I sit in the rear-facing window seat of the 8:32 from St Pancras. The minute hand of the gilded nineteenth century platform clock partially covers the VI as the train judders forward, rocking my head and jolting my hands as they grip the cardboard take-away cup. The storm created in my teacup as the train jolts to life causes tidal waves of tea to spill over, burning my hands and covering the table in front of me.

“Fuck my life!” My muttering is perhaps a little too loud as the grizzled old lady diagonally across from me frowns in my direction. I avoid eye contact.

In my seat I am facing London as the train gathers speed in the direction of Sheffield. Going backwards seems apt. I rest my head in my hands, elbows like islands in the ocean of tea sploshing around the table.

Gloomy, smog-stained buildings soon give way to grey fields and farmland as the sun fails to penetrate through the low-hanging cumulonimbus clouds. Soon tears of rain drizzle across the window. The old lady knits and I close my eyes.

“I just can’t stand to look at you anymore,” Jenny had said as she walked out the front door for the last time. The Christmas party with its limitless free Prosecco was the straw, but the camel’s back was already well and truly sagging before she caught me with my boss under the mistletoe.

“Come home, duck,” mum had said when I blubbered down the phone that Jenny had left. She might not feel the same when I tell her the full truth, but then again mothers are supposed to love us no matter what, aren’t they?

Now I peer through the window, the passing fields populated by sheep with their newly-born lambs tagging along. It may be the distorted perspective through the rain-streaked glass, or the glancing view I am afforded as the train races me away from my home, or even the blurriness caused by tear-rimmed eyes, but one sheep in particular catches my eye. It appears, as I watch her in that fleeting moment, that she looks in my direction through the rain, turns away from her lamb, and kicks it in the nose.