Xeno

The sun was still high when she noticed the stretch of shadows on the pavement—long, low shapes cast by iron benches and pint glasses sweating on crowded tables.

She sat on the edge of a low wall by the canal, the weight of her lager pressing against her palms. She’d paid £7.10 for it and tried not to think about it too much. Tried to tell herself to just relax. To enjoy it. The sun. The music. The vaguely festive energy pulsing through Camden Lock.

A live reggae band is playing, and the singer—a woman in a bright purple outfit—looks cheerful and full of life. Loose groups of friends leaned back in their chairs. Couples shared chips from cardboard trays. People were smiling. Not polite, London survival smiles—but real ones. It felt almost wrong.

The country had voted to leave the EU that morning. The mood was tense. London was brutal at the best of times. A Polish woman on the bus earlier looked like she was on the verge of tears. No one had thought it would actually happen.

And yet, here on the canal, under a sky too blue to make sense of anything, people looked... fine. Better than fine. Like none of it had happened. Maybe they hadn’t checked the news. Maybe they were in denial. Or maybe it just hadn’t touched them yet.

She took a sip of her lager and tried to tune herself to their wavelength. The air was thick with the smell of food—jerk chicken and samosas and fried dough curling up from the market stalls. Someone passed behind her with a paper tray stacked with rotis.

Amy Winehouse’s statue stood just a few feet away, her beehive slick in the sunlight. A pair of girls took selfies beside it, giggling. The singer in the background started a new song, slower now. More soulful.

She watched the water stir under the footbridge. Even when she lived in London, she never did things like this. Camden was for tourists and celebrities. For people who liked being watched. She was here only because the pub she’d interviewed at was around the corner. She didn’t know the area. She didn’t belong here. But she wasn’t sure where she did belong anymore.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

20:07.

Three unread messages from Clara.

“Are you heading back soon?”

“Just wondering where you are. Again.”

“You could at least answer.”

She blinked. Eight o’clock?

She stared out at the golden canal, the crowd still laughing, the smell of spice and sugar still curling in the air. The sun hadn’t even dipped.

She’d completely forgotten how long the light lingered here in summer.

Her thumb hovered over the screen. Then she sighed and typed, On my way.

It was easier than the truth. She didn’t want to go back.

To Clara, this was just her coming back, like she’d always said she would. A quick stopover. A catch-up. But for her, it was something else entirely—an attempt to reclaim a place she’d spent years yearning for. To come back to where she belonged. She’d studied, travelled, become politically aware, and rewritten herself over and over. She wasn’t the same person who left. She thought that might be a good thing.

Clara hadn’t noticed. When she’d arrived the night before, it was like no time had passed. The conversation picked up exactly where it had left off five years ago, like she’d only gone away for a long weekend. Clara had wanted to talk about the same happenings from way back when, now in between school pick-ups, rising food prices, some neighbour’s car getting broken into. Within an hour, the talk had dulled. She read her book at the kitchen table between half-hearted complaints about the country and louder ones aimed at her kids. She hadn’t smiled once.

The kitchen had once been a space of wine bottles and ashtrays, sprawling confessions, big questions at two a.m. Now it just felt grey. Shrunk. And no one wanted to talk about what any of it meant. Not really.

Two days earlier, she’d stayed with an old family friend—someone who used to make jokes about Thatcher and blast the Sex Pistols. Now he’d poured a glass of red and ranted about Farage being “the only one who tells the truth” and how it was “just common sense” to limit immigration. She’d sat through it, stunned. Smiling politely. Waiting for the moment it would turn into a joke. It never did.

That had been disaster reunion number one. Clara was number three. She had Essex next.

She stood, tossing the dregs of her lager into a nearby bin, glass clinking against other forgotten afternoons, and started walking. She didn’t know Camden well. It had always felt like someone else’s London—flashy, performative, full of people who had somewhere cooler to be. She was here today only because of the job interview. A pub. Loud music, clunky questions. The manager looked through her more than at her. It was over in fifteen minutes.

She walked to the Tube station in no particular hurry, following the path of least resistance—quiet side roads, the smell of fried onions from a kebab van, a cyclist swerving. Her phone buzzed again as she passed the turnstiles. She didn’t look. She just tapped through the gates and descended into the hum.

The train was hot. Her reflection in the window was green-tinted and restless, the image of someone who had nowhere to be but everywhere to return to.

By the time she climbed the stairs at Blackfriars, the river below was gleaming. The sky still held its brightness. The platform stretched long and open above the city, and it was still busy—commuters, tourists, teenagers with shopping bags. No one looked panicked anymore. Not like earlier.

She boarded the Thameslink and sank into a window seat. She felt hollow. Like something poured out and forgotten. Even here—on the soil that made her, in the city she once clung to like proof—she felt unanchored. London didn’t feel like home anymore. But then again, nothing else did either.

The train set off slowly, tracing the river. London lay stretched and luminous in the open light. As they passed over the bridge, the sky began to deepen—no longer full sun, but not quite dusk. Apricot, rose, bruised lilac.

She hadn’t expected to feel like a stranger here.

She shut her eyes and tried to summon something—sadness, anger, homesickness. But all she felt was static. A quiet buzz beneath her skin. Like the signal of a radio not quite tuned. She kept her eyes fixed on the city unfolding before her.

Then the tourists arrived.

Three youngish women approached her window, she clearly had the best view. They spoke quietly in a language she didn’t recognise—their eyes lit up.

They leaned in closer to the glass, the same way she had.

She watched them as they watched the city. One of them met her eyes for a moment, smiling as if to say: Isn’t it beautiful?

She wanted to say: You’re right to love it.

But she said nothing. She leaned closer instead, allowing herself to look at the view from the eyes of a foreigner.

The train curved away from the river. The buildings stacked tighter, windows lit in grids—some bright, some fading. She thought of all the people inside. Stirring pasta, turning on the news, folding towels. Known by someone else. Remembered.

She used to tell herself she didn’t need that. That she was meant to be untethered. But the last few years she’d been yearning for home. And now she was here, it was nowhere to be found.

The tourists drifted back to their seats, still smiling.

She stayed where she was. Eyes on the darkening glass.

And then, she noticed him.

He was already there. Sitting directly across the aisle from her—same row, same angle, looking out his own window. Between them, two empty seats. She hadn’t seen him get on, but there he was. Still. Present.

Early thirties. Blue jumper. Neat haircut. No phone in his hand. No headphones. He wasn’t checking anything or scanning the carriage. Just... watching the city fade behind them.

His arms rested loosely in his lap. His head tilted toward the glass. Jaw relaxed, posture soft. Not bored—just quiet. Like someone carrying a private thought around with care. He looked the way she felt: like he was on his way somewhere he didn’t quite want to be.

For a moment she watched him—not with intention, not for long—then turned back to her own window. She would normally have felt a ripple of caution realising she was the only woman alone in a carriage with a man at night. But there was something about him. Not warm exactly. But familiar. The kind of familiarity you don’t notice until you realise you’re breathing easier around it.

The lights outside blurred slightly. Buildings grew shorter. The river had long slipped behind them. Rows of homes and estates passed by, each window glowing in its own quiet rhythm. Some warm. Some sharp. Most dark.

She thought of the lives unfolding inside them. Whole domestic universes she’d never know. Arguments and dinners and television and silence. Places where people belonged simply because they’d always been there. Where people were known by others. Shared routines. Shared arguments. Shared history.

And what about people who didn’t have that?

What did it mean to belong, if your story was never mirrored back to you?

Who are you, really, if the stories you tell yourself aren’t shared with anyone?

Her eyes traced a single lit window as it slid past. A woman in a dressing gown standing still in a kitchen. Her hands resting on the edge of a sink. Just standing.

She caught his reflection again. Not directly—just flickering at the edge of her vision. Their faces hovered side by side in the glass, layered into the same stretch of sky. He looked tired, but not defeated. Reflective, maybe. A little exasperated. Like someone who was also trying to make sense of the shape of their life in motion.

There was no staring. No tension. Just... recognition. Two people existing in parallel silence.

At some point—neither of them knowing when—it happened.

She shifted slightly. So did he.

Their heads turned, slow, almost imperceptible. She felt the seat’s blue felt press into her cheek, rough but grounding. And when their eyes met, there was no startle, no performance. Just presence.

Her mouth curved into a smile. Soft. Automatic. Not a greeting, not a question—just the shape your face makes when you see something you understand.

He smiled too.

It wasn’t flirtation. It wasn’t curiosity. It was acknowledgment. A quiet, mutual yes.

You too?

Yeah. Me too.

They didn’t speak. Words would have made it too small.

The train slowed into Abbey Wood. He reached for his bag, lifting it with a kind of gentle rhythm that felt practiced, like he moved through the world carefully. He stood, slinging the strap over one shoulder, coat in his hand.

As he reached the door, he paused. Turned.

And smiled again—open, certain, the way you smile at someone who’s shared something with you, even if neither of you can name it.

She returned it. Not as a reflex. But as a thank you.

Not goodbye. Just agreement.

Yes. This happened.

Then the doors opened, and he stepped out into the night.

The train pulled away.

Outside, the buildings stretched further apart. Streetlights blinked into view one by one, their glow softened by distance. She was alone in the carriage again. But it no longer felt like a void.

She turned back to the window.

The skyline shimmered faintly behind her reflection—the final traces of gold folding into grey. The bridges still catching light. The city’s outline, flawed and eternal.

She still didn’t know where she was going.

But she felt real again.

And for now, that was enough.

Author’s Note

Xeno is a story shaped by the experience of returning to a place you once called home and finding it no longer fits. It follows a woman navigating the emotional fallout of a homecoming that offers no closure: a city changed by politics, by time, and by the quiet hardening of the people she once knew.

The title comes from an unofficial but poignant term: “xeno”—the smallest measurable unit of human connection. These are the fleeting but potent exchanges between strangers: a glance, a nod, a moment of shared presence. They don’t demand language, but they offer recognition. And in times of emotional isolation, that recognition can feel like oxygen.

Set against the backdrop of post-Brexit Britain, where the politics of division have ruptured social and personal ties alike, Xeno explores how belonging isn’t just about place—it’s about being known. The story asks: Who are we when our stories go unheard? What grounds us when the people we thought were part of us no longer reflect who we are?

For the protagonist, it’s not a dramatic transformation that begins to stitch her back together—it’s a quiet, anonymous moment on a train. No words exchanged. Just the mutual acknowledgement of someone else carrying the same weight.

Sometimes, that’s all it takes to remember you’re real.