extract
‘Do you see that woman?’ She gave
a light nod to the woman by the wall. ‘Don’t you think she looks, well, odd?’
Baz followed her stare before
shrugging and downing the last of his pint. ‘She’s obviously homeless and has
come in for a bit of warm. It’s not a crime, Carla, even though the police
would probably like to make it one.’
She ignored the dig. Ever since
she’d hidden from Baz that she was still using contraceptives, which she’d
fully admitted was a terrible thing to do, he had increasingly made negative
comments about the police in general and her colleagues in particular. She
weathered it, figuring it was a price worth paying for him to trust her again,
but every time a jibe came it was just a reminder he didn’t.
Baz stood. ‘I’m getting another
pint, want another?’ The mood he was in made her want a whole bottle, but she
said, ‘No thanks, I’m good.’
She watched him walk off and felt
a pang of love – but whether it was for what they had now or a memory of what
had been, she couldn’t tell.
Taking a sip of wine, she looked
back at the woman by the wall. She hadn’t moved. Carla thought how small she
looked, as if she was trying to make herself invisible. Maybe Baz was right –
she was homeless and hiding from bar staff, but there was something about the
way she kept scanning the crowd which made Carla think she was waiting for
something.
Suddenly, the woman took a step
out of the shadows – her face pale, her thin lips and nose overshadowed by
wide, dark eyes, giving her a lost look. She appeared to have found what she
was looking for, eyes fixated on a spot to the right of Carla, but the strength
of the crowd made it impossible for Carla to see what it was.
Then everything happened at once;
or in a sequence Carla was unable to untangle, even days, weeks later. Baz was
coming towards her with a pint of beer; the woman was taking a step back, then
another; Baz was near to their table and no one seemed to be concerned with the
frightened woman by the wall; no one seemed to care about the look on her face
– fear, panic; no one was looking to see what she’d seen so they could help and
no one seemed to know what Carla knew: the woman was about to jump.
No comments:
Post a Comment