Bobble Hat

The Thames was a fire stream. The lights from the boats passing under Westminster Bridge, the fireworks which were igniting in exuberant star shimmers and flower bursts long after midnight, all transformed the water into a path of flame.

Sarah stood looking over the parapet of the bridge. None of these transformations, of water into fire, or the sky into a palette of exploding colour, meant anything. They meant as much as the dead rat she nudged with her foot as she moved on, aiming to join the revellers.

By getting in amongst the drunken crowds, she had every chance of cadging a fag, persuading someone to hand over their almost finished bottle, or maybe even begging a fiver or tenner. She knew exactly where she could go with that, back into the darkness and desertion of the streets of Victoria. New Year's Eve. Who cared?

Sarah turned off Westminster Bridge. She had nothing in her pocket, only a few cigarette butts and some rolling papers. She'd have to sit down somewhere and calm her shaking fingers, in order to roll a fag, then look for a light from a passer by. She had a sudden picture of Grandpa, and the cigar she used to buy for him every Christmas, choosing the most prettily wrapped one from Woolworths. It was always the wrappers which attracted her; the strange- smelling, rolled up leaves, were a mystery.

A roll up was a last resort. Her brain was ravenous. 

On the Embankment, the police had kettled a large group of revellers for their own safety; the crush was becoming overwhelming. Sarah was used to this. She slipped in under the arm of a police constable, who was more intent on keeping people in, than keeping people out. It didn't take long for her to feel a fat wallet between her fingers, and move out again, manoeuvering herself at ground level between the police constables’ boots.

Outside Victoria Station, in the detritus between the kebab shop and the newsagents, in a narrow alley- empty crates and a few rotting vegetables- she found him, pushed up against the decaying wall, in a light drizzle. She walked away, throwing the empty wallet into the gutter.

Her brain filled, her veins relaxed. She no longer wanted to kill.

The Methodists near the station had a good soup kitchen. Everyone knew to go there if they were in the area, because the food was better. Home cooked, and at weekends brought in by volunteers- no heated up, almost past their sell-by date, donated supermarket meals here. You could get a good feed up with the Methodists, and it was always warm. It helped you walk the streets longer, looking for what you needed.

The church had a blue door. It looked like a child's drawing. Sarah had stopped trembling and the nausea stood aside, leaving her tummy rumbling. She paused just outside the door, taking a few drags from her roll-up, before she went in. The building was made of brick; the bricks framing the windows were an orange colour, like freshly nicotine- stained fingers.

She went in.

It was New Year's Eve and so the volunteers served the guests. There was a chocolate truffle and a cracker beside every plate. Sarah stared at them.

She chose her dessert spoon. It would be quicker. The meat was tender, falling apart, on a mound of creamed potato flecked with parsley and butter, and there was even a dumpling nestling beneath a raft of carrots.

The custard on the apple crumble had a gloss on it, and as the volunteer poured for her, she watched the gleam of the ladle as it lifted from the tureen.

Memories stirred.

Her mum had had a dented old ladle, with a wooden handle, bleached with wear. She could remember it dipping into a pan of gravy, or a bowl of steaming custard, and her mum's hand on the shaft of it, her large knuckles and the thin wedding band gleaming.

"Would you like one love?"

A woman was holding out a basket, in which there were a number of knitted bobble hats; over her arm she had draped matching scarves. "They've been knitted by a lady locally who doesn't want any of you getting cold this winter."

Sarah did not reply. 

The volunteer selected one for her, a pale peach with a purple and white bobble, then she carefully took a purple scarf from the assortment over her arm.

She indicated to Sarah to put the hat on, and wind the scarf around her neck. "It's damp out there."

She returned to the bridge, and sat by one of the stone piers, gazing out through the balustrades onto the water. The fireworks had finished. It wasn't long till morning. The Methodists would be back for breakfast.

She took off the hat, clasped the bobble in the palm of her hand and felt it give, as she squeezed and released it. Another memory was stirring, which was unusual, because she was rarely capable of reflection.

Mum. After school one day. "Would you like me to show you how to make a bobble?"

She struggled to remember. Maybe it was lots of pieces of wool all cut to the same length, and then around the middle, somehow, a strong thong of wool was drawn tight, and, at the end of it, you got a bobble, like a little woolly miracle?

She wasn't sure. She just saw her mum's strong fingers drawing that thread tightly, and she could remember her own astonishment.

The Thames roiled beneath her, and a cyclist passed, but otherwise it was dark and still.

Siobhan