Page 5 of Always, in December

‘Well,’ she said slowly. ‘If you’re sure. . .’ The problem was, although he said it was all fine, he really sounded as though it was not in fact fine in the slightest. She bit her lip, trying to figure out what she was supposed to do now.

‘Look, thanks for the concern and all, but I could use a pint after that, so I’ll just . . .’ He trailed off, looking up and down the road, then huffed and looked down at her. ‘Do you know where the nearest pub is, by any chance?’

‘I’ll show you!’ Josie knew she sounded far too enthusiastic, but she was determined to make him not so pissed off with her. He frowned and she nodded vigorously. ‘I know a good one around here.’ Well, ‘good’ might be a bit of an overstatement, but she’d been to one round the corner with Bia a few times on a Friday night. She started walking, pushing her bike in a way that made her have to hunch over awkwardly, and he followed along beside her.

‘You don’t have to walk me there,’ he grumbled, shoving his hands into his coat, which was reminiscent of Benedict Cumberbatch’s in Sherlock – long, grey and expensive-looking. ‘You could just point me in the right direction.’

‘It’s no trouble!’ she said, a little too squeakily, despite the fact that she was pretty sure that he wasn’t really concerned with her trouble so much as didn’t want her tagging along. Well, too bad. She’d show him the damn pub and maybe that would even out her karmic bad luck or whatever. He made absolutely no effort to start a conversation, seeming to be particularly focused on the pavement in front of them. She fought the scowl that wanted to settle on her face. She knew she’d run him over and all, but he didn’t need to be such a prick about it – she’d have forgiven someone for doing it to her, she was sure. It wasn’t like she’d done it on purpose.

After a full minute of silence, she was severely regretting not just giving him instructions and hopping on her bike. She tried desperately to think of something to say – but what did you say to the stranger you’d just knocked over in the middle of the road? She needed Bia. If Bia had done the same, she’d have this man laughing in two minutes tops.

‘So, umm, were you on your way home from work?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said slowly, and the look he gave her was a little incredulous. She pushed her bike a bit faster. Well, no, ok – if he was on his way home from work then he would probably know the area, and therefore know where a pub would be. But, in her defence, he could be a hotshot businessman or lawyer or something, living in a big house in the country and down in London for meetings. Besides, he didn’t have to be so damn rude about it – he could show some appreciation for the fact she was trying to show him around. She sneaked another glance at him, but couldn’t guess anything else about him, everything hidden under that damned coat.

‘What about you?’ he asked after a moment, with the distinct impression of someone forcing himself to continue the conversation.

She started, caught in the action of surreptitiously studying him. ‘What?’

‘Were you on the way back from work?’

‘Oh right. No.’ God, this guy must think she was a total idiot. She cleared her throat. ‘No, I was just running a few errands.’ She took the handlebars of her bike in one hand, felt automatically for the letter with the other, then jolted when she realised it wasn’t there. She must have lost it in the road somewhere and not noticed.

‘Everything ok?’

‘Yeah. Sorry. It’s just . . . I was sending a letter, I think I must have dropped it.’ That was ok, though, she told herself. She’d write another one tomorrow and post it then.

‘A letter?’ His voice was a little less clipped this time, almost incredulous instead. ‘People still write those these days?’

She shrugged. ‘Well yeah, I guess so. Memo – my grandmother, that is – is always writing letters, even though she’s the most technologically savvy person I know.’ No need to tell him that’s not who she was writing to this evening.

He stepped out of the way of a jogger, quiet for a moment. ‘When I was a kid,’ he said slowly, ‘I used to try and get my friends at school to write me letters in the summer holidays, but it never quite caught on.’

He said the whole thing completely deadpan, but Josie let out a snort of laughter. ‘Really?’

‘Mmm. My best friend at the time, James Winterbourne, kept the letter I wrote to him and then read it out to everyone at school once we got back in September.’

She laughed again. ‘That’s so mean! What had you written?’

‘God, I don’t remember. It was just the principle of the thing that stuck with me more than anything. I never did quite forgive him for it.’

‘Aha. So James Winterbourne has been struck off the wedding guest list for a letter-writing faux pas.’ Though he met her gaze, her smile wasn’t reflected.

‘Quite.’

Damn, maybe she’d put her foot in it. Maybe he’d been married and it had all gone terribly wrong, or maybe he’d been jilted at the altar, or James Winterbourne had married the love of his life or something.

‘So how come you’re out this way then?’ she asked, her voice cringeworthily jovial at the forced change of subject. ‘Do you live in London?’

‘No.’ His voice was a little distant, but he shook his head and when he spoke again it was with a little more purpose. ‘No, I’m from Bristol actually. Well, from a few places, I suppose, but I grew up in Bristol, and live there now.’

‘So you’re down here for Christmas?’

He grimaced. ‘No. Well, I wasn’t supposed to be.’ He pulled a hand through his messy hair, and the coppery highlights in the brown caught the artificial light a little. ‘I was due to fly out to New York today, but my flight has been cancelled because of some bloody storm.’

Josie frowned, looked up at the sky. It was cloudy, for sure, and the echo of misty rain still hung in the air, but it didn’t exactly seem stormy. She glanced at the man to see him raising his eyebrows.

‘There’s obviously not a storm here,’ he said, in a way that seemed condescending enough to make her flush again. ‘But somewhere over the Atlantic or something. Anyway. I’m now on standby for a new flight, but looks like I’m stranded here for now.’