Often, dreams of her train, and the way it took her out of his life while he stood on the station platform watching her leave, haunted him. Sometimes, in those dreams, he would jump on the train as it left the station determined to make her get off, come home with him, or to go on the journey with her, not letting her out of his sight.
William would wake the next morning, after the dream had left him with a sad headache and a messed-up bed, knowing this was reality and knowing that she had never come back, knowing that morning on the station platform was the last time he had ever seen her.
Donna was supposed to be going back to visit her parents for a couple of weeks. A surprise visit before her new job started at the start of the next month.
Donna and William had talked of getting married, and as far as he knew they were happy and in love. He had no reason to worry about her and his only concern as he turned away after the train had disappeared around the corner was how he was going to manage for the next couple of weeks without her.
Those two weeks had now turned into fifteen years.
When he phoned her parents a few days after she left, wondering why she hadn’t called him, he found that she had never arrived there. They’d had no idea she was coming to visit them and were wondering themselves why she had not phoned recently. Donna’s parents had wondered if, and then assumed, Donna and William had decided to go away somewhere together for a break before the start of Donna’s new job.
Later, the police discovered that Donna got off the train a few stops after boarding it and then… nothing. It seemed she’d disappeared from the face of the Earth after calmly walking out of the zone covered by that station’s security cameras, and never seen again.
A Tangled Rope 