I can't speak for the others
I can only reflect on my own thoughts and the heat of discomfort.
I can't speak for the woman who wept beside her oversized suitcases on the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow, I can only consider her tears and what they did to my own heartache.
I didn't speak, but I reached over after several minutes of communal silence and placed a tissue (clean and unused) on her lap. Before I was back in my seat, she had taken it and covered her face in her grief and the tears came again.
The grandmother across from me got up next and placed a red stripped mint on the woman's skirt.
The dad who stood in the doorway, dressed for the beach, followed, leaving an offering of a capri-sun.
The child in the pram looked up at his mother and she smiled encouragement to him, as he offered his Spider-Man, pressing it to the woman's hand
and as she unveiled her face and saw the offerings, she laughed, brief and wet, but with a smile that stayed. She hugged Spider-Man, nodded and then with a sensibility to a child's needs, handed it back with thanks.
After a moment she found my eyes, and mimed a request for a fresh tissue and then in the silence she settled for her journey as we all looked away, dutifully silent.
The London underground train system is known for its un spoken policy of not speaking to one another.
