A sby amongst our mist

- How was your journey into work this morning?

- Entertaining. 

Michael responded and felt a smile start to form at the corners of his mouth and then grow into full bloom. Cathy looked back at him with surprise, tilted her head to one side, raised an eyebrow, pursed her lips and nodded her head in approval. This wasn't the stock answer she would receive 99 times out of a 100, if not more. Normally on any given morning he'd recant tales of woe, of train delays and passengers moving slowly like a sea of zombies each one more afraid than the last that a show of manners or the merest hint of happiness would cause the entire group to combust. 

- Is it safe to ask why?

Cathy asked in a manner that conveyed she'd stepped on too many of Michael's landmines before and only found out to her own detriment way too late. Sometimes answers oozed from his lips like toothpaste which she could never get back in the tube and made a mess of her morning before the daily work battles they shared had begun in earnest. 

- I made a new friend. 

Cathy made the mistake that so many women may have done at this juncture and assumed that this was his code for having pulled or whatever men called it nowadays. She couldn't have been further from the truth if she'd flown first class to Nebraska. Her making a drawn out suggestive 

- ooooooo-wuh

in response didn't help her cause. 

- Not like that thank you. 

For her next response Cathy drastically shortened her use of o’s down to just the one and had added an h to the end for good measure, tinged with an air of disappointment in its delivery. 

- Oh. 

- Sorry to disappoint.

- Sooooo 

Cathy's vocabulary this morning was proving to be formed from nothing more than a bad hand of Scrabble tiles. 

- Well, I was sat minding my own on one of those rare occasions when you get to enjoy a double seat to yourself and from the corner of my eye I spotted a girl of about so high staring at me intently. 

Michael moved his hand about 3 foot off the ground as a visual representation of the little girl's height. Cathy's face one of surprise again, she'd clearly been given an answer that she hadn't been expecting. At no stage since they'd worked together could she once remember him ever having discussed children and she therefore naturally assumed he was allergic to them. Her normal inclination was to pepper him with questions throughout a story but for once genuinely intrigued to know where this one went, she let that need ride for now. 

- I smiled and she beamed back at me in a way that no adult ever does at that time in the morning. Kind of restored my faith in humanity. Here's this little beacon of hope in a sea full of people who've had their spirit crushed on a daily basis by old age. 

Cathy's eyebrows flicked up twice like a car's headlights flashing in positive recognition and letting Michael continue on his way unabated.

- I was waiting for someone to come and claim her but no adult came so I stood up and looked up and down the aisle but no one seemed to be missing her.

- What did you do?

- Well she started to try and climb up next to me but couldn't quite manage it and not really thinking about how it might be perceived I bent down and picked her up and sat her down on the seat, had another look around, still no adult and so I sat down and looked at her and her little legs and trainers which didn't even reach the end of the seat and then had a panic she might fall off so pulled down the arm of the chair next to her as a safety rail. 

- That's sweet of you I always had you down as a jerk. Who knew you had a heart?

- Funny. You should see if you can get a slot at the comedy club. 

- Thanks. 

- I was being disingenuous.

- Oh did you swallow a dictionary on the way to work after you'd closed your nursery?

- Hilarious.

- I know right?

Michael rolled his eyes in a rainbow arc. 

-Then what happened?

- We talked. 

- You talked?

- Yes. The clue, albeit a very subtle one I know, was when I said we talked.

Cathy's turn to roll her eyes now. 

- What did you talk about?

- James Bond

- James Bond?

- Yes James Bond.

- How old was she?

- I don't know about 3, maybe 4.

- Why did you talk to her about James Bond?

- Because she was talking to me about James Bond. 

- Had she seen James Bond?

- That's what I wondered, she seemed a little too young. 

- You think?

- Are you going to keep asking stupid questions?

- Probably.

- Great, at least now I know I'll prepare myself better. 

- You do that. So what did she have to say about him?

Michael laughed spontaneously in a manner that he never does until at least 1645 hours on a working day when he knows he's almost out the door. 

- She told me he was as by.

- As by? Don't you mean a spy?

- I imagine that's exactly what she meant but no she definitely called him as by.

- Oh my god that's adorable. 

- I know right. 

- Did you eat her up there and then?

- Jesus this isn't Goldilocks and the three bears Cath.

Cathy looks back at him confused for a few seconds whilst she does the mental calculations. 

- Do you mean the three little pigs?

Michael does some quiet mental calculations of his own, feels his cheeks start to blush and concedes the point with a single exhaled sound disguised as a laugh although it could also have been mistaken for a sound from a Frankie goes to Hollywood record. 

- Huh. Yeah I'll let you have that one. My bad. 

- Why thank you kind Sir. This kids has quite the positive effect on you. Maybe you should have adopted her. 

- Yeah maybe I should have done. 

- So then what did she say?

- Well she told me that he shoots guns and she took her tiny little right hand and with her left one closed her bottom 3 fingers leaving her remaining finger and thumb like this. 

Once again Michael kindly felt the need to demonstrate just in case Cathy wasn't following what a finger gun looked like. 

- Then she shot an old lady of about 80 dead on one of the seats opposite.

- Oh no, what did the lady do?

- She played dead like it was a role she'd been waiting all her life to play. Clutched both her hands over her heart and slumped down into her chair for a few seconds and then opened one eye to check for the girls reaction.

- Which was?

- Oh she thought it was hilarious and was giggling away to herself quite pleased with the effectiveness of her hand as a killing machine. 

- That's adorable. 

- I know right. 

- What did you do?

- I said ‘nice shot but please don't shoot me ‘

- And what did she do?

- She shot me. 

- Oh no. Then what? 

- Well I played dead as well. Then she went on a murderous rampage and you've suddenly got a carriage of adults all playing make believe, keeled over playing dead. 

- Why didn't you bring her into work with you? She could have shot Alan!

Alan being their boss who they both despised with a shared passion. 

- Damn it why didn't I think of that?

- Well you weren't born a woman so it doesn't surprise me and in fairness you don't know the difference between Goldilocks and the three little pigs so it's hardly surprising.

- Alright mouth. Did they ever find your off switch by the way?

- Not yet. 

Michael reached for an elastic band from his desk, looped it around his left thumb, pulling back the other end with his right hand like he was still at school and pinged it in her direction and yet somehow contrived to miss Cathy despite her being sat not more than 10 foot away from him. 

- You missed. 

She tells him stating the obvious. 

- No shit. 

Cathy grins at him. 

- So did anyone claim her in the end?

- Oh yeah about two minutes later a poor woman came running down looking harangued like she'd lost a…

- Child?

Cathy says, interrupting him. 

- Thank you Einstein. Perhaps you'll be kind enough to enlighten me on your theory of relativity before the end of the working day?

Cathy's head stopped momentarily caught like a deer in the headlights. Clearly more knowledgeable about kids' nursery rhymes than of elements of physics, space and time. 

- We'll call that one all. 

Michael added. Cathy didn't rise to the bait. 

- Then what happened?

- The poor woman I think didn't know whether to laugh or cry by that stage, hug the kid or throttle her for scaring her half to death wandering off like that. 

- And what did the kid do?

- Just sat there grinning like an idiot.

- I can see why she chose you to sit next to, clearly you're kindred spirits.

- Yeah something like that. Hang on a minute.

Cathy's turn to grin. Shake of the head from Michael, he continues 

- The lady starts apologising and I'm reassuring her there's nothing to apologise for other than the mass murdering spree that's just occured and the poor thing already half out of her mind looks really confused and so I explained how our countries next James Bond had been shooting everyone in sight and clearly all the other passengers had stopped what they were doing by now and were listening because several of them giggled. 

- What did she do then?

- She sat down. 

- Oh next to you?

- Yes I asked if she'd like to sit.

- Quite the gentleman all of a sudden. So how did she lose her in the first place?

- Was trying to pay for her ticket with the inspector, one minute she was stood there child at her feet patiently waiting for it to connect in the arse end of nowhere, the next, ticket in hand, no child at feet, panic ensuing.

- Had she gone off far?

- Probably about 40 feet, not much further than round the bend where the toilet sticks out so she can't see. Not like she'd have gotten very far if she'd have wanted to. 

- Yes I imagine if you're going to lose a child doing it on a big metal tube is preferable than in the centre of a city. 

- Yes, quite. 

- Coffee?

- Only if you spit in it the way I like.

- Damn it I didn't think you knew. Clearly I'd not have made a good sby.

And with that they both laughed heartily.