For the first hour, he did nothing. He watched the suburbs thin into fields, then thicken into a town he’d never heard of. At Redhill, a teenage girl got on with a violin case. She sat opposite and practiced fingering silently on the velvet lining. Peter remembered he used to play clarinet. He’d stopped when the commute began, because there was no room in a season ticket for a life.

There was a long pause. “Who is this?”

The season ticket expired on a Tuesday. Peter kept the orange paper slip from Coulsdon in his wallet. It wasn’t a pass to anywhere. It was proof that sometimes, the cheapest fare is the one that lets you get off.

“What are you doing now?” Brenda asked.

Peter laughed. It sounded strange—rusty, like a gate swinging open for the first time in years.

Rail season tickets are offered by train operating companies in the UK, allowing passengers to travel on specific routes or networks for a fixed period, typically a monthly or annual period. The prices of these tickets are set by the train operating companies, with input from the Department for Transport (DfT). The prices are designed to cover the costs of operating the rail network, while also providing a profit for the train operating companies.