I sat beside the window and watched a woman fold a paper napkin into a perfect square, as if she had been practicing for years and had only just found the right moment.

The train left the station with a soft shiver and the smell of wet wool, and by the time we had crossed the river the whole carriage had begun to seem like a room someone had forgotten to finish. Rain had been falling for hours in the city, but on the far side of the fields it changed character and became something gentler, almost thoughtful. The windows had gone silver at the edges, and every passing farm looked briefly like a memory rather than a place.

Across from me sat a woman with a parcel on her lap and a small red umbrella tucked into the seat beside her. She did not read, nor did she sleep. Instead she took a paper napkin from her bag and folded it with astonishing care, making a neat square and then a narrower one, until it looked less like a napkin than a tiny flag of patience. When she was finished she tucked it into the corner of her handbag and smiled at nothing in particular, as if she had solved some private puzzle and had no wish to make a ceremony of it.

By the time we reached the last station, the rain had begun again in a lighter way, and the windows were full of blurred lamps and dark hedges and the bright, uncertain promise of evening. I stepped down to the platform carrying a damp coat and the feeling that I had spent the afternoon in an ordinary place that had briefly become strange and dear.