AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 2
‘Hey! What are you doing?’
A moment earlier, Abigail had been crossing the bridge, minding her own business, and hoping everyone else would mind theirs too. It was just her luck to be stopped in her tracks by a good Samaritan. That was all she needed.
She had just reached the spot where it had happened. She knew she only had herself to blame. If she hadn’t been so hell-bent on saving this magical sum of money for a deposit, hadn’t been so determined to get on the housing ladder before they were forty, he wouldn’t have been doing overtime, volunteering to work an extra shift in one of two ambulances called to a stabbing on Tower Bridge.
She had been standing there on the pavement, staring at the spot in the road. Then she’d turned around, walked over to the wall, and started to climb. It was only four feet to hitch herself up and sit on the wall. The murky water of the Thames swirled down below. It would have been easier, perhaps, if she’d just stepped into the path of a moving vehicle as she crossed the bridge, but what if it had swerved into another car, or god forbid – ploughed into another pedestrian across the other side of the road? Her life was ruined, but she had no intention of ruining the lives of anyone else or of their friends and loved ones. She’d made a decision not to involve anyone else.
That had turned out to be easier said than done. She cast her gaze over her shoulder. There were hardly any pedestrians on the bridge at this time in the afternoon. Perhaps everyone had returned to work by now. There were cars passing, but no one would take any notice of a lone woman suddenly throwing herself off the bridge.
Abigail glanced over her shoulder and sighed as the old man of West Indian descent, leaning heavily on a walking stick, shouted again, ‘Hey, you. What do you think you’re doing?’
I’m joining my husband, thought Abigail.There’s nothing to live for.She turned back to the water.
‘It can’t be as bad as all that,’ she heard him say. She had always hated that expression. ‘What’sall that?’ she threw back at him, annoyed that he was interrupting her perfectly thought-out plan.
He didn’t answer her question, appearing preoccupied with something on the ground. ‘What’s this?’ he asked, tapping something with his walking stick.
Abigail, still annoyed that he was interrupting her, saw an envelope on the ground. She thrust her hand in her pocket and discovered it was empty. ‘My letter!’ She didn’t know why she was bothered about it. It wasn’t like she was going to read it on her way down.
The old man tried to bend down and retrieve it, but he couldn’t reach it. ‘Come over here and pick this up.’ He wasn’t addressing Abigail. He was holding a dog lead. Out from behind his legs trotted a podgy brown and white Cavalier King Charles spaniel. Abigail recognised the breed. She’d had one as a child, right up until he had died when she was seventeen or eighteen, not long after she’d left home. She had thought of taking him with her to London, but she had been a student at university, living in a dorm, and it just hadn’t been possible. The romantic in her had always wondered if he’d died of a broken heart, even though deep down she knew it was just old age.
Abigail asked, ‘What’s his name?’
‘Ah, his name is Ulysses.’
Abigail forgot herself and laughed. ‘Your dog is named after a hero in Greek mythology?’
‘No, actually, my grandson named him after a squirrel.’
‘A squirrel?’
‘From the Disney movie,Flora and Ulysses. Ulysses has superpowers, apparently.’
Abigail looked at the podgy dog. ‘Yeah, I don’t think he has any superpowers.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that. He’s surprisingly agile.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ulysses, pick it up!’
Abigail was still looking over her shoulder, watching the dog pick up the letter in its jaws. She didn’t quite get how that made the dog agile, until the old man said, ‘Give it to the lady.’
Abigail looked down at the dog as he jumped up, standing on his hind legs. He held his snout up with the letter still clamped between his jaws. Abigail couldn’t resist the big brown eyes staring up at her. She brought her legs over to the street side, which elicited a round of applause. Her eyes went wide when she realised they had an audience. Some people were even filming it on their phones.
Abigail was about to swing her legs over again when the dog suddenly took a running jump and landed on the wall beside her. Abigail reached for the dog as he almost lost his balance. ‘Oh, my god!’ She grabbed his collar. ‘You stupid dog!’
Without thinking, Abigail got down from the wall, holding the dog in her arms. He still had the letter in his jaws. Another round of applause went up amongst the circle of bystanders.
The old man smiled knowingly. He knew all about his dog’s fondness for climbing onto walls, just like a small child. That was why he had to keep him close on the lead; if he ended up on the wall, he’d probably topple right in, and that would be the end of Ulysses. He had never let the lead slacken like that before, walking over the bridge. He had counted on the young woman saving the dog.
Abigail put the dog down. Ulysses sat at her feet, his long, soft ears drooping either side of his face as he looked up at her. He moved closer. He could have been her own dog from childhood sitting there looking up at her – except, she remembered, that if her dog got hold of the post, you wouldn’t get your letter back in one piece; it would be more like twenty. Abigail bent down for her letter. The dog gave it up with a few teeth marks, but the envelope wasn’t torn.
The old man stepped forward. ‘I’m Sidney, and I’ve been where you are now.’
Abigail looked at him in surprise. ‘You climbed on to the wall?’
