A World of Other People Read Online Free PDF Page B

flames. And as he turns back to the group he greets her stare with a puzzled nod. What did you see, he could almost be asking. To which she replies, I saw the fox shiver into life. I saw its eyes light up under the moon. I saw its nose lift to the night sky. I’m on to your little game.
    In that hazy time before dawn, with the all clear sounded, they will each go their separate ways and walk home. Their steps heavy after a long, uneventful night — except for this one moment, the duration of which is now uncertain because the moment, Iris imagines, looking back on it, did not take place in ordinary time. And in time — familiar, measured time — they may even come to doubt that they ever saw what they surely did. So fantastic and improbable was the vision that passed in front of them.
    Iris trudges through the quiet, deserted streets. It is late at night, or early in the morning. However you want to look at it. That time when the moon and the sun, like shift workers about to clock off and clock on, position themselves for the new day. There are sounds of motors somewhere in the distance. Thesky will be blue today. She turns into a small street off Bedford Square. All the houses, hotels and offices intact. No gaps in the row, for fate decided not to fall here tonight. It is a normal street. Her legs are heavy and she makes her way to St James’s Park like a sleepwalker, or as if she’s been to an all-night party and still has the prospect of a full day’s work in front of her.
    In her flat, between resting and washing and going to work, and while her flatmate, Pip, sleeps, she picks up her notebook and writes it all down. The sheer, fantastic improbability of it all. And part of her writes it down for that very reason, as a testament, a proof, that it really did happen, and that, in the months and years in the future when she remembers the events of the night, she won’t doubt her memory and won’t tell herself that she’s making it all up because, well … and she nods to herself, pen in hand as she closes her notebook, you couldn’t.

4.
A STATUE IN THE PARK
    Iris has come to the park to eat her sandwiches. She could take the tube to Russell Square for her nights on the rooftop looking for firecrackers (and there have been none since she started over a year ago, which comes as a relief to her, though not without a certain disappointment), but she chooses to walk from her work at Westminster. And it’s a good walk. One that builds up the appetite. Especially if you’re twenty-two, which Iris turned a month ago. And her reward is her picnic in the tranquil park. It is the most pleasurable part of the day, that part to which she looks forward.
    She has just finished reading a letter from Frank, the young man who gave her the ring that she saidshe’d wear when he returned and whom she thinks of as her fiancé — and, at the same time, doesn’t. For they’re not engaged, are they? It’s only a sort of possibility. Something that might happen, and might not — because she wasn’t sure then and she’s not sure now. Which is why she never put the ring on. It’s stowed away in her drawer and she looks at it occasionally and wonders what it means. Some days, rare ones, she likes the look of it and can see it on her finger; others she wishes it wasn’t there at all. Some days she wishes it would magically vanish. Frank writes to her, just as he said he would. And she’s here to receive the letters, someone to think of and to write back, just as she was meant to be. He’s somewhere in the Middle East, and while most of his letters mention sitting round in cafes talking to Russians and Poles, this latest is a short one saying he has a new job, that he may be out of contact for a while, and she doesn’t much like the sound of that although she can’t say why. She folds the letter, contemplating the question, and looks around the square.
    She normally has a park bench to herself and she can sit and eat her