SHE OPENED THE unlocked door, collected the straps of her coat together and sat down. Not long now, she thought, gazing at the park across the busy road. She looked at the used match on the dashboard, its thin charcoal arch a stretching cat, the usual fragment of blonde un-burnt wood pinched between his forefinger and thumb both blackened down the decades and unconcerned. Sometimes the flame simply went out without being blown out or shook out, nowhere left to go, the pipe always lit before a long walk. Searching out the windscreen for his emerging shape she put the match in the stiff ashtray and with difficulty pushed it shut.
Pulling down the vanity mirror she noticed the doctor leave the surgery for home visits. Watching his slow progress to his deliberately valueless car with its boot full of drugs she shrank down, hoping he wouldn’t notice her still sat there inexplicably. Did you forget something Else? Where’s Michael? He'd say.
“You know how much he likes to walk and think, he’s a child when it comes to parks,” she said with a dry throat, relieved to see him finally pull away passing by without noticing and turning left.
The increasingly strong wind about the leafless trees made her feel the cold.
The 114 bus went by for a fourth time keeping its usual timetable every 30 minutes, the second one late but not by very much. She knew by the third. She knew by the second, she thought. The sound of sirens neared and the louder they became the more determined and somehow soothing they seemed. She climbed out of the car with unusual ease and noticed the strap had caught in the door after all. Crossing the road along the crossing she noticed the people standing around him lying awkwardly, maladroit in the damp grass. One of them saw her and called out to her, called her love. “That’s my husband,” she said feeling close enough so that they could hear but they appeared not too. The wind took up and seemed to put miles between them.