Blown Away

IAM the wind from the wild parts, I freeze your bones and frost your hearts . . .” I don’t know where the words that have sprung into my mind are from, but I hear them said in a child’s voice. So maybe from a story or poem I read as a kid.

Whatever, it’s delivering its threats today, all right. I watch as the advertising board outside the butcher’s shop opposite is flung down the street, and the clouds fly across the sky as though being chased.

“It wasn’t forecast to be as bad as this,” Raksha says. She’s one of my two part-time assistants in the little deli/café I run.

“No. I think we’d better close and get home,” I reply.

“It’s what everyone else is doing,” Thomas, my other helper, agrees.

It’s true: the streets are emptying fast.

We shut everything up and say goodbye at the door.

Raksha and Thomas live nearby. I’m further away and I come either by car or bike, depending on what else I have to do.

Today I came by bike, not needing my car for anything. But I don’t fancy cycling home so I leave my bike in the shop and jump on a bus that’s passing.

“At least the buses are still running,” I say to the woman I sit down beside.

She looks at me in a “Why wouldn’t they be?” sort of way. Maybe it didn’t affect her, but I’m remembering another day, a couple of years ago. . .

I was working long hours at the time, while I was saving up. And like today, it wasn’t forecast.

But people returning from lunch complained that the wind was getting up, and by mid-afternoon it was punching at our windows.

Websites confirmed there were now warnings in place. The decision was made for us all to go home.

But it really was freak conditions that day, and by the time we got out it was to find that most buses had stopped running. There were no taxis in sight, either.

The answer seemed to be to walk. Little clusters of us marched together along the main roads out of the town.

Most of my group reached their destinations before me and I was left to do the last leg alone.

I was exhausted by then. It was raining, too, and there was no sign of the howling wind easing.

There’s an alternative way to get to where I live – along a lane that goes through a business park – and I thought that might be better. It might offer more protection than the main road.

I thought wrong. The lane is bordered by fairly tall buildings, tunnelling the wind so it nearly knocked me over.

Several times I had to hold on to something to save myself from being blown over. Once I grabbed at a parked car for support and set the alarm off.

I heard footsteps behind me and turned, wondering if it was the car’s owner thinking I was trying to steal it. I quickly decided it wasn’t – the man approaching was showing no interest in it.

He was a biggish guy, looking to be coming home from work, a bag over his shoulder. He had a pleasant, open face and seemed to be coping better than I was. Maybe he hadn’t come as far.

“Stay behind me,” he told me. “I’ll go first.”

We got talking – shouting sometimes, because of the noise of the wind – and I ended up walking alongside him, so I didn’t benefit from the intended buffering effect of him being ahead of me.

Nonetheless my fear and fatigue fell away. I guess it was having someone with me again, and there was something dependable about him.

As we approached a narrow bridge for pedestrians only, we heard a vehicle behind us.

It was a neighbour of mine in her big RangeRover.

“Get in!” she shouted to us.

I turned to my companion and explained who she was. He looked for a moment as though he were going to get in with me, but then shook his head.

“I don’t have far to go.” He pointed to the bridge. “It’s easing up now anyway.”

It was, too, as unexpectedly as it had arrived.

I clambered in beside my neighbour.

“I hope my fence hasn’t blown down,” she said as we turned on to our road.

The wind is bitter and cold, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel!

It hadn’t and neither had mine, but several trees had lost branches.

“A tree has fallen down on Redhill Road.” Someone in front of me on the bus rouses me from my memories. “That’s why there’s a diversion. It’s blocking the road.”

Peering through the window, I see the bus is no longer on its normal route and is now going in a different direction from where I live.

I get off at the first opportunity and consider the quickest way home. Again it’s through the business park.

I pause for a moment, thinking about the last time and wondering if this is the best choice.

But I decide it’ll be OK. Bad though the wind is, it’s nothing like that other time.

Even so, it’s not good as I start along the lane. It’s getting dark now, too, but thankfully most of the offices are still occupied and have their lights on.

Walking along ahead of me is someone else – a teenage girl in school clothes. She looks like I imagine I looked that other time: cold and scared.

A particularly sharp gust swipes at us then and whisks her mobile phone from her hand. I see tears in her eyes as she fishes it out of a puddle.

“Walk with me if you like,” I say, remembering again how that offer had once helped me.

She smiles gratefully and we get into step.

“I need to phone my gran,” she says. “She’ll be worried.”

“Here, use mine,” I say, handing her my phone.

We stop in the doorway to one of the offices while she makes her call, then we continue onwards to the bridge.

As we’re nearing it, a figure comes running across it from the other side.

It’s the man who helped me that other time!

To my surprise, the girl calls out to him. “Dad!”

“Emma, love!” he shouts back, attention now fully on her. “Your mum said you were going to Anna’s after school.”

“I’ve put your coat by the radiator to dry.”

“Thank you.” I smile gratefully as I accept a cup of tea from Sheila, who is Emma’s gran.

Emma’s dad, Chris, had been right the time before when he’d said he hadn’t far to go when my neighbour offered him a lift.

Sheila’s house is just over the bridge and apparently he and Emma always come to hers for tea on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

As I sip the tea and warm my bones I watch Emma telling her dad about her journey.

“Your mum phoned to tell me to pick you up at Anna’s later,” Chris says.

“Yes, I was going there but I changed my mind. She was prattling on and on about Jamie . . .”

She pauses and from her face I suspect she rather likes Jamie and that her friend Anna is a rival for his attentions.

“She was getting on my nerves,” Emma resumes. “I couldn’t stand listening to her any more.” “Right,” Chris says. He smiles at me and I’m suddenly aware of how well I remember his smile.

He’s not the best-looking guy in the world, but there’s just something about him. Which is, of course, why he’s spoken for already.

I smile to myself at the irony.

Jimmy and I had a fair bit of money saved for our wedding and the setting up of our first home, but it didn’t happen. He met someone else and I was devastated.

But as the numbness started to recede, I saw that I needed to focus on something again. I had done some training in catering and decided to open the café.

Assuredly I was not looking for romance. No-one since my split with Jimmy has remotely tempted me, though I probably haven’t been willing to give anyone a chance.

But the irony is, that when I saw Chris coming over the bridge before Emma called out to him, I was aware that someone like him. . . Yes, maybe I would give someone like him a chance.

He smiles at me again now.

“The wind’s dropping. I’ll give you a lift home.”

“After we’ve eaten,” Sheila says, indicating a place at the table for me, too.

An hour or so later I’m sitting beside Chris in his van, giving him directions to my house. Twigs are scattered all over the roads and there’s the odd roof slate, too.

“Thanks for helping Emma today,” he says. “She says seeing you saved her life.”

He adds the last bit in a good impersonation of the rather dramatic way Emma speaks.

We both laugh. “She’s a love,” I say, meaning it. “And I was glad I was there. You helped me that other time and I’m pleased to have paid you back.”

He’s stopped outside my house now, and his face in the light from a streetlamp is serious.

“You paid me back at the time, Kerry,” he says. “Emma’s mum and I had recently split up. We share care of Emma. Her happiness is the absolute priority for both of us.”

“Well, you’re obviously both succeeding there,” I reply, still taking in what he said. “Emma seems fine.”

“Yes. But back when I first met you, it was still early days.” He pauses a moment. “I remember wanting to get in the car with you and your friend just to get to know you better.” He shrugs.

“It was the first time I’d felt that way since the divorce. But I couldn’t risk rocking the boat with Emma by introducing someone else into her life.”

He goes quiet again, then laughs.

“You’re probably wondering how this connects with me saying you’ve already paid me back.

“What I meant was, it was good for me to feel that way again even if the time wasn’t right. But now I’ve been given a second chance, and if you . . .”

He’s still talking, though I’m not properly listening. What I’ve already heard has sent me reeling as much as the wind did earlier.

I am the wind from the wild parts, I freeze your bones and frost your hearts . . .

Getting out of the van, with an arrangement made for him to come down to the café after he finishes work tomorrow, I smile.

Well, yes, maybe it did freeze our bones. But it warmed at least a couple of hearts! n