She dropped into the seat with a heaviness that suggested utter exhaustion.
Her mousey, flyaway hair scraped back into a heavy, scruffy pony tail; her chin all teenage spotty.
She looked at no-one, not even with that out-of-the-corner-of-your-eye curiosity you use on the underground, just to make sure you're not about to sit next to a nutter.
She didn't care who was around her.
She buried her nose in her scarf, rested her head against her hand against the window, shut her eyes and shut out the world.
I think she must have been about 16, though impossible to say for sure.
She had bright lime green headphones on - the ones that cover your whole ears - and in the hand that wasn't rested against her cheek she was holding an iPod.
And that might have been that.
As you do on the tube, even a mid-afternoon one, you try not to preoccupy yourself too much with anyone around you. Just in case.
Simple rules. Try not to meet another's eyes, don't invade personal space, don't inhale too deeply when someone a few seats back sneezes...the usual stuff.
A jumble of humanity doing its best to disengage, to disappear, to pretend they aren't there...just until they reach their stop.
This girl was doing a cracking job of all that. But teenagers can can't they? We expect them to shut off, ignore, defy. Sullen-ness their shield - and some of them do it so well.
I glanced again at the girl.
She looked crumpled. Her face had burrowed deeper into the material of her scarf and denim jacket and only her closed eyes, cheek apples and forehead were visible. But part of the scarf material closest to her eyes had become a shade darker. Wet. And I noticed wetness on her cheeks too.
She was crying.
I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed, but I don't think they had.
The woman next to me was on her phone, had been for ages, high-pitched, shrieky and animated. The man in the seat next to the girl was engrossed in his paper and in the contents of his beer can.
Besides, the girl had done her best to make herself look as if she wasn't there. And just observing her, noticing her tears, felt instrusive, voyeuristic.
She was closed to the world. Eyes clamped shut. But now I come to notice it, there's an occasional but obvious lurch of the shoulders, a sob surpressed.
Seconds pass.
Maybe it's the music, I think. Perhaps she's broken up with a boyfriend. Maybe a row with her parents. Or maybe it's much, much worse than that.
And I realise I'm sitting there minutes later making up stories in my head for what might be the matter with the girl sitting opposite me instead of....instead of what?
I'm ages away from my stop, she's showing no sign of being near hers so are we to sit like this, this girl crying and me, opposite...watching her?
When does minding your own business become a failure of human compassion.
The thought of it.
Am I to do nothing at all?
Hardly aware of the decision I've made I lean over and lightly touch her elbow. I know she can't hear me because of the music.
At my touch her eyes flash open and for a second I see enraged, flashing soaked brown eyes, sodden lashes, not quite a snarl but something aggressive - attack the best form of defence, I suppose.
'Vous etes ok?' I ask. She sees instantly I am harmless but shrugs a shoulder away from me, fiddles with her ipod and wipes her nose with her scarf before hunkering down again and shutting me out.
Her music is classical, I heard a bit of it as she readjusted the headphones. Something searing, something soaraway. I'm surprised, though I don't know why.
I can't reach her and she doesn't want me to.
So I sit for a few stops more with her, not watching, but aware, as she snuffles into her scarf and then at one stop just as the doors are about to close, she moves, grabs her rucksack, and makes for the door, all flying ponytail, trailing scarf and ipod wires.
And she's gone.
And I sit for a few moments more, imagining and wondering... before it's my turn to get off too.
The Metro, where we see snippets of lives, and then they are gone.
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