Punk fiction - 'Another Girl, Another Planet' by Paul Smith

We catch trains so that we can enter each other's world. Another long journey; re-entry to her atmosphere. The conductor had a teddy-boy quiff, where the dark hair behind each ear bore the trace of his fingers, creating slick horizontal ditches on his skull. The curled front of his hair-do was fluffy and precarious as he leaned over to sign my ticket. He squiggled his signature using a stubby little biro that you used to get in bingo halls and betting shops. He was wearing a dated, utilitarian, navy blue suit that made him look like an extra from Jailhouse Rock and he moved about the train from seat to seat, at ease with his job and his environment. As he walked back into his compartment, some kids who had table seats switched on their phones and the tinny barrage of compressed, high-tempo music began again. Opposite me, a young woman changed into a pair of trainers, peeling off her flat, office shoes delicately. Her whole demeanour changed and her body slackened. She looked up to see if anyone had noticed and then closed her eyes.

"You've been staring through that window for five whole minutes."

"I know."

"Well, where's the fire?"

"Just looking at the name of that hotel. The one that's lit up in big red letters."

"You don't need to describe it to me. I see it every day; every morning. Ho hum."

"Mmmmh."

It was like this more often than not. She probed and I shuffled. Back and forth without any real momentum. In time, her body would shrink and fade in colour until she was transparent and susceptible. Her demeanour remained hardened and she seemed to anticipate the leaks in any suggestion; anything less than what she perceived to be genuine was hounded down. Maybe she was right to be that way.

Looking down, I took a photograph of the car park from the window. The white grids were perfectly spaced so I waited until the cars that came and went seemed to form a regular pattern. As usual, she was waiting for me to leave the flat as I dithered. "Come on, I'm always waiting for you!" I said. "Shut up, you," she replied, exasperated but laughing.

A daily routine was already established. The green tiles of the vestibule glistened and our voices would ricochet around the stairwell as we checked her mailbox. The lift was often broken in her apartment block. When the lift was working it was slow and we would pose in the mirrored wall as we descended. I would fix my hat and she would suck her cheeks inwards whilst tilting her head upwards. Sometimes I would pick her up in a big bear-hug and we'd wobble about before the doors opened. Then we would smirk our way out past whoever was waiting into the muted light of the city centre.

We walked without purpose.

"It's like there's two of you: the one I see when you're with me and the one who does whatever you do when you're not with me."

I always went on the defensive when that sort of comment arrived. They came unexpectedly after a period of contemplation, or late at night when we huddled beneath her thin sheets. Invariably, they came before I was about to go away again. I would agonise over what to say and how to deliver it, but that method only seemed to make things worse, looking like I was stalling over saying some unutterable home truth; the dreadful delay of someone who's thirsty to get something off their chest despite the unwanted consequences. This time, though, a watershed had been reached and instead of the usual anxiety I found myself sinking into the pillow, unable to stop my eyes from shutting.

Some hours later I turned the sheets over and leaned out of the bed gently so I didn't wake myself up too much. The hard skin on my bare feet brushed along the laminated floor in the dark hallway. I kept my eyes scrunched up, half-shut, as I pulled the cord and the bathroom light came on. As I moved towards the toilet, I stood on something sharp. I reached down on the floor to pick up a hair clip before studying it in unnecessary depth. The ends were grazed and worn; grey where the paint had been lost. I placed it on the side of the bath. The bathroom was bare apart from a few products dotted around; a white, blank space, free of mementoes or baggage. Some soapy rings stained the porcelain surfaces. There was no towel to dry my hands. Weeks later, I found myself worn out in a hotel lobby, much calmer than I had been for a long time. I got into my room and threw my bag on the bed as the door clunked behind me. I was in darkness and I realised I would have to go back to the doorway and fumble around for the keycard holder to activate the room's power. I tried to imagine what it must look like from outside: another golden cube appearing in a broken grid; another stranger appearing three seconds later to draw the single curtain.

I laid out my vital bathing accompaniments, including a book that I'd been reading for ages with little hope of completion, and began to run a bath. However hard I tried not to get water on the books I read in the bath, they always ended up with a grey drop spoiling the page or a shrivelled corner that I would later find as I reopened the book. As usual, the bath was too hot and, as usual, I had no intention of waiting so I tentatively lowered myself in using the handrail. The clear water's surface came to meet the ridge of skin that ran around my leg from the tight elastic of my discarded socks. At the very moment when the two lines met, I thought of an eclipse.

A long pause followed as I hovered above the inevitable. After a large intake of breath, my backside breached the stillness of the water. The rest of my body hurriedly descended in an easy movement that belied the surge of activity underneath my skin, which reacted to star-shaped heat rushes by covering itself in a flush. I stopped myself reaching for the cold tap, reasoning that the experience must be doing me some good.

Eventually, I lurched forward until I was sat upright staring down at my immersed feet, strangely pale and distorted. No one can reach me here, I thought. My open mouth was still dripping from my bottom lip. A peculiar mix of tap water and saliva steadily dropped into the bath, creating a fertile trail that spiralled and whisked. Such a pretty little mess.

Back on a train, I wondered less about what had gone wrong than how it had begun. She was distant now, in every sense; several months soon turned into a year. Through the large windows, a familiar, evenly paced tapestry unravelled. Ever-changing, ever-the-same embankments collided with the fringe of various housing estates; somehow dated and timeless. Young, stunted trees struggling to make progress in blanched, open grassland suddenly gave way to brambles and evergreen bushes spilling over each other, alongside the tracks.

On the scruffy, plastic table lay the same book I'd meant to finish all those months ago. Her photograph was the bookmark. I picked it out as I stalled on the last few pages in a familiar ritual meant to prolong my enjoyment and memory of a story. Under scrutiny, the picture revealed little of the feelings once attached to it with such intensity. Its totemic quality was so reduced that it came as a shock. I closed the book, losing my place, and tried to recapture some memory or essence that would compensate for this emotional amnesia. How much of my knowledge about her was formed in those first, impressionable days? Did it leave me blind to subsequent events? That initial grapple left me floored, dazed even, but now my eyes were studying her smile as if to bore beneath the printed surface. Momentarily, a local train pulled alongside, on parallel tracks, its four lurching carriages brightly lit. As the tracks diverged, the rear of the train came into view, with a digital display spelling out "Airport" in crude, illuminated cubes. A girl wearing a winter hat briefly returned my curious gaze; the only one to make eye contact amongst the bodies pressed against the glass doors of the opposite train; another girl, another planet.

'Punk Fiction' is out now (Portico Books, £9.99)

The Only Ones' "Another Girl, Another Planet" is a fizzy rush of a pop song. It's arguable whether it even is a punk song. For one thing, it has one of the best guitar solos I've heard, which I used to rewind on my tape player, over and over. Punk is probably associated with less proficiency and more brevity, but I see it as a direct mode of self-expression that obliterates everything in its path with a brazen abandon. This song has that spirit. Punk inspires other people to create, which is why I wanted to write something for the book.