I’m sitting downstairs on a Penrith bound train. I’ve got a triple seat all to myself and a good fifteen minutes before I need get off at Kingswood. And Pride and Prejudice to read for uni. I am immersed.

A deliberately heavy tread above disturbs my concentration, and I momentarily flick my eyes away from my book to see a small girl with a big attitude stomping down the steps towards me. She throws herself down into the aisle seat across from me, the effort huffing a huge and dramatic sigh from her lungs. Ignoring her grand entrance, I turn back to Pride n’ Predge. The handsome but proud Mr. Darcy has proposed to Lizzy and she has spurned him. I am glued.

At this gripping moment the girl sitting across from me decides to make her presence felt. Ripping her phone out of her pocket and flipping it open, she messages her friends at top speed. As her fingers fly over the keypad, the flurry of shrill beeps torments my ears. I try to concentrate on the page before me, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine I am in nineteenth century England, and harder still to hear Lizzy as she tells off Darcy in her dulcet middle-class tones:

“You could not have BEEP made me the BEEP offer of your BEEP hand in any possible BEEP BEEP way that would have BEEP tempted me to accept it.”

I hold my book up to my nose, as if it might somehow help to block out the cacophonous bleeping.

Losing patience with texting her friend, and possibly struggling with the spelling of ‘amphetamines’ (too many F’s and not enough M’s) the girl curses very nearly under her breath and hits her speed dial.

She is all business, and her tone is as strident as it is uncompromising. ‘Steve-oh. It’s me. Can you see me today?’

Steve’s voice is a distant whistling, and then she cuts him off with a brusque ‘When then?’

Again the static murmur. It makes my ears itch.

The girl snorts in disbelief. ‘Get fucked. Call me .’ She concludes her call, punching the ‘end’ button in disgust. I breathe an inaudible sigh of relief and look back down at the page. Lizzy is totally scathing; I can’t help but suck my teeth in sympathy with the wilting Darcy as she thoroughly castigates him.