Canal

She smashed the bonnet of the car in a rage with both palms open, the noise, somewhere between a thwack and a snap of a drum skin.

She smashed the bonnet of the car in a rage with both palms open, the noise, somewhere between a thwack and a snap of a drum skin caused the driver - to whom the anger was directed - to jump in his seat and feel a surge of hostility, more due to the possibility of his beloved car being damaged than any sense or wrong directed towards himself.

He considered getting out of the car to confront her - but as he had already had that screaming match in his head (and lost) he decided instead to just drive on and see how close he could get to knocking her over without touching her. The ensuing few seconds were a blur - he couldn’t quite remember whether metal touched flesh or cloth or whether she jumped out of the way - he recalled, only, the second thump on the car with hands, this time on the car’s rear as he sped off.

‘Fucking shit’ she screamed after him, unheard in the deafening roar of wide-bore exhaust pipes. 

That was last night. This morning, as dawn broke over the canal, she had calmed down a little, the cheek-reddening conviction of being wronged and made a fool of had dampened - yet the hangover from the bottle of port had not. Or perhaps she was still a little drunk. The dawn was grey. The canal was green-grey and menacing in its implied depth and toxic industrial dirt. Weeds sprouted at the edges by the water and away from the water. She had been walking for hours and only now was she feeling wary, perhaps scared. She hadn’t seen a soul all this time, but a fox, two rabbits, and a cat had made their appearances to scare the shit out of her.

There was something at the water's edge just ahead, under the bridge built of metal and rivets an era ago. A bundle, or mound, of something soft. As she approached the details came into focus - it was a heap of clothes, a jumper, tee-shirt, trousers, socks, and there, right at the edge (she had said it was the kerb if this was a pavement) a pair of black well-used shoes with laces, lined up, facing the water as if their owner had gone for a dip and was about to come back to claim them. 

A shiver of raised hairs and goose flesh pulsed through her. Where was the body? She scoured the canal in front of her through the dank morning light and expected to see grey, stiff flesh bloated and floating just below the surface, but saw nothing. Reaching into her pocket for her phone, to call the number imprinted in her mind from an early age, she found that the phone was not there - she’d left it at home on purpose so as not to be contactable. She felt vulnerable. Her umbilical cut. She crouched to the pile of clothes and checked for a wallet or something to identify the owner of these clothes, hoping to find nothing. But there was a wallet. A familiar wallet, a branded wallet that she herself had purchased last year with the beloved car logo embossed upon it - tacky she had felt - but presents weren’t for you were they?

Surely not. This couldn’t be. As the implication lightened in her head with the dawn.

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Regent’s Canal (with Banksy) London, 2008. Nikon FM2

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