Time Check

We sat for a moment, still trying to get our heads around it.

All of fifty years since we’d parted. Either of us could have been anywhere. Yet there we were, in the same compartment of the same tube train on the same day of the year. Millions to one against, must be.

‘Did you know it was me?’ she asked, as we toyed with the coffee that neither of us wanted.

‘Yes.’ Grey-haired and wrinkled now, but the same girl forever and a day.

‘How are you anyway?’

‘Fine, thanks.’

‘You’re looking well.’

‘And you.’

We looked out the cafe window, anywhere but at each other. The chasm of time was too great to span.

‘Still working hard?’

‘On and off.’ I glanced at my watch.

‘You’re in a hurry.’

‘A bit.’

‘Me too.’

Another silence, as heavy as uranium, then with a scrape of chairs we both got up.

‘I’ll pay.’

‘No, let me.’