The din of people who had just gotten on at the last station settling down in their train carriage woke her daughter up. She looked up distractedly from the email she’d been reading on her phone at the tiny stirring form in the baby carrier at her feet, but it was her husband who put aside his book so he could reach down to pick their child up.

Passers-by crooned at their daughter in that way that well-meaning strangers do, exclaiming over her stuffed giraffe and her beautiful butterscotch eyes and her adorable onesie. She smiled as her daughter babbled nonsense to the delight of the entire car, and dutifully supplied answers about her daughter’s name (Lauren) and age (ten months) and temperament (adventurous to a fault).

The train had started moving again, almost imperceptibly, and her daughter struggled to escape her father’s grasp so she could clamber onto her mother’s lap and look out the window. The child batted against the window, uncomprehending of the glass that prevented her from reaching out and touching the trees moving past them at increasing speeds. Her husband still had his arms on their daughter’s waist, and so she merely rested one hand against the tiny protruding belly to prevent the child from tumbling too far forward and knocking its head on the window.

She looked up from her phone again at a particular enthusiastic clamour of her daughter’s at something that had just flown past their window, but when she looked out from her seat, her eyes looked right past the green fields and the straggling forest in the distant horizon, looking at something only she could see. In the next moment her eyes refocused and she seemed to be looking at her own reflection in the train window, at her dark hair and tasteful earrings and designer necklace.

Her husband pulled their daughter back onto his lap and tapped her on the nose, affectionately. She looked at her tiny family, its members beaming at each other, and smiled a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.