Anton has never been a morning person and it’s only got worse with age.
‘Where’s my bus pass?’ I ask, banging once more for effect. ‘I asked you to leave it on the table when you got in last night.’
I could ask him to takemoneyfrom me and he’d still do it wrong just to spite me.
He grumbles something unintelligible and I hear the shuffling of his duvet, and scraping, before his door inches open. I can just about make out his face, set into pure resentment as he peers through the gap and recoils at the hallway light. He is a gremlin if I ever saw one. One who cannot go back to university quick enough, if you ask me.
‘Aren’t you too old to be getting the bus to work?’ he asks, reluctantly passing the card through the crack in his door.
‘Buy your own bus pass next time.’ I snatch it off him.
‘Move out.’
‘Grow up!’
There’s no use. The door is already closed and the shuffling behind it suggests he’s already back in bed.
I’m already so behind I could cry, and at this rate I may actually be late to the office again. So, I speed out of the door for the second time this morning, the gripless soles of my loafers be damned. There’s no time to be practical– it’s make or break. Get this bus or be late for the most important meeting of the year.
The heavens open above me, a non-forecasted torrential rain pouring demonically from the sky. I rummage through my bag as I continue to skid down the street, a mum on the school run eyeing me for my choice of language as I curse the clouds. I have an umbrella, of course– I always pack prepared– but what I do not have today is a hood– the only thing that could possibly keep my hair from frizzing. High-powered businesswomen walkdown the road in wool trenches, not parkas they’ve hung onto since they were sixteen.
High-powered businesswomen, however, probably have their own drivers, or at least their own very fancy cars. I have a worn-out bus pass and a head of hair that’s frizzing the longer I remain in denial. I do a quick mental calculation.
Bus– Eleven minutes away from bus stop.
Bus stop– Seven minutes away from my house.
House– Three minutes away from where I had got to.
Raincoat– On our banister. A one-minute grab at most.
Time behind schedule: Zero if I move fast enough to be back at bus stop in eight minutes.
‘Back again?’ Mum asks as I run through the door. ‘What did you forget this time?’
But I have no time to give her more than a grunt in response as I lunge for the banister. I have no doubt I’ll hear all about my supposed attitude later, but my mother’s wrath is a price I’ll simply have to pay.
I plough through the rain once more, shimmying to keep my handbag from sliding down my arm, fingers grappling as I try to frantically close the zipper on the coat before realizing it’s on the completely wrong side. I look down. I grabbed Anton’s coat. It’s larger, bulkier, not tailored at all. But at least I will be on time, with my hair mostly intact. That is, of course, if the bus app stops acting up. Why the jump from six minutes to three when I’m five minutes away? I pick up the pace, my rain-soaked loafers hooked on my feet with nothing but the sheer force of my toes. It’s a race against time, gravity and the forces that clearly wantme dead, but I power on. I must. My future hangs in the balance. I cannot have suffered all this for nothing.
By the time I reach the end of the road I can make out the bus, a once-distant blob becoming clearer and closer. I run. My lungs hate me, but there’s too much at stake. It’s close– far too close, but I reach the stop just in time, my sigh of relief synced with the stilling engine and the whoosh of the doors opening.
I press my card against the yellow reader.
A double beep and a red light flashes up.
I try again. The same happens.
‘You’re out,’ the driver snaps at me through his little glass window.
‘Excuse me?’ I’m panting, still catching my breath.
‘Out of money. It needs topping up.’
Of course it does. Anton is the devil incarnate. Why would he think to reimburse me after using the card I pre-load with the exact amount I need to get the bus to and from the office each month?
‘I don’t think I have my bank card.’ I’m still disorientated as I riffle through my bag.
‘Just use your phone, darling.’ He tuts. ‘Everyone uses the phone these days.’
