look in front of me all the time and make a red line along the floor in the picture of the big room in my head and follow it.

And I walked across the big room to the escalators. And I kept hold of my Swiss Army knife in my pocket and I held on to Toby in my other pocket to make sure he didn’t escape.

And the escalators was a staircase but it was moving and people stepped onto it and it carried them down and up and it made me laugh because I hadn’t been on one before and it was like something in a science fiction film about the future. But I didn’t want to use it so I went down the stairs instead.

And then I was in a smaller room underground and there were lots of people and there were pillars which had blue lights in the ground around the bottom of them and I liked these but I didn’t like the people, so I saw a photo booth like one I went into on 25 March 1994 to have my passport photo done, and I went into the photo booth because it was like a cupboard and it felt safer and I could look out through the curtain.

And I did detecting by watching and I saw that people were putting tickets into gray gates and walking through. And some of them were buying tickets at big black machines on the wall.

And I watched 47 people do this and I memorized what to do. Then I imagined a red line on the floor and I walked over to the wall where there was a poster which was a list of places to go and it was alphabetical and I saw Willesden Greenand it said ?2:20and then I went to one of the machines and there was a little screen which said PRESS TICKET TYPEand I pressed the button that most people had pressed, which was ADULT SINGLEand ?2:20,and the screen said INSERT ?2:20and I put three ?1 coins into the slot and there was a clinking noise and the screen said TAKE TICKET AND CHANGEand there was a ticket in a little hole at the bottom of the machine and a 50p coin and a 20p coin and a 10p coin and I put the coins in my pocket and I went up to one of the gray gates and I put my ticket into the slot and it sucked it in and it came out on the other side of the gate. And someone said, “Get a move on,” and I made the noise like a dog barking and I walked forward and the gate opened this time and I took my ticket like other people did and I liked the gray gate because that was like something in a science fiction film about the future, too.