Five — Ilona Bannister

Welcome to Five—once this train has left, there’s no stopping it.“Razor-sharp, wickedly funny, and darkly thrilling, Five asks difficult questions about judgement, forgiveness, and the notion of cause and effect.”—Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the DarkSomeone will die here this morning, at this suburban train station. It will happen in the next five minutes when the 7:06 to London Victoria arrives.On a train platform, five strangers unknowingly face a chilling countdown. As the clock ticks away, we fall in love with a beautiful young man who is on the verge of gambling his life away. We pity the cantankerous old woman who has fallen to the ground yet is refusing help. We look away from the child throwing a tantrum. We judge his mother, who must surely be to blame? And we are curiously compelled by the successful and damaged businessman, orbiting around them all.These are the candidates for this morning’s misfortune but they don’t know it. Only you know. And you, our complicit reader, will not be able to resist judging who deserves to walk away, and who deserves only five more minutes to live. Minute by minute, the train gets closer, as we delve into each of their stories to learn what brought them right here, to this moment, to this station, to the very edge of life and death.A child, a mother, a businessman, an old woman, and a gambler—who would you choose to save? Or die?