But as my eyes landed on the table that I’d been about to dive in the direction of, I saw that a couple were already sat there, perusing a menu and hanging their coats on the backs of the chairs that should have been mine. I tossed my head back and groaned. My rival with the diabetic coma in a cup turned on the ball of his foot and headed for the door. Turns out he was never a rival in the first place.
I looked around, searching for anywhere to sit, at this point an upturned box would do just fine. I pushed the sandwich up so that it was wedged between my less than generous chest and my forearm, the crisps from my meal deal gripped in my elbow, coffee in my left hand. I reached down with my free right hand and got out my phone. Twenty-seven minutes of freedom remained and I intended to spend that time sitting down. Over by the window was one of those annoying communal tables. It was rectangular and had several separate groups of people sitting at it. There wasn’t much room, but just there on the end was one space, next to a lone dark-haired man, his back to me, his shoulders hunched over towards the table. I clutched everything tightly and set off towards my last hope of a seat.
I hated situations like the one I would shortly find myself in, where I had to share an enclosed, intimate space with strangers whom I felt like I should talk to, out of politeness, but whom I knew had absolutely no interest in talking to me, nor me in talking to them. My mother hadn’t tried to force many traits upon me when I was younger, but politeness had been something she had been stern about. She always tried to encourage me to smile at strangers who passed me by and strike up small talk with people in lifts. I had very little control over it, as if the politeness that had been drummed into me as a child took physical form and began overriding my ability to stay quiet. It happened all the time in taxis. One minute I’d be sitting, quite happily minding my own business and trying to distract myself with my phone, the next I’d ask the question that every cabby must hear a thousand times a day: ‘So, have you been busy?’
Before the ride was over, I would know all about them: their name, every single one of their past employers, their children’s names and where they went to school. I’d leave feeling like me and old Mahmood were childhood friends and then we’d part, never to set eyes on each other again.
I arrived at the table as my sandwich began slipping from my arm and I bowed to speak to the hunched man. ‘Excuse me.’ He jumped a little and turned to me with cornflower blue, darkly lashed eyes. It looked as though I’d interrupted a deep thought, which was lingering like fog on a wet autumn morning. ‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ Before he could answer, the sandwich made its escape and slipped from my grasp. I jerked my arm upwards, clocking it with my elbow and sending it careening up into the air. It tumbled, rather more gracefully than I would have imagined, before falling downwards in the direction of the lone man’s head. I gasped inwardly as the sandwich slapped into the side of his face with a wet thud, flopping into his lap before dropping through his knees and thumping onto the floor.
We stared at each other for a silent moment, the other people around the table sheepishly looking on or sniggering behind hands. I wasn’t quite sure if he was about to shout at me, or burst into laughter. ‘Ha-ha.’ I spoke it rather than laughed. ‘Guess hu-mussed the catch on that one? I guess that joke only works if you know that there’s hummus in the sandwich, which you didn’t and the joke wasn’t any good anyway.’ Oh, shut up, Nell. He pressed his lips together suppressing laughter or embarrassment, bent down and picked it up. He placed the sandwich down on the table in front of the empty seat and shrugged his trendily unruly eyebrows.
‘Be my guest,’ he mumbled.
‘Thank you.’ I sat, arranging my things on the table. I already felt awkward as I peeled back the wrapping on my slightly misshapen sandwich and raised it inelegantly to my mouth. I hated eating in public when I felt as though I was being watched. I was not what anyone would call a graceful eater. I was one of those people who go into some sort of food-induced trance, where I become completely unreachable until the food is gone. I have no idea what I must look like when I do this. I have mental images of Henry VIII chomping down on a turkey leg, or a snake when a frozen mouse is dropped into its paths and it has to unhinge its jaws around it. It’s something that I’ve been trying to work on, ever since I became old enough to be embarrassed by it. It’s still a work in progress, much like the not speaking to strangers thing.
The man beside me had resumed the position he’d held when I’d stormed in to ruin his calm, sitting with his head hunched over his mug of tea. The bag was still floating in the cup, secured by a
