Two Years Ago
Corby leans back against his patrol car, sipping bad coffee from a paper cup.
He surveys the City, alive all around him, the ebb and flow of humanity.
Couriers whizz by on scooters and bikes. Office workers bustle by with phone pressed to their ears. Solicitors and barristers stroll to the courts, files in hand, arguing earnestly as they walk. Tramps and hobos take shelter in doorways against the looming clouds
Tall, short, young, old, male, female. Black, white, brown, yellow. They’re all here.
No redheads.
He glances skywards then turns up his collar against the rain which begins to fall in large fat splats to the sidewalk.
Perhaps he should work towards a promotion? Something that would take him to a desk and warm office?
But then, he would lose the freedom to patrol and work behind the wings.
He shrugs and knocks back the rest of the coffee.
She'll surface…. sooner or later.
*****
James
Three months later….
Charlotte sits beside me on warm grass under warmer sunshine. Even though it is Spring, I find I still need extra protection for my damaged leg, so I sit on a blanket.
the green of grass and leaves is that bright green you don’t see later in the year. Clouds scud across an azure sky and way below,
sheep-clipped meadow to the waters. Surreptitiously, I
that means
here,
…. and apparently happy.
the background is the clatter and chaos of the last of the work on the hotel and the on-going labours on the house
hers laughing as a particularly fruity oath wings
be ready on time?” she
rich middle-class friends that he’s not open
take the bull by
We have to know….
her hand, “You’re not too upset about not going back to
way works just as well as actually attending. So long as we have a decent
Really?
Really good?
sure of that? I don’t want any more
grin is impish as she pecks me on the cheek. “I’m sure.
harassed, his blond hair stiffly askew with dust and his eyes bright blue through a layer of
he says, flopping down
we can spare a bit of turf,” I say, “Everything going well up
a home and less like a building site.” He eyes Charlotte. “We could move back here from the beach house
You promised me my home, months ago.
I see it, the moment, that link between the two of them that I so wanted to build and grow. Dirty and dishevelled
“Yes?”
to enter the auction, but you did that out of necessity. I’d like
and waiting as she
she sees. With everything that life has thrown at her, the horrors of her childhood, the terrors of her adulthood, and now to be here, in this lovely place, with the
that