I sit on the tram and I read. I read people: that’s what I do. I watch them, I read them, and then I write about them. Perhaps not directly, but from every person I meet or observe, I take something. I imagine whole stories, whole lives, and I write. Each time, what strikes me is their persona: the mask they all don when situation requires. I’m watching now. And, as I watch, I take in the pretence, the affectation they assume. I read people.

Perhaps I’m not making myself clear. In each of us, there lies a duality between the public and private self. It cannot be helped, but it is rare that the two are united. Nor, I hasten to add, is it necessarily a bad thing. However, it creates a duality: Shakespeare evoked it in his Hamlet, his Romeo, his Juliet. Even the hermit, in his overt rejection of society, expresses this duality: his is a statement, an open expression of exclusion, a yearning for solitude and the private self. In this, however, his existence, his essence, is shaped by the without, translated by the external world: he has rejected it, and chosen to be alone. Each of us requires this absence, this solitary quietude, in moments – however brief – of utter seclusion. We need an interlude between the rasping music of life, the harsh chords that sound incessantly.

This is what strikes me when I see Felicity. She sits, slowly tracing the contours of her face with her finger; lost in thought. Her mask is slipping and I can see thin lines of sadness appearing on her face. She is unaware that I am watching her, that I am reading her. I imagine her name is Felicity and that she drinks hot chocolate in secluded cafés on the other side of town, that she reads French novels and dreams of sparse Parisien appartments where artists stare at broken mirrors. Although this is probably untrue, it’s what I read, what I imagine her life to be. I wonder why she is sad. Perhaps she is thinking of an old lover who broke her heart, long ago, by a platform in York. She smiled, sadly, tears streaming down her face, before slowly walking towards the train for her departure. She never looked back.

John sits two rows in front of her, to her left, and gently taps his finger against his walkman. He looks serene, silently mouthing the words that echo in his ears. I’m not sure what John does – nor do I care. Behind his mask of apparent serenity, I see his eyes, staring aimlessly ahead. I read their listless vacuity and wonder what it is that he dreams. His sadness is not the same as Felicity’s: his sadness is an absence from himself, a detachment from his life. Days roll by in black and white – reels of fleeting images that rarely alter. He yearns for a life far beyond his present inertia. I imagine him walking down the street, head bowed down, dreaming of the life beyond. One day, he may even walk out, without a word or a hint, and jump on the next boat to Patagonia.

One day, he may even meet Felicity – they take the same tram at the same time, day in, day out, – and timidly ask her for her number. She smiles shyly and etches it on his hand with eyeliner. They meet for a drink the following Friday. He kisses her. She kisses him. He smiles – she smiles. He caresses the soft skin of her cheekbone with his thumb. She smiles. He whispers something in her ear. A week from then, they kiss and find themselves in a lovers’ embrace. No, not a lovers’ embrace – words miss it, it goes beyond words: they are neither merely lovers, nor simply caught in an embrace. But this is the closest I can get with words: the dancer dances, but she and her dance are inexpressible, inseparable. I digress. Their first child is named Emily, and they move into a semi-detached in a leafy suburb of Manchester. Perhaps Sale. Perhaps Timperley.

It doesn’t matter: it’s all imaginary, all pretence. None of it, I imagine, is (or will be) real. It’s now my stop and I have to get out. I close my book, put away my pen, step off the tram and make my way home. I now realise: it is I who is wearing the mask, and you are reading me.