ridie Collins steps down from the train, waits for the crowd to wrap her up. She looks above her; pigeons scattering under the great glass roof. Someone bumps her shoulder, rushes on. In the half-light she shivers, picks up her cardboard case and walks towards the ticket collector.

On the train, from Wales, Bridie had listened to the clattering songs in the track. "Did she do right? Well, did she do right? What could she have done? What should she have done? Was it right, was it right, was it right?"

After twenty-minutes, about an hour-and-a-half ago, the train had slowed down, clacking and slapping as it crossed points, then easing into the dark Severn tunnel. Bridie had felt her first real moment of guilt, then. How could she have left Pat, Jenny, Ronnie? And Barbara, Angela? Smoke had leaked in through an open window, but then the train emerged into light sunlight, bright, fresh English green, and she was excited. Now the rails whispered, "Of course it was right. Of course it was right. What else could you do, could you do, could you do? It was right. It was right. It was right."

The ticket-collector is a darkie. He smiles, has gold on one tooth. Bridie smiles back. Steam hisses somewhere, everything smells of sulphur. People push round her. She picks up her little case and walks out of the station into a damp morning. She has nowhere in the world to go.

"I can give you nine shillings," the pawn-broker says. He's bald and fat and wears a brown woollen cardigan, one of those funny little round hats. His eyes are red and watery. Bridie smiles at him, couldn't he make it ten-bob?

"Two rings," he says, "nine and three-pence," best he can do.

Bridie is at Trafalgar Square. She is leaning back to look up at Nelson when someone puts a paper cup in her hand. A pigeon settles on her head. She laughs. A man waves a camera at her.

"Oh, no thank-you," she says. The man takes the cup back.

She buys a newspaper, goes into a café to read it for jobs. The windows are steamed up. She borrows a pencil to mark the things she thinks she could do. The owner, one of those cockney chaps, makes a saucy remark which makes Bridie smile again when she goes for her second cuppa. When she feels warmer she asks the way to Bayswater. He says it's near Paddington, she should get the tube.

She looks at him. "The underground," he says.

She finds a public convenience and goes down. She washes her face and dries it with a towel from the case, then she carefully brushes her hair back with a little water. When she looks at the mirror she thinks her eyes look sad. She goes up, back into the day.

There are more jobs than people these days. Bridie can start tomorrow night. All she has to do, they tell her, is change any soiled beds and make sure all the old dears are all right. Bridie asks, would it be possible to start tonight? The matron, thin-lipped with a mole on her chin is surprised, but she says yes. Bridie leaves and goes for a walk.

The next day Bridie goes to see the Almoner in Paddington Hospital and gets a day-job there as a ward orderly. She can start tomorrow. She goes to the pictures in the afternoon and falls asleep. An usherette wakes her. Is madam all right? I'm fine, Bridie says, just a bit tired. She'd been travelling.

That night Bridie changes some beds, makes sure the doors are locked, then dozes in a chair. She knows she'll wake up if anything happens.

In the morning she has a wash and brush up, goes to the hospital. They give her a grey uniform and a little white hat. Most of the time she seems to be bed-panning. The other orderlies are darkies, but they're very nice.

When Bridie has been at the hospital for four weeks, sister comes over and says, "Mrs Collins, we were wondering if you'd like to be in charge of the other orderlies." It's worth an extra five bob a week.

Bridie says yes. On her way to the old folk's home that night she has a vanilla slice with her cup of tea and buys another newspaper to look for a flat. It was a good night and she reckoned she got three hours' worth of sleep between doing her bits and pieces. She finds a bed-sit. It costs nearly as much as what she earns from working in the home but it's worth it. Sunday nights they don't want her there, and it's still cold out.

Two weeks later, Bridie finds an evening job working in a delicatessen for a man called Stephano. She gives in her notice at the home. Some of the old ladies cry. The first night she uses her coat to cover the bed. The next day she borrows a red blanket from the hospital, sneaked out in a carrier-bag. She buys a pillow-case, and a clock for the mantle-piece in her flat.

Three months later, Mr Stephano asks Bridie, would she run his new shop in Tottenham Court Road? It would be days as well as the evenings, but she can have the flat above rent-free. Bridie gives her notice at the hospital and the day she finishes, goes for a drink with her darkie friends. They all cry. Bridie buys an eiderdown and returns the red blanket.

In the Spring, Mr Stephano asks Bridie to come and look at a site with him; it's not the perfect position, maybe. They go in his car. Bridie sees a new office block being built two streets away, workmen clearing bomb damage opposite. She tells Mr Stephano the shop will be quiet for a year or so, but then it will make a packet. Mr Stephano buys the shop and gives Bridie a raise. Bridie buys a table-cloth and a candlestick for the flat.

In the summer, Bridie realises how slim she's getting. Mrs Stephano has let her have one of her dresses, but the other dresses, from before, they're all too big. She buys eight yards of Crimplene roll-ends, and runs up three different outfits. She has her shoes repaired, polishes them, and buys more stockings. That weekend she goes to a play and buys a paperback book.

It's August when Bridie hears that Ronnie has passed his eleven-plus exam. She sends a pound note and asks a friend to get it to him. The friend is uncomfortable using the telephone. She asks how's Bridie doing.

"Oh, making a go," Bridie says.

About the time Ronnie is starting at Grammar School, Bridie takes all the furniture from her sitting room and stacks it in her bedroom. Then she pulls up the linoleum and sets to work with sandpaper. Every night, after finishing in the shop, she works for two hours rubbing down the boards. By Ronnie's half-term holiday, the floor is immaculate. She stains it, and over the next few days soaks it with a dark brown polish, smelling of almonds. When it is dry she buffs it to glass, then lays a new rug in front of the fireplace. Next to the clock, above the fire, she puts a little china dog, a gift from Mrs Stefano. Behind the clock she puts her Building Society book.

At Christmas, Mr & Mrs Stefano hold a party to celebrate the opening of their fourth shop and the promotion of Bridie Collins, to area manageress. Bridie comes in her new dress and wearing new shoes. Her long dark hair is brushed to gleam, tied back, falling loosely on her shoulders. She sits opposite Mr Stefano's cousin, Maxim, and they talk all evening; about a wonderful new play by Arthur Miller, the new Graham Greene novel, the buildings going up all over the city. At the end of the evening, Max asks Mrs Collins if she might have dinner with him.

The next day, Bridie reclaims her rings from the pawnbroker. He seems much older than she remembered. When she pays he smiles and says they were worth only eight shillings but he always knew she would come back. Bridie flutters her eye-lashes and refingers the rings.

On the Saturday, Bridie goes to a new play with Maxim. Afterwards they dine at a small restaurant close to the river and later, take a taxi to Tottenham Court Road. Bridie says goodnight outside the shop and Max shakes her hand. When the taxi leaves, Bridie goes in to her rooms that smell of almonds, takes off her rings, and drinks a little gin.

On the Monday, Bridie rings her friend. Yes, her ten pounds had arrived but there's bad news. Pat is sixteen now, unhappy. She's left home. They're going to take the children away from Tom and into care.

Bridie puts down the phone.

On Wednesday, Bridie goes to Paddington station and buys a ticket. On Thursday she travels back to Wales. Maxim takes her to the station and for the first time she kisses him; lightly, faintly, on his pink-shaved cheek. As the train clatters and December sun flashes, she remembers a trip in the other direction not so very long ago. When again she enters the tunnel under the sea she takes a breath. As she leaves England, she dabs a handkerchief at the corner of her eye and sits up straight.

The train clanks across a dirty river and stops. Bridie disembarks, then walks from the station. Heads turn to watch her pass as she strides through town to the bus terminus. She takes a bus, walks from the stop to a red-brick terrace close to the canal, goes to a scuffed door, and knocks.

Tom Jones opens the door. He does not speak. He looks down and sees Bridie has no suitcase. He's in working clothes, unshaved. He nods, goes into their front room, spreads newspaper on an armchair and sits down.

The house does not smell of almonds and it's dark inside. Above a dead fireplace the mantlepiece is cluttered with tea-cups, a hairbrush, a drinking glass, papers, cigarette packs, ash, a silver mug, now brown, a school report. On the wall is an embossed plaque which says Bless this House.

Bridie goes into the kitchen, finds two mugs, wipes them, makes hot, very sweet tea. Then she comes back into their front room and tells her husband they should take them upstairs.

In the bedroom Bridie undresses, climbs into a grey bed beside Tom. He is dark, urgent, desperate and silent, and it's quick. He smells of the steelworks she had almost forgotten, his fingernails are thick and cracked. She whispers to him. They drink their tea and she rolls on to her side. He makes himself her shape behind her and they doze until he grows for her again and it happens again. They sleep.

Ronnie, Barbara and Angela come home. Bridie is ready for them, in the kitchen wiping down when they come through the back door. She tells them their father is asleep upstairs and to be quiet. She dries her hands and they go into the front room. They sit on the sofa by the growing fire. She tells them she has to go back to London tomorrow to do some things, but she's coming back on the weekend.

"Do you mean it?" Ronnie says.

She looks straight at him.

"Yes," she says.

"For good?"

"Yes," she says.

In the morning, Tom comes in from work, makes a single cup of tea and sits down in the kitchen at a table with a check plastic cover. His wife comes in silently, makes another cup and sits opposite him. How was his night at work? He tells her there were problems with the rollers again. They'd worked all night in eighteen inches of water. Dai Evans got burned when a white-hot run of steel snaked.

Bridie makes Tom a piece of toast to take to bed.

On the way back to London, Bridie listens to the talking rails and hears the sound of her children. The Severn Tunnel passes by without a thought.

When she gets to Paddington she pops down to the underground, takes the Circle Line, changes once, leaves one stop before Tottenham Court Road. She walks down Oxford Street to see the lights. It's alive with people. Black taxis throb, stalled behind red buses, shops tinkle and ping.

The Stefanos beg Bridie to stay. Mrs Stefano cries and Mr Stefano offers her a partnership. They have been so kind, Bridie says, but they're making a go now and she's needed elsewhere. She'll finish the week and then go home.

She goes to work and telephones Max. At seven o'clock, she goes to her apartment, bathes in perfumed water, brushes her hair, dresses. Max arrives at eight, immaculate, in dinner dress beneath a charcoal overcoat. He wears a white silk scarf. They have tickets to Miller and they walk there, arm in arm against the night. Later they eat and later they make love to the smell of almonds. Max is kind and he whispers to her as they listen to London. They will have just two more nights.

She leaves her clock, her rug, her eiderdown, but she takes her books, the theatre program, her clothes, her savings. She watches and listens as the train eases slowly out of Paddington. December sun glints on the lines but she hears no voices, only metal on metal, clack, cah-lack, clack-clack, cah-lack.

© Alex Keegan