“Thanks, have a nice day,” she said. I didn’t even know her name. We had walked side by side down the stairs without exchanging looks or words.

It’s funny how good deeds and acts of kindness are surrounded by an air of anonymity. Just like sins. 

“You’re welcome,” I replied with my fixed, fake, forced morning smile. I put her luggage on the floor and our roads diverged as we continued our journey in the underworld.

It was Friday so there was a livelier buzz around the station. People were standing in bunches at the end of platforms mechanically looking at their phone screens, scrolling or swiping, completely disengaged and deep in thought of how to waste yet another weekend.

In the corridor in between platforms, the man with the yellow violin was in his usual place, hat on his head and his violin case open for donations. He was stroking the bow against the strings with the same affection and tenderness a dad touches his newborn baby. Every now and then his music would be accompanied by the most unlikely set of lyrics coming from a digitalized female voice: “Mind the gap between the train and the platform.” If this were a new music genre it would be called classical techno or clechno, depending on your postcode.

This Friday wasn’t different. Listening to his music and looking at the stoic way he was handling the musical instrument, the same recurring thought I’ve had for weeks filled my head like the tides invade a sea caves at dusk.

The imaginary scenario was nothing short of a modern day Titanic. Instead of the freezing waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, the setting were the underground surroundings of King’s Cross St. Pancras. In the place of the iceberg, a bomb.

BOOM.

I open my eyes to a world of shadows, smoke and blood.  Both my ears are buzzing with a witch’s scream as I’m laying on the floor, barely able to breathe. People around me are running aimlessly. My right arm is numb, probably broken and covered in someone else’s red bodily fluids. I try to pick myself up but after the moral victory of standing on my own two legs, I realize I don’t know where to go. At this point fear has seized control of my existence. I’m shaking backed against the wall with no clear direction of where I am and what I need to do next. Tears start running down my cheeks. To my right there is a motionless male body flat on the floor. To my left, a woman is howling at the top of her lungs and even though I can’’t hear her, the veins popping on her neck and the stretched facial muscles are telling of her distress. What do I do? What has just happened? The voices in my head are louder than the pain on my arm.  

“Sir? Are you getting on the train? You’re obstructing the doors.” 

My train was on time. In the background, the man with the yellow violin was still releasing notes in the air. 

I stepped on the train. 

“Doors closing.”