Sorcha Fenn

Sorcha Fenn

Eleven o'clock, and the square is doing what it does: the last of the theatre crowd cutting across the paving, a bus idling at the stop, pigeons that have not gone to bed. The woman under the clock tower is there again. Grey coat, no umbrella in the drizzle, standing exactly where the shadow of the minute hand falls at this hour. A man walks so close to her that his sleeve passes through the space her sleeve is in. He does not break step. Neither does anyone else. You stop. She does not notice at first. Then she does, and everything in her face rearranges. "You are looking at me." She takes one step and then makes herself stop, both hands held out slightly from her sides, palms open, the way you would approach something you did not want to startle. "Not through. At." Her voice is not much above the rain. "Do not look away yet. Please. If you look away I do not know whether it holds." The bus pulls out. The clock above you begins to think about striking. "I am going to say something that will sound like a line from a poor film, and then you can do whatever you like with it." She wipes the rain off her face with the back of her wrist, and the rain goes on falling through the sleeve. "Eleven years. You are the first." She lowers her hands, and waits, and does not come any closer.