She wondered if the green trouser suit had made any difference in the end, or if she should have gone with her pink dress, like she’d wanted to. Her mother, not surprisingly, had favoured the suit.
‘The colour is better on you,’ she’d said, drawing her darning needle through the heel of one of her husband’s many dark grey socks. ‘And you look much more professional in it.’
‘I’m interviewing for a cook’s job,’ Sarah had pointed out. ‘I won’t need to look professional when I’m chopping onions or peeling spuds.’
But she knew, of course, that the real objection to the dress was that it was too short. Sarah didn’t think it was that short, not compared to some of the ones she saw on
Top of the Pops
every week. Minis were in, everyone was wearing them – and her legs weren’t bad, if she said so herself.
Mind you, that woman on the interview panel, the one from the nursing home’s board of management – Bernice? Beatrice? – with her blue rinse and lavender cardigan buttoned all the way up, would probably have found fault with anything above the knee, and of course it was a lot easier to cycle in trousers.
She’d be glad when she got home though, already caught in a small shower and by the look of it, a lot more on—
And there was the scarf, spread like a puddle on the wooden surface of the bridge, nearly under Sarah’s wheels before she spotted it. She swerved and pulled on the brakes, and doubled back for a closer look.
It
weighed nothing, a wisp of a thing –
100% wild silk
, the label said – in gorgeous swirly blues and turquoises and lilacs. She held it by the ends and opened it out, and found a rectangle about the size of a bath towel. She brought it to her nose and smelt sweetish perfume, and cigarettes.
Where had it come from? It couldn’t have been here long – no tyre marks on it that she could see, no sign that anything had disturbed it since its arrival. Perfectly dry, although the bridge itself was damp from the short shower Sarah had cycled through not ten minutes before – and surely such a feathery thing would have been blown away on the tiniest breeze, whisked up and carried off?
She imagined it billowing upwards, skirting the treetops, wrapping itself eventually around a church steeple, to the bemusement of the parishioners below. Or maybe swooping gently into the river and floating away to sea, like the Owl and Pussycat, catching the attention maybe of a passing fisherman, who might scoop it up and take it home to his wife.
She glanced behind her and saw again the carelessly parked car – and only then did she notice a figure standing on its far side, between the car and the waist-high metal railing that spanned the bridge on either side, thirty yards or so from where Sarah stood.
She squinted to get a better view of the person she was looking at. As far as she could see, whoever it was wore a dark coat, brown or black. Big hair, also dark, above it – or maybe a hat, one of those furry ones that Russian secret agents wore in James Bond films.
She got off her bike and wheeled it over to lean it against the railing. As she covered the short distance back towards the car, rubbing her hands to get some warmth into them, the narrow heels of the only presentable shoes she owned made a loud clacking sound on the wooden surface that reminded her, for some reason, of a teacher she’d had in second or third class – Sister Mary Assumpta, or was it Attracta?
Brought a ruler down hard three times on Sarah’s palm once when she hadn’t known the Irish for something. Gave her such a fright she’d wet her pants. Sister Mary Whatever-her-name-was, everyone terrified of her, slap you soon as look at you. Dead now, died not long after Sarah had moved on to secondary school, keeled over with a brain haemorrhage, or a massive stroke or something. Poor creature, you couldn’t hold a grudge when you heard something like that.
As
she drew nearer to the other figure, she saw that it wasn’t a hat: it was hair with the glossy red-brown richness of a just-hatched conker. It was masses of glorious Shirley Temple curls that Sarah would have traded her boring straw-coloured bob for in an instant. They tumbled down the back of the woman’s black sheepskin coat, shielding her face completely as Sarah approached.
She must have heard the ridiculous clippity-clop of Sarah’s shoes, but she didn’t look around. Her palms were braced against the metal railing – no gloves, she must be cold – the too-long sleeves of her coat, miles too big for her, almost covering her hands, the furry cuff of the left one dangerously close to the tip of the half-smoked cigarette that was clamped between her first and second fingers. The smoke from it drifted straight upwards, no breeze to push it sideways.
Sarah stopped about six feet away. No movement from the other woman, apart from a tiny, rapidly vanishing puff of steam around her face each time her warm breath met the January air. Would she appreciate an interruption? But if it was her scarf, and surely it was, she’d be glad to have it returned to her, wouldn’t she?
‘Excuse me.’
No response. No reaction, no sign at all that she’d heard.
‘Excuse me.’ A little louder.
Still nothing. Didn’t she want her scarf back? Sarah held it out. ‘I found this lying on the bridge up ahead, and I wondered if it was yours.’
The woman continued to ignore her. This was getting ridiculous. Maybe she was deaf.
Sarah stepped closer. ‘Excuse me, I just wanted to—’
‘Go
away.’
Softly said, the words practically inaudible, the head still turned away. Ash dropped off the end of her cigarette and tumbled towards the water.
‘Pardon? I didn’t quite catch—’
‘Leave me alone.’
Sarah was thrown. Maybe she’d missed the mention of the scarf. ‘Oh, well … but I found this—’
‘Just go away, would you?’ Louder, sharper, the voice quite deep for a woman. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘But your scarf—’
‘Keep it.’
Keep it? She was giving her beautiful, and probably very expensive, scarf to a stranger, just like that? Why on earth would anyone just hand over—
The thought stopped short in Sarah’s head, snagged on a new and disturbing one. Clearly, the woman was in a distressed state. She was standing on a bridge, and she wasn’t interested in having her scarf returned to her. Why wouldn’t she want it back, unless she was planning never to wear it again?
A green car drove onto the bridge from the opposite direction. The driver, an elderly man, glanced at the two of them as he passed. Too late, as he reached the far end of the bridge, for Sarah to be wondering if she should have flagged him down.
No, of course she shouldn’t have: that would have been overreacting. The woman was upset about something, that was all. She needed a shoulder to cry on, some words of comfort.
‘Look,’ Sarah said, ‘is everything OK? I mean, you seem a little … I don’t know. I mean, are you all right? Can I help at all?’
A long, slow sigh came from the other woman. She flicked what was left of the cigarette into the river and turned finally to look at Sarah. A few years older, somewhere into her thirties. Not beautiful as much as striking. Eyes so very dark brown they might have been black, deeply shadowed beneath, nose large and slightly hooked, bottom lip full and wide. Skin the soft colour of coffee with cream in it, cheekbones high and sharply defined.
But
there was a curious blankness in the expression, an emptiness in the dark eyes that caused a fresh flick of uneasiness in Sarah.
‘Would you just go away?’ the woman said, emphasising each word. ‘Would you leave me alone and go away, and just keep the fucking scarf, or dump it, I really don’t care.’
The swear word, uttered so quietly and with so little feeling, was shocking in its unexpectedness. Sarah’s anxiety increased as the woman turned back to face the river. The two of them stood there as the seconds ticked on, Sarah’s mind tumbling about, searching for the right course of action. She couldn’t possibly leave her – but what on earth was she to do?
A little brown bird swooped towards the water before lifting off again. The sun, well hidden all day behind the clouds, slid past a particularly dense one, washing the afternoon in a slightly darker shade of grey and causing Sarah to pull the front edges of her jacket more tightly closed. Not long till twilight, and a further drop in temperature. She thought longingly of a hot bath, of her mother’s rich, beefy stew.
A sudden burst of birdsong came from a copse a few feet from the bank. It sounded unnervingly out of place in the still, cold January afternoon.
Sarah’s stomach rumbled, almost three hours since she’d chopped a hardboiled egg into slices and added it to a handful of raw mushrooms. Much less than she normally ate for lunch, but all she’d been able to face with the interview looming.
She had to say something: they couldn’t go on standing here in silence all afternoon. She might be blowing this whole thing out of all proportion, it might still be a case of some sad person simply wanting to be alone for a while. But what if it wasn’t?
She
had to speak, even if she made an utter fool of herself. Better say it and be wrong than be left wondering. As she opened her mouth, the woman looked around again, and this time the dark eyes were narrowed, the lips pressed together, a frown lodged between her eyebrows.
‘Sorry,’ Sarah said quickly, ‘I know you want me to go, but I can’t. Not until I know you’re not going to …’ she faltered, searching for the right words ‘… I’m just afraid you might be thinking of …’
She came to a stop again, the words refusing to come out – but surely it must be obvious what she meant. She waited for the woman to protest, to tell Sarah she was being stupid, to laugh at her, even – but there was no protestation, no sign that what was lying unspoken between them surprised her in the least. No indication at all that Sarah had come to the wrong conclusion.
God, she wasn’t wrong, she knew that now. Her palms prickled with nervousness. Why did she have to be the one to come on this situation? Why hadn’t she cycled on and ignored the damn scarf? No, she didn’t mean that; she wanted to help, but she hadn’t a clue what to do, not a clue.
‘It’s none of your business,’ the woman snapped. ‘You know nothing about me, you’ve no right to butt in. Just leave me alone, for Christ’s sake.’
‘I can’t,’ Sarah insisted, ‘not when I know what you want to do. I can’t leave you – how can I? How could anyone walk away from this? I’d never be able to live with myself if – I mean, I just can’t leave you on your own to—’
Again she stuttered to a standstill, praying for another car to appear. Anyone would do – she’d run out and flag them down, make them stop and help – but no car came. She was alone with a suicidal woman: it was down to her.
‘Please don’t,’ she went on, putting a hand on the sleeve of the too-big coat, feeling the heat of incipient tears behind her eyes. ‘You can’t do this – things can’t be that bad. There must be—’
‘How
the
fuck
would you know how bad they are?’ the woman demanded angrily, snatching her arm away. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are, to tell me what I can and can’t do? Go away, leave me alone – this has nothing to do with you.’
‘I can’t go away,’ Sarah repeated, eyes burning, voice trembling. ‘Look,’ she said urgently, blinking hard to keep the tears at bay, ‘I have to try to help you, whether you want it or not. I can’t just walk away from you – even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. You must understand that.’ Tears spilled out then and rolled down her face, and without thinking she pressed the scarf to her eyes, smelling again the perfume, the tobacco.
‘Jesus!’
The woman slammed both her hands hard onto the top of the railing, making Sarah’s heart jump, making her jerk the scarf away from her face. ‘What the hell are
you
crying for? You know
nothing
about me. If you had any fucking
idea
what I’m going through—’
‘Tell me,’ Sarah cried, rummaging in her jacket pockets for a tissue, remembering that they were in her bag, which was sitting in the bike’s basket. ‘Tell me what’s wrong – maybe it’ll help.’
Wasn’t that what everyone said, that you had to talk about your problems? Never mind that Sarah wouldn’t have an idea what to say in response: maybe the act of talking would be enough.
But the woman shook her head violently.
‘Jesus Christ!’
she cried. ‘You really think you can make all this go away? You think I’ll tell you what’s wrong and you’ll, what, wave your little magic wand and make it all better?’ Her eyes were flashing, and bright with tears too now. ‘Would you ever just go and leave me to it? Just walk on, pretend you never saw me. Would you just do that? If you want to make anything better, that’s what you can do.’ She pressed her mouth shut and swung her head away to look out at the river again.
‘I can’t,’ Sarah wept, ‘I can’t do that. I’m sorry, I can’t walk away. Please don’t ask me to.’ She searched for the right words, anything that might help. ‘There must be someone,’ she said urgently, dabbing again at her wet face with the scarf, ‘you must have some family – think what this would do to them, think how much it would hurt them.’
She
had to keep talking, had to keep trying to stop this. ‘You don’t want to cause more hurt, do you? Because that’s all this will do. You’ll escape whatever you’re running away from, but you’ll be leaving more heartache behind you, and where’s the good in that?’
She was dimly aware, as she talked, that maybe her words were all wrong. Maybe there was no family – maybe they’d all been wiped out in a terrible car crash, or a house fire. Maybe that was why the woman was here now, planning to end it all. Sarah watched her hands, still planted on the railing. She waited in dread for any sudden movement.
But the woman remained motionless. Sarah glanced up to her face, but the little she could see of it gave nothing away. Was she listening, or had she shifted her awareness somewhere else? No matter: the longer she didn’t haul herself upwards onto the railings, the better.
‘I just think,’ Sarah went on, afraid to let the silence grow, ‘that maybe if you got some help or, I don’t know, if you had someone to talk to – oh, not me, I don’t mean me. Like you said, we don’t know each other at all, and of course you’re right, I have no idea what’s brought you to this state, but I really truly feel that this isn’t the answer. Maybe if you spoke to a doctor or …’ not a psychiatrist, she’d better not say that, it mightn’t go down well ‘… or a counsellor, someone professional, they might be able to help you.’