It is 4.37 and I am just pondering whether to have a last cigarette or to head straight onto the 4.47 from Temple Meads. I stand in the area in front of the ticket booths pondering when a petite young Chinese woman wanders up. Er…uh, a hit person from AIM fraud Jiasen?
She opens her wallet and shows me a ticket to London. “Where go?” she says. Follow me say I beckoning as I walk towards and through the ticket barriers and point to the train on platform 3 just the other side.
She follows. As I wander up towards my normal seat in coach F (a full desk next to the coffee bar) I hear the pitter patter of tiny footsteps. I climb on board in coach F and wander to my seat on the deserted train. The following continues. The normal solitude of my journey which lasts until Didcot, when the train fills up, is today broken. Follow me was an instruction followed literally for the little lady now sits directly in front of me.
Maybe she is a Jiasen hit person after all and is waiting to do her job when – in a few minutes – I head off for a coffee?