Ticket to ride

200 word flash fiction

She hated her new job. Just six weeks in she knew it wasn’t for her. And she was desperately unhappy living in the tiny, beige, expensive apartment in London. The noisy neighbours and the litter-strewn streets crushed her spirits and knotted her stomach every day.

That morning, her footsteps slowed the nearer she got to the office and she came to a standstill, head bowed, outside Kings Cross. An impulse seized her. She entered the station, looked up at the departures board and considered. She bought a train ticket to Scotland, climbed onto a train, and was gone. She sloughed off her old life like a snake sheds its skin.

Cities gave way to open spaces and hours later she looked out on clean, bright countryside. Green and yellow fields stitched together with hedgerows flashed by on her left. Wide blue skies arched above and to the horizon. A blue sea, white flecked, rolled on her right. She dismissed thoughts of office and landlord, of loud people and bills. She stepped off the train in the Kingdom of Fife, found a flat, found a job, found a friend. She never looked back once she’d decided to live happily ever after.

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