The train came out of the tunnel and the light changed all at once, the way it does in late September. Nobody looked up; everyone had their own small window to keep open. She turned the page slowly, as if the carriage might notice.

At Skanstull a man sat down beside her with a paper bag of cinnamon buns and the smell filled the whole row. She decided that a book read among strangers is never quite the same book read alone. The doors closed. The sentence waited for her.

There were twelve stations between home and work, and she had long ago stopped counting them. What she counted instead were pages, and on good mornings the two numbers were the same.