carole foster

Secure Storage

She held her breath looking up to the dark sky ringed with street lights, passing buses and the glow of shops. She cursed herself for leaving work later than she’d meant and ending up in this crush of people trying to get down the steps of the Oxford Circus tube. People crushed up hard enough to lift each other off their feet. It was dangerous going down the steps to the ticket barriers. Touching the brick wall, Caroline held her small case to steady herself. The movement stopped suddenly pushing Caroline’s nose into the collar of a man on the step below her. She pulled back and saw his balding head, the dandruff she’d just had her nose pushed into and inwardly shuddered. ‘I am never doing this again’ she thought as the crowd suddenly released into the wider ticket hall. The mass rushed to the automatic ticket barriers, tutting as slower people got their tickets stuck or struggled to get their cards to pay to open the barriers quickly enough for the daily experts behind them. Caroline stopped to take a breath before tackling the barrier and then the escalators down to the rammed tube trains.