get, take the poor girl!’ Another questions why on earth anybody would ever want to go to London in the first place. A few agree. And yet, there’s Zara, struggling with getting her bags onto the pavement whilst still pleading, asking the next taxi driver, then the next. Nobody’s helping her. And why should they? Nobody knows her.
Except me. I’ve known her for about four hours now.
‘Excuse me, mate,’ I say, jumping in front of the first taxi, another passenger now in the back seat and the driver about to exit the rank. I wave my arms, the brakes of the vehicle squeaking from the rain. ‘You can’t just leave this girl stranded.’
‘Jim, what are you doing?’ Zara asks.
‘You can’t treat her like that, mate. Have a heart, will you?’
The taxi honks his horn and moves forward a little, threatening.
‘Don’t be such a tosser!’ I shout.
The driver steps out. Shaved head and shaved chin, he’s equal to me in height, but three times the build, tattoos across his knuckles. I very nearly shit myself.
‘Who you calling a tosser? You fucking gobshite.’
‘Eloquent choice of words, mate,’ I say.
Variations of horns honk, drivers hang out of their windows. Some are quietly trying to see what the problem is, and others aren’t so polite, vomiting the most vulgar vocabulary. The driver squares up to me, his round, hard belly pressing into my ribs. On instinct, I push back.
Somehow, Zara gets herself in between me and the driver. Well, she is small enough to appear from nowhere, and she muscles in, trying to break us apart. I place a hand around her waist, an attempt to keep her away from our spat, but the driver grabs the strap of her dress and throws her against the brick wall.
A small gasp escapes the onlookers.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ Zara says, shaking off the gravel, but her voice is trembling.
This is bang out of order. I take hold of the driver’s sweatshirt and swing a punch with my free hand right across his jaw. A larger gasp now filters through the taxi rank, a couple of cheers and a round of applause from the hen party huddled in the stage door opposite. Fuck. My hand aches. I’m by no means a fighter, and, in all honesty, I’m panicking. The driver’s eyes are bulging, his round head becoming very red. His tattooed fists curl tight, his browning teeth drip with riled spit. Another driver barges in, holding the first driver back and telling me to fuck off.
‘Go fuck yourselves,’ I say.
My knees are quivering. Either I’ll have to swing another punch or await my own beating. I haven’t had a fist fight since I was ten and some lad nicked my cola pips in the park.
‘Stop this,’ Zara says. ‘None of this is going to get me to London.’
And, great. A couple of police officers have spotted the incident and are stomping towards us all. I back off, hands up high. Both drivers get into their respective black cabs, drive off. They even manage to get willing passengers. You can’t blame them in this weather.
‘What was all that about?’ a police officer asks. She’s female, much younger than me.
‘A misunderstanding,’ I say, chancing a smile.
The second police officer strolls into the rain with confidence, as if immune to getting wet. Zara shivers.
‘Where’s your coat?’ the young police officer asks.
‘Uhm. In my suitcase,’ Zara says.
‘Why aren’t you wearing it?’
‘I like the cold.’
‘You look a little lost. Are you with this man here?’
I find myself placing my arm across Zara’s shoulders. ‘Yep, she’s with me.’
‘And everything’s okay?’
‘Everything’s fine,’ I say. ‘It’s them taxi drivers you should be talking to, not us. They started it.’
‘How so?’
‘Erm …’
It’s impossible to sound like an innocent citizen when facing the police.
‘Jenny?’ the second police officer calls from the other side of the road.
The tingling ache in my fist subsides. But, the adrenaline pumping in my chest beats stronger. Zara squeezes my arm. I follow Jenny’s head, turning in response to her partner. A complicated knot sitting behind my belly button, the one that started with the crash four hours ago and has been feeling tighter, tighter, tighter as this bloody day progresses, tightens again.
‘Excuse me,’ Jenny says and goes to join her partner.
Beside the stage door of the theatre, beneath a huge poster advertising the forthcoming pantomime starring Jane McDonald and some fella from Hollyoaks, is my BMW, being inspected. Both police officers are drawn to the boot, one bent over and scanning the