The child of the train is quick and clever. She has never grown as tall as she had hoped, so she can still squeeze into the smallest spaces and scramble up into the train’s hidden corners. She has learned all the secrets of the train—how to duck through the kitchen carriages and steal a hot dumpling on the way; how to tiptoe through the garden carriage without disturbing the bad-tempered chickens; how to get to the pipework and wires when things go wrong (and they do go wrong—more often than the Company would like, or would ever reveal to their investors). She runs in time with the rhythm of
...more
