kindly, offered to lend her an old bicycle that was out back.
It was incredibly old, in fact, a great big heavy metal bone shaker with a solid frame, three gears, and a withered brown basket on the front. The one thing in its favor was that riding it was so incredibly difficult that she soon ceased to feel the cold as she pedaled ferociously through the rain in the direction of where she thought the van was.
As she approached the crest of the hill, panting, she saw a small crack in the clouds that raced across the sky. Suddenly, and only for an instant, a great beam of golden sunshine flooded through it and she raised her head toward it, craning like a sunflower. At the very top of the hill, she stopped and gazed at the clouds. She never saw them back home, for glass and steel tended to obscure the top end of the weather; you kept your eyes on the pavement, or your phone, and you carried on. Clearing the drops out of her eyes and shaking her hair behind herâit would frizz like crazy, she thought, but who was there to mind or care?âshe was rewarded suddenly by the rain stopping, as if on her command, and the golden sunlight splashed down again, illuminating every crystal raindrop, every damp leaf and shiny field of rapeseed all the way down to the little cove, an enormous rainbow cracking through the gaps. The clouds continued to race by as if speeding up, making a patchwork of the field below.
Nina took a deep breath of the incredibly fresh air, then looked to her right, where a red train was running parallel to the road. She knew it wouldnât have Marek in itâit was a passenger trainâbut she hopped back on her bike nevertheless and coasted down the other side of the hill, racing the train, watching as it sped on its way: Perth, Dundee . . . maybe Edinburgh, Glasgow and beyond, Britain for once not feeling like the small, cramped country she had always thought it to be, hugger-mugger, that corner of London and the southeast continuously sending out its fingers into more and more of the world around it, trying to swallow it whole, concreting over the entire land into a dark, grimy urban sprawl, with a coffee shop in every street and everyone shut away in highly priced boxy little flats, attached to their WiFi, living through a screen even as another nine skyscrapers were thrown up right next door, blocking out more of the light and the clouds and the air and the view and nobody seeming to care, everyone thinking of it as progress.
She let her feet fly off the pedals and freewheeled faster and faster, watching the train speed ahead, knowing that even though she had no job, no pension, no partner, nothing at all except a rackety old van, somehow, more than ever in her life, she felt free.
Not at all where she remembered it beingâand rather farther away; she was starving by the time she reached itâshe came upon the train crossing. In the turnoff next to it, completely untouched apart from the police sticker, which, had she still been in Birmingham, sheâd have been tempted not to peel off in case it got her free parking, was the big van, looking a lot lessdaunting in the sunshine than it had the last time sheâd seen it, in the middle of the night.
As she dismounted from the bicycle, she saw the red lights begin to flash and the striped barriers making their descent. Immediately she felt tense; how awful that sheâd been so nearly caught there, so nearly trapped. That feeling of panicky powerlessness when sheâd fumbled for the door came over her again, and she forced herself to watch the trainâa small local service, but even that felt huge and noisyâthunder across. She shivered as a cloud passed once more across the sun and she leaned against a nearby tree. It was okay. It was okay. It was fine. She had to tell herself that and not let her imagination run away with her. It was a freak accident, the train had stopped; it would not happen again.
She wondered if
It was incredibly old, in fact, a great big heavy metal bone shaker with a solid frame, three gears, and a withered brown basket on the front. The one thing in its favor was that riding it was so incredibly difficult that she soon ceased to feel the cold as she pedaled ferociously through the rain in the direction of where she thought the van was.
As she approached the crest of the hill, panting, she saw a small crack in the clouds that raced across the sky. Suddenly, and only for an instant, a great beam of golden sunshine flooded through it and she raised her head toward it, craning like a sunflower. At the very top of the hill, she stopped and gazed at the clouds. She never saw them back home, for glass and steel tended to obscure the top end of the weather; you kept your eyes on the pavement, or your phone, and you carried on. Clearing the drops out of her eyes and shaking her hair behind herâit would frizz like crazy, she thought, but who was there to mind or care?âshe was rewarded suddenly by the rain stopping, as if on her command, and the golden sunlight splashed down again, illuminating every crystal raindrop, every damp leaf and shiny field of rapeseed all the way down to the little cove, an enormous rainbow cracking through the gaps. The clouds continued to race by as if speeding up, making a patchwork of the field below.
Nina took a deep breath of the incredibly fresh air, then looked to her right, where a red train was running parallel to the road. She knew it wouldnât have Marek in itâit was a passenger trainâbut she hopped back on her bike nevertheless and coasted down the other side of the hill, racing the train, watching as it sped on its way: Perth, Dundee . . . maybe Edinburgh, Glasgow and beyond, Britain for once not feeling like the small, cramped country she had always thought it to be, hugger-mugger, that corner of London and the southeast continuously sending out its fingers into more and more of the world around it, trying to swallow it whole, concreting over the entire land into a dark, grimy urban sprawl, with a coffee shop in every street and everyone shut away in highly priced boxy little flats, attached to their WiFi, living through a screen even as another nine skyscrapers were thrown up right next door, blocking out more of the light and the clouds and the air and the view and nobody seeming to care, everyone thinking of it as progress.
She let her feet fly off the pedals and freewheeled faster and faster, watching the train speed ahead, knowing that even though she had no job, no pension, no partner, nothing at all except a rackety old van, somehow, more than ever in her life, she felt free.
Not at all where she remembered it beingâand rather farther away; she was starving by the time she reached itâshe came upon the train crossing. In the turnoff next to it, completely untouched apart from the police sticker, which, had she still been in Birmingham, sheâd have been tempted not to peel off in case it got her free parking, was the big van, looking a lot lessdaunting in the sunshine than it had the last time sheâd seen it, in the middle of the night.
As she dismounted from the bicycle, she saw the red lights begin to flash and the striped barriers making their descent. Immediately she felt tense; how awful that sheâd been so nearly caught there, so nearly trapped. That feeling of panicky powerlessness when sheâd fumbled for the door came over her again, and she forced herself to watch the trainâa small local service, but even that felt huge and noisyâthunder across. She shivered as a cloud passed once more across the sun and she leaned against a nearby tree. It was okay. It was okay. It was fine. She had to tell herself that and not let her imagination run away with her. It was a freak accident, the train had stopped; it would not happen again.
She wondered if
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