Three stops into my journey to work a couple clamber on board the train. Both of them in tracksuits and trainers. She is hopping, she is only wearing one trainer, the other is grasped in her hand. He sits opposite me, she sits on the seat opposite him on the other side of the aisle, both of them turned to face each other. Next to her is a giant Bargain Booze carrier bag with a Sports Direct bag shoved into the top of it. She is still only wearing one shoe. She admires the Staffordshire Bull Terrier which was previously being stroked by a stranger.
"Can I read that paper please?" a business man in a woolly hat passes the one shoe-d woman the Metro lying next to him.
While catching up on the day's update on the royal baby*, the woman stretches out her leg and rests her foot on her partner's knee, "do that for us?" she says. "What?" "Me sock". Entirely unphased the man rolls up the leg of her tracksuit bottoms and adjusts her sock. She puts her trainer on. She takes her trainer back off.
A man two seats behind looks on, he is smirking at the scene.
There is a young man diagonally opposite me, after some discussion with her partner the woman calls out to him "'Ey, if I've bought something from Burtons in town, I can change it 'ere, can't I?" He tells her she can, "told you so" she says to her partner.
"What time is it?" she bellows to the man next to her "shit, I'm five minutes late" and carries on fiddling with the shoe in her hand.
They are getting off at the next stop, they stand up and walk towards the doors, she puts her shoes on at this point and falls onto her partner. As the train trundles into the station she presses her back into his front and he looks at their reflection in the doors opposite.
*probably, I don't know for sure
