When I finished speaking the woman behind the doors began saying something impatient-looking. But listening for what I couldn't hear had made my ears different. Now I could hear birds, air, the traffic in the distance. Then what I could hear most clearly was unexpected music.
      Three boys were coming along the path I thought of as my path now, along the side of the train. One had a ghettoblaster. A black dog with his lead trailing on the ground was ahead of them, stopping to sniff the grass and stones, then loping off in front again when the boys got ahead instead.
      The dog saw me and stopped. The boys stopped. They were all in clothes that looked too big for them. The dog was streamlined in comparison, held in one neat piece by his skin. They backed up two or three steps as if they were all part of the same single body. Then they shrugged apart and came forward again, because I was no threat to anyone.
      Trespassing's illegal, one of the boys said to me when they were close enough.
      I said nothing. I pointed to the woman in the train.
      She's got wheels, man, the smallest boy said to the others.
      All three waved to the woman. She waved back. One boy held up a packet of cigarettes. The woman nodded and shouted the silent word yes.
The boy with the ghetto blaster turned the volume off.
      Can't hear you, he shouted.
      The woman mouthed the word yes again, with finesse, as if very quietly. The boy with the cigarette packet opened the packet, took out two cigarettes and threw them both at the shut door. Somehow it was funnier because he threw two cigarettes, not just one. The woman held up her hand as if to say, wait a minute. She put her other hand in a bag on the side of the chair and took out an umbrella with a hooked handle. Then she backed her chair away from the door. She wheeled herself into the carriage, lined up the wheelchair next to the train seats and, using all the strength in her arms, she lifted and shifted herself from the wheelchair onto the seat. She got her breath back. She bent her head over the umbrella, lengthened the umbrella somehow, then she reached with the lengthened umbrella to hook open the little train window above her.
      The boys cheered. I did too. Now we could hear the woman's voice through the open window. She said in a voice that was proper, rather upper middle class, that she wished she'd thought how to open that window earlier, and that she would love a cigarette, that she hadn't had a cigarette for over five years now, that she deserved one after today. She thanked the boys. She turned then and said a separate hello to me, as if we were all at a party she'd thrown and she was simply emphasising how very pleased she was to see each and every one of us.
      I saw you on the train looking so thoughtful, she said. Thank you for finding me.
      The notion that I had been seen, and that from the outside I had at some unknowing point looked thoughtful, made me feel strange, better. The idea that I had found anything filled me with wonder. As the boys took turns trying to throw single cigarettes up in the air and through the open window, I felt myself become substantial. Now the boys were scrabbling about on the ground trying to find the fallen cigarettes, arguing about picking the cigarettes up off the ground and not crushing them. They shouted with happiness when one went through the high window and landed on the woman's lap. They argued about whose aim was truest, who would be best to throw the little red plastic lighter.

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