Strangers Read Online Free Page A

going to be aroundfor long. Whatever happened, their lives were going to cross only briefly. The parameters were already set. It would be crazy to get too involved.
    Friends, she told herself. They could be friends.
    He called her a couple of days later with a suggestion that they explore the Bow Back Rivers that Saturday.
    ‘The what?’ she said.
    ‘I’ll show you.’
    He was waiting for her when she came out of Bromley-by-Bow station. He smiled when he saw her, and took her hand. The traffic roared by, heading for the Blackwall Tunnel. ‘Half of Londoners don’t know this exists,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
    She thought she knew this part of London–a derelict area of industrial wasteland tracked by busy roads that was best escaped from, not explored. She followed him away from the roads, down some steps and found herself in a wilderness where waterways tangled together through overgrown footpaths and abandoned locks and bridges. They walked for an hour along the waterways without touching the city.
    The rivers were choked with weed and the muddy banks were littered with rubbish, but there were swans on the water, and a heron rose lazily from the river ahead of them. He told her the names of the rivers as they walked–Pudding Mill, Bow Creek, Three Mills, Channelsea. The day was misty and cold.
    They left the silence of the old waterways and came out into the roar of the traffic. It started to rain, and he opened his umbrella, putting his arm round her to pull her into its shelter. He had the thin frame of a runner, and she was aware of the hardness of his arm through the sleeve of his coat as they walked together.
    They fell into a pattern of seeing each other a couple of times a week, often just walking, discovering parts of the city they didn’t know, sometimes going for a drink. Their meetings were friendly and casual. She didn’t know who he saw or what he did when he didn’t see her. He didn’t talk about himself much.
    On an unseasonably cold day about six weeks after their first meeting they found themselves on the South Bank. They’d been to Tate Modern to see the Edward Hopper exhibition, and afterwards they’d wandered aimlessly back along the path. Joe had been quiet for most of the afternoon and Roisin was happy just to walk beside him and watch the river.
    The water was translucent green except where the light glinting off the eddies and flows turned it silver. A tour boat went past, lines of seats visible inside the cabin where people sheltered from the brisk wind that blew up the river. The seats on the upper deck were empty apart from a couple who hung over the rail, pointing out the sights of the river as the boat passed. Briefly the voice ofthe guide boomed across the water:…
the Houses of Parliament, built in the
…A woman on the top deck leaned out dangerously to take a photograph as the boat rocked on an eddy.
    ‘She’s going to fall,’ Roisin said.
    She felt him stiffen beside her. ‘She’s dead if she does. In this water you’ve got maybe two minutes before the cold paralyses you.’ They watched as the woman righted herself and the boat dwindled into the shadows under Waterloo Bridge. His voice was sombre when he spoke again. ‘I used to get the river deaths when I worked here before–a lot of them ended up in our mortuary. It’s a terrible way to die.’
    She took his hand. This was the first time he’d talked about the darker side of his work. ‘I don’t remember reading about deaths in the river.’
    He was still watching the water, his thoughts somewhere else. ‘There are so many they hardly bother reporting it now.’
    She thought about the dark waters closing above her, the cold eating into her until it drove all feeling away, knowing that her existence would be snuffed out and forgotten and when her body was pulled out of the river–if it ever was–no one would care. The sky was grey and the wind off the water had a cutting edge.
    She was still holding his hand.