KATHRYN – DREM STATION

Taking its time, as ever! The train often does this really irritating thing before it gets to Drem; it just stops on the track for ages. Sometimes up to fifteen, twenty minutes, and all in order to let a high-speed train past.

Never does one feel more like a second-class citizen than when one is sitting on a train that has been deliberately delayed to let another one past. You're sitting there on the crappy plain old train, looking out at some random field or dumpsite, and if you're lucky you might get a "Sorry for the delay" over the tannoy. Then you'll hear it, in the background at first, but getting louder and louder: a sort of hi-tech whooshing sound, and as the noise reaches its crescendo, you look out the window and see the sleek, slim train, fancy curtains around the windows, go speeding past, gently rocking our train with the force of it. Blink and you miss it. Then, after another minute or two, your train will wheeze and splutter back into life, and off you trundle.

It's a bit like an old man going up a pavement in a wheelchair, or perhaps hobbling with a walking stick, and then stopping and shifting to the side to let a young fit jogger listening to the latest model of iPod run past, or perhaps a young businessman in a sharp suit power-walking to work.

Move over, old man, new man is coming through and we're not waiting up. This is the twenty-first century, mother-fu –

No. No swearing. It was my new year's resolution, and though I've broken it a few times, we're now at December and I feel I've done pretty damn well. The year before, it sort of gradually occurred to me that I was swearing a lot. I went out a lot as well, and I have a theory that too much drink loosened my tongue rather more than I'd have liked. To be honest, it got to the stage where I just felt like a foul-mouthed bi –

No. No swearing. I'm a hardliner – I consider even thinking a swear-word to be a defeat.

In the distance, I see the lights and body of the approaching train – about time! The punctuality isn't too bad today though, I suppose, comparatively speaking. The train gradually slows on the last few hundred yards before arriving at the platform, and I slip into the surprisingly large crowd waiting, just behind a bunch of kids all speaking Spanish, being herded like cats by a plump old Latino woman – in other words, she's making a right meal of it. I wouldn't have expected such a busy platform at a stop like Drem, but stranger things have happened.

Then I look into one of the train's windows and I see him, sitting there opposite an old lady and a man in one of those fluorescent yellow jackets. Him being Jack, my ex-boyfriend – and shi – sugar – he's looking right this way!

I dart through the crowd, past the Spaniards, to the doors at the next carriage. I'm irritated – normally I'm really good at judging where to stand on the platform, so I can get first on whatever carriage I go for. But because of that fu – that annoying boy – I'm stuck behind a crowd, all of whom seem to be acting as though their lives depend on entering the train as slowly … as … humanly … possible.

Life's a rush, okay? It's short and to the point, and you have to grab it by the scruff of the neck. That's why Jack and I couldn't last. There's laid-back and, you know, there's laid-back. And then there's just not giving two hoots about anything. Jack was borderline.

Maybe I exaggerate. But as far as I'm concerned, if you're not at the front jostling in the queue that is life, you're not doing it right, or to its fullest.

As I sit down in the train, and it begins to bump forwards again, I do wonder about how shaken-up seeing that boy for two seconds through public transport windows got me, so much so that I ran to stay away from him. I mean, what the hell? I haven't seen him for about a year. What am I afraid of? We didn't exactly end on the worst of terms, did we? Considering how close we were, and how long we were together, I was genuinely surprised at the lack of acrimony in the split.

That said, I'd prefer to have some time for preparation. I'd prefer to know I was going to see him, so I could react accordingly. I would have time to think about what I wanted to say, and what messages I'd want to send. I put my headphones in, and the stops start to roll by. Longniddry – Prestonpans – Wallyford – Musselburgh. Before I know it, we're rolling into Edinburgh Waverley, and I move to the train doors, first in the queue, while people jostle behind me.