They peered through the windows and saw several disgruntled customers standing on a platform that was decorated in custard-yellow tiles with small, repeating orange sun motifs. Every one of them was soaked through to the bone. The men were dressed in garishly coloured shorts and shirts, their sodden garments sticking to their skin. One dishevelled woman was wringing out her ponytailed hair over the tracks, whilst balancing on one leg and pouring water from a knee-high boot.

They heard two women outside their carriage window discussing the weather. “First rain on Sunny Street in over a century,” declared the smaller woman, hunching under a newspaper that she held open over her bedraggled head.