My hand trembled slightly as I gripped my thermos this morning. The rush around Oxford Street had its own rhythm: heels clicking on wet pavement, taxis honking in gridlock, the distant rumble of the Tube cutting through the autumn chill. Seven months pregnant and bone-weary, yet here I was in my faded blue cleaner’s uniform – Emily Davies, still showing up. Still trying.
I took my usual shortcut through the grimy underpass near Piccadilly, weaving past flower vendors and the scattered belongings of rough sleepers. Most looked away. I couldn’t. Not after everything I’d lived through.
That’s when I spotted him again.
Slumped against the concrete, half-shrouded in shadow: tangled ginger curls, a crutch across his lap, a frayed cricket cap upside-down for coins. Different from the others. No shouting. No begging. Just… watching.
I hesitated, then approached. Pulled a crumpled five-pound note from my coat pocket – yesterday’s tips – and held it out. “Get yourself something warm, yeah?” I murmured. “It’s not much.”
He didn’t take it. Not right away.
His eyes fixed on my bump instead. “Always this kind, are you?” His voice was husky, parched.
I shrugged. “Suppose I’ve walked both sides of the pavement.”
A faint smirk touched his lips as he took the note. But when our fingers brushed, something shifted in his eyes. Recognition? Guilt?
“Listen,” he said suddenly, glancing about. “You come this way tomorrow?”
I blinked. “Yeah. Always do.”
He leaned forward, just inches. “Maybe don’t. Tomorrow. Not this way.”
My breath hitched. “Why?” I whispered.
But he was already turning away, hood up, melting back into shadow.
I stood frozen. London rushed on around me as if nothing happened, as if no warning had been whispered into my ordinary morning. Threat? Trap? Or something else entirely?
Later, back in my tiny Hackney flat, I relived it again and again. That urgency. That hesitation, like words caught in his throat. Curled on my sagging mattress, one hand on my belly, the other clutching my mobile. Nearly called someone. But who? No family. No mates to ring at midnight. Just that bloke’s raspy warning echoing: “Maybe don’t come this way tomorrow.”
Little did I know what he truly meant… would change absolutely everything.
