Page 1 of Return Ticket

chapterone

Bastard incoming.

That’s what Gabriella’s colleague and friend Liz called what was about to happen.

Gabriella had to admit, it was a perfect description.

She wrote out the ticket on Kings Road in Chelsea, listening to the sound of shouting and swearing drawing closer.

She refused to scrawl and run, which every nerve in her body was urging her to do, as a man moved toward her like a storm, spewing thunder and lightning. Instead, she held her ground, carefully filling in the details as he got louder and closer.

When he was a few car-lengths away, she could finally make out what he was screaming.

“Hands off my car!” He slammed a fist into a parked vehicle he passed as he moved toward her, and she heard the meaty smack of it and tried not to flinch.

She slipped the fixed penalty notice into its plastic sleeve and had just begun to tape it to the windscreen of the Land Rover when Shouty Man arrived.

“Give that to me.” He ripped the plastic sleeve off the window, and tried to tear it, but the plastic was too robust and he struggled with it for a few moments, his face red, his massive hands twisting as he tried to rend it down the middle.

Eventually, humiliated, he worked out he had to pull the ticket out, and he did, throwing it on the ground and jumping up and down on it a few times.

Gabriella had taken a step back, and as she watched the tantrum, a well of laughter bubbled up inside her. Nerves, she admitted, but also, it was funny to see a middle-aged man act like a baby.

Passersby began to stop and look and he seemed to come to himself, aware that he had a growing audience. He raised his arm and shook his fist. “What are you staring at?”

“A grown man acting like a toddler,” a woman with the clear, crystal-cut accent of the upper west end, opined, lifted her nose and walked off, her little dog trotting by her side.

“Bitch,” the man muttered under his breath, but her comment seemed to have taken the wind out of his sails.

Gabriella saw he was dressed in rough trousers and jacket, and the smell of cow manure coming from the tires that she had caught a few whiffs of while she had filled out the penalty notice suddenly made sense.

She had herself a farmer, on a foray into the Big Smoke.

“Jumping up and down on it won’t help,” she said, keeping her tone crisp and even. “If you can’t afford to pay, you can contact the city and work out a payment plan.” She gave a nod and hitched her satchel up on her shoulder as she began to walk her route again.

“Can’t afford . . .” The farmer spluttered. “I’ll have you know, girlie, I have twenty trucks coming into the city every market day. And every single one of them seems to have a fine by the end of the day. It’s daylight robbery!”

Gabriella shook her head and kept walking, not willing to engage any further.

The thunder of boots behind her made her heart leap in her chest as a heavy hand came down on her shoulder, and she was spun around.

“Now see here . . .” His face was right up in hers, skin flushed, mustache quivering. The stink of stale tobacco wafted off him.

“Sir.” She tried to shrug his hand off. “I don’t make the rules. My job is to follow the law. If you have a problem with it, take it up with the lawmakers.” She wanted to knock his arm away with her own, but she was afraid to provoke him any more than he was already provoked.

“You need some help there, miss?” One of the men who had been watching the incident from the start, having just gotten out of his Plymouth a few parking spots down, asked.

“Do I need some help, sir?” Gabriella asked him.

The farmer looked at his hand, lifted it, and took a step back. Shook his head, and stomped off, muttering under his breath.

Gabriella gave the Plymouth driver a nod of thanks, and swung back to her route.

There wasn’t a day that went by without some excitement, but this one pushed the limits.

She turned down a smaller street, just to have a bit of time to get herself back together, and saw three boys up ahead.

From their furtive behavior, they looked up to no good. Her stomach sank, because she did not feel like another argument, but rather than run away, they ran toward her, faces a little pale under the dirt and smudges on their cheeks.

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