Page 4 of Always, in December

She looked up to see a black cab pulled over on the road right in front of her, across the cycle lane, hazard lights flashing. She fumbled with her brakes but the door to the taxi was already opening on the pavement side. She swore, swerved, and had only a fleeting impression of a man’s face as he got out of the taxi and slammed the door behind him, glancing towards her just in time to see her coming at him.

Her brakes screeched painfully, and she tried to swing the bike left, out of his way. But it wasn’t enough. Her heart gave a warning slam in her chest, and for a paralysing second she met the man’s confused gaze, the light of her bike reflected in his eyes.

Then he was slammed backwards, and her bike skidded away from her. She shoved her hands out and pain shot through her wrists as she landed on the tarmac with a thump.

Chapter Three

Josie stayed sprawled on the ground, her heart pounding, ears ringing. Her knees stung and she could feel the dampness of the road seeping in through her tights. As she pushed herself into an awkward kneel, she realised her hands were shaking.

There were several people clustered around her, one of whom was shouting, she noticed now, the sound finally getting through the buzzing in her ears. She focused in on a figure marching around from the other side of the taxi – a woman. A short, slightly plump woman. Why was she shouting at her? Then she got it – this was the taxi driver.

‘Didn’t you see me here?’ she screamed, her voice disproportionately deep compared to her size. ‘What the hell were you thinking, coming at us at that speed? Do you not have eyes? Do you not think it might have been sensible to slow the bloody hell down?’

Josie scrambled all the way to her feet, wincing a little. She wasn’t seriously hurt, but her arm had twisted awkwardly from where she’d tried to cushion her fall, and she was pretty sure she’d have a bruise on her hip when she checked later. And her tights had laddered. Great. Well, that’s what you got for cycling in completely impractical clothes, she supposed.

One of the passers-by who had stopped to witness the spectacle asked if she was ok, and she nodded, dumbfounded, while taxi woman continued to rant, her eyes skimming over Josie to a spot behind her. Josie jumped, remembering, far too late, about the man she’d hit. She spun, her heart renewing its gallop.

Her breath loosened a little when she saw him. Another man, slightly balding, had stopped to help him, and he was already getting slowly to his feet, his movements slow and awkward. She jerked towards him, her nerves fizzing, mouth dry.

‘Are you ok?’ she blurted out, but he didn’t seem to hear her above all the interested chattering of the little group around them. The balding man was now holding out to him a wallet, and a few stray bits of paper he must have dropped. She stumbled forward another step, earning an evil glare from taxi woman. God, what if he was hurt? He was up, but he looked a bit unsteady on his feet – what if he had a broken rib or something?

‘I’m . . .’ She tried again, but stopped, sucking in a tight breath when he finally looked at her. She couldn’t quite make out the whole of his face, only got an impression of a somewhat chiselled jaw and messy hair, but she swore she saw it darken, the night’s shadows winning out over the pockets of light from the streetlamps and headlights. She took another wavering step towards him, wrapping her arms around herself. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she breathed. He said nothing, just dismissed her with a glance and turned instead to Balding, who was helping him to take the last of his belongings.

Josie became very aware of the clamminess of her palms. ‘I really, I don’t know what to say, I can’t apologise enough,’ she babbled, wishing he’d just meet her gaze, rather than now looking at the tarmac, frowning, as if she weren’t worth paying attention to. ‘I just, I don’t know what happened, I wasn’t concentrating, it was completely my fault and I—’

He held up a hand as the crowd around them began to disperse, losing interest now the drama of the moment was over. He looked her up and down, as if weighing up the sincerity of her words, taking in her laddered tights, the skirt of her work dress poking out beneath her blue winter coat, purple and white trainers that definitely did not go with the outfit. Her body felt stiff and when his gaze travelled up to her face, she felt her cheeks warm. She had no doubt she looked a total mess – he probably thought he’d been run over by a complete lunatic.

‘It’s fine,’ he said, his voice clipped and low enough that it barely carried over the sound of the traffic. He turned away from her again to thank the balding man, who nodded, glanced at Josie in a curious sort of way, then headed off up the street.

‘It is not bloody well fine,’ taxi woman muttered. But she’d already turned her back on them both, apparently deciding that, now it was clear no one was seriously injured, she was better off out of it.

Josie hovered awkwardly. Her knee was throbbing now, but she didn’t want to bend down to check it in case that looked like she was more concerned with herself than the stranger she’d just knocked off his feet. Now that they were the only two people left, he glanced over to her and his eyes flickered briefly, as if he was surprised to see she was still hanging around. She couldn’t quite make out the colour, wasn’t sure if they just looked dark because of his expression. He was about her age, she realised, and a couple of inches taller than her.

‘I’m really, really sorry,’ she said again, aware that she sounded like a broken record, but completely at a loss as to what else she could say that wouldn’t sound utterly wrong, given the circumstances.

‘I said it’s fine,’ he said on a tired sigh. Not as clipped as before, but still not quite what she was after. Josie bit her lip, but before she could say anything else, the taxi driver wound down the window on the passenger side.

‘All good here then?’ she asked, clearly making an effort not to look at Josie, seeming to decide this was a better form of punishment than shouting at her.

The man nodded. ‘All good, cheers.’ Oh sure, with the taxi driver he was perfectly affable. But then, Josie supposed she’d been helping him get to where he was going, not knocking him over the moment he got there.

‘Right-oh.’ And with that she rolled up the window and pulled back out onto the road behind a bus.

The man frowned again the moment the taxi drove away, and turned his attention back to the road. The way he was determinedly ignoring her, she could probably have got away with just leaving him, but it felt wrong to abandon him. She glanced down at the road too, and noticed what he was looking for before he did. She grabbed his phone, a metre or so from where he stood, and her stomach twisted as she saw the screen was completely smashed.

‘Shit,’ she muttered, grimacing apologetically as she held it out to him. ‘I’m so—’

‘Sorry?’ He raised his eyebrows as he took it from her and she felt herself flush. His eyes were green, she realised now she was closer, though they were those fancy two-toned kind of eyes, with a ring of something lighter around the edges. It felt wrong to describe the second colour as ‘gold’, given the way his eyes seemed to scowl without so much as a furrow of eyebrows.

‘I’ll pay for it,’ she said immediately. She wondered what model of iPhone it was, how much that would set her back, whether she’d have to use her credit card to pay for it. He didn’t reply, just pocketed the phone and grabbed her bike from where it was still strewn across the cycle path, pushing it up the kerb onto the pavement. She should have done that, she realised. The bike was in the way, and she hadn’t even thought to move it.

She stepped up beside him. ‘Seriously, let me pay for it. Maybe there’s a phone shop near here that’s still open and we can—’

‘Stop.’ He said it in such a final way that she did. ‘I’ve said it’s fine. Besides, we were parked on a cycle lane, weren’t we? So you’re not the only one to blame.’ He jiggled the handlebars of her bike a little, as if impatient to be rid of it, and she took it awkwardly.

‘I just . . .’

He sighed, slipped his phone out of his pocket, switched it on and held it out to her. It lit up to show his home screen, still visible beneath the cracked glass. ‘See?’ The word was a little aggressive. ‘Still works and everything. And besides,’ he carried on, overriding her protest, ‘my contract’s up soon. So if I’m not bothered about living with a smashed screen for a few weeks, then you really shouldn’t be either. Ok?’ It was a demand, more than a question.