November morning

Annie’s week had started badly and had continued downhill. Now it was Thursday morning and she woke up with her mouth dry and head pounding, thirty-five minutes after her alarm went off. “Snooze and you lose is right”, she thought, having only meant to have had an extra five minutes in bed, but finding the snooze button and the warm comfortable nest she’d dug into the duvet too much to resist. Ordinarily Annie would have been able to get up later than this but her car had broke down on Monday, something to do with the fan belt, the mechanic said. Annie did not know much about how her car worked, just that she didn’t have quite enough money to pay for it to be fixed at present. She clambered out of her bed, cursing that final glass of wine with her flatmate last night, and stumbled across her bedroom through the piles of clothes and shoes, only dimly made out in the grey miserable light filtering through her not-quite-closed curtains. Upon reaching the bathroom, she found it already in use. Growing more impatient as her need increased, she hopped from one leg to the other; the sound of running water from her housemate’s shower was doing little to help.

Elementary ablutions complete, Annie quickly got dressed for the day ahead, which promised nothing of particular excitement, and left the house clutching her handbag, a bottle of water and two aspirin. The weather was mild for late November but the threat of rain lingered in the air, emanating from the ominous grey clouds lumbering around the sky. Annie struggled to do up her buttons as she hurried towards the bus stop, she was too busy concentrating on her coat and her pounding head to look properly before crossing the road and caused a driver to sound his horn at her after he was forced to break. Annie responded in her usual way, flashing her finger in defiance despite knowing that she was in the wrong; she hated it when pedestrians got under her feet whilst she was driving. “It’s like they think they own the road,” she’d often been heard to grumble. “Especially mums sticking their prams out before they cross the road. Just wait for the green man won’t you!”

There were several other people at the bus stop: school kids, students and pensioners. No one Annie’s age. She felt the eyes of the drivers stopped at the traffic lights on the other side of the road gazing at the collection of bus travellers, sitting in their own cars, snug, smug and self-satisfied on their way to work, or maybe dropping their kids off at school. She imagined that they saw her as a failed thirty-something, waiting on the side of a busy road for the horror that is public transport, unable to enjoy the luxury of her own car. Annie wished she had a sign or some distinguishing mark that could let others know -  the car travellers, her fellow passengers, the bus-driver when he came – that she wasn’t a regular bus user, that she used to be part of the car-driving elite, that she wasn’t a failure, left on the shelf at the mere age of twenty-seven.

Her phone bleeped, a text came through. As she fumbled in her handbag to retrieve it, she dropped her water bottle and bent to retrieve it, a surge of blood rushing to her head. A few of the school kids sniggered and she felt herself blushing as she regained her standing position. The text was from her younger brother, a joke about their shared football team. She felt a pang of guilt that she hadn’t phoned to speak to him in a while; her mother had rung her yesterday and relayed how Harry had got the job he’d been applying for and was now manager of his office floor. Annie heard the pride in her mother’s voice and then the slight disappointment as Annie had no such good news to share, only the news that she’d broken up with Gary on Tuesday. Her mother had tried to be supportive, telling her only daughter that she’d find “another nice man soon, and settle down”. Annie didn’t want to settle down, that had been the problem with Gary towards the end. They’d been together for nearly eight months and it had become routine, lacklustre. The excitement of going on dates and spontaneous ideas had passed along with the summer; she didn’t get excited whenever he sent her a text or she knew he was coming over to hers. Pizza and monotonous TV on weekends and Wednesdays had become their habit and she was bored. Perhaps she should have made more of an effort to suggest things but the truth was she knew their relationship had reached its terminal phase. Gary had too, and he’d been the one to finish it on Tuesday evening after a terse phonecall that had started mundane enough and eventually degenerated into a cool argument about her car. Despite wanting to end it too, Annie’s feelings were still hurt; anyone would be if their partner said they didn’t want to be with you, no matter what your own thoughts on the relationship. More than sadness, she felt relief, but her mother didn’t seem to believe her when she said she was okay. She suspected it was because Harry had moved in with his girlfriend of three years just two months ago. Annie had been feeling less and less comparable with her younger brother as the years went on: in their younger days, she’s been the bright star, the academic one with great school results, the one who went to university, whilst Harry had meandered through college and gone to work for the civil service. Now she was in the dead end job as a sales assistant at a clothes retailer, hoping for something better to come along, single and living with two flatmates because she couldn’t afford an apartment of her own. No wonder her mother’s voice was tinged with sympathy when she was on the phone to her eldest child.

Feeling a wave of self-pity wash over her and desperate not to appear moist-eyed in front of the other would-be passengers, Annie delved into her handbag once more, searching for her cigarettes. She located them and lit up, thankful for something to occupy her mind with, if only for a few seconds.

“Excuse me, won’t you step away further from me if you’re going to do that?” one of the pensioners gave her a disapproving look as she politely asked Annie to leave the shelter.

“It’s illegal to smoke in the bus shelter anyways, innit,” one of the school children piped up, as his friends tittered behind him.

Annie obligingly stepped two paces to her right, from under the shelter just as the heavens finally broke and the rain poured down. “What a brilliant start to the morning,” she thought dejectedly. “Thank god I can see the bus at last.”