Less than a block away from his destination, a voice calling urgently through the blinding rain caught his attention. A well-dressed woman stood dejectedly at the kerb. Already drenched, she glanced from face to face as they passed, pleading. Bob caught her eye as he approached.
"Help me, please." She indicated the gutter. It brimmed with rushing brown water as it struggled to cope with the cloudburst. "My keys."
Bob stopped, momentarily torn between his natural urge to help and his pressing and vital engagement. He gave a mental sigh.
"Where did you drop them?"
"Right here. Here by the door." Her car was parked on a double yellow line, although it was now rendered invisible by the gurgling drain water. "I've felt around a bit, but..."
"This current is strong enough to carry them quite a distance," Bob mused. He rolled up the sleeves of his soaking jacket, offered an ironic smile to the woman, and plunged his hand into the fast-flowing water a foot or so past the point she had indicated. The freezing cold water rose past his wrist, numbing his fingers as he groped along the edge of the kerb.
With a triumphant cry, he fished a set of keys out of the gutter.
"There you go!"
"Oh, thank you!"
"Sorry to dash, but I'm already late."
*
Fiona Broadbent watched the earnest young man as he made his apology and ran for the nearest building. Her car keys dangled from her hand and they almost slipped from her grasp before she clutched them against her chest, opened the door, and slid gratefully behind the wheel out of the torrential rain that continued to fall.She fired up the engine and pulled into the flow of traffic, almost as heavy and fast-flowing as the gutter from which the gentleman had retrieved her keys. Her wipers struggled to keep the windscreen clear against the continuing downpour. A few hundred metres further on she passed an elderly lady, standing alone at a bus stop. She was bent almost double under the combined weight of two enormous shopping bags and the heavy rain. There were no buses in sight. Fiona had never offered anyone a lift in her life. If anyone had asked her why she chose to make today her first she would not have been able to explain it. She pulled in to the kerb and keyed the window.
"Would you like a lift?"
"Eh?"
"Looks like I'm going in your direction - would you like a ride?"
"Oh, bless you!"
The old woman fell in through the open door, dragging her shopping after her. The inside of Fiona's car began to reek of wet old dog and mothballs.
"Where are you going?"
"Well I was going to get the bus to the station, but if you're going that far...?"
Fiona's turn was three blocks before the station, but her new-found altruism blossomed in her mind. "The station it is," she replied quickly, glancing behind as she pulled out once more into the traffic. "Have you got much further to go?"
"I live in Greenfield," said the woman, "it's only about 20 minutes away by train."
*
By the time Brenda McIntyre stepped from the train at Greenfield station the unexpected cloudburst had ceased, the clouds had moved away as quickly as they had appeared, and the late summer sun burned the wet platform into a steaming cauldron. As she walked quickly to the exit, her unused bus fare jingled loudly in her coat pocket. A young boy stood by the exit, looking up at the arrivals board. Brenda reached into her pocket, held out her change to the boy."Here you are young man," she said in her best headmistress voice -- unused these past eleven years and yet apparently still in good working order. "I'm sure you can put this to good use."
*
Jonny watched the old woman pass through the exit turnstile with a dazed expression glued to his face. He stared at his open hand, and back at the woman's retreating back. And then, he looked at the flower vendor's display further down the platform. He had another 12 minutes before his Mum's train arrived. He turned in the direction of the stall, counting the coins as he walked.
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