The following is a true story. Names have been changed or omitted altogether to protect those involved, but the events occurred as depicted.
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"You can pick me up anytime."
I'll never forget those softly spoken words. The way that she made eye contact while getting out of my car and softly uttered those words immediately got my mind racing with possibilities. It seemed to me as if they were thrown out almost as an afterthought, yet I couldn't help wondering if there was an unspoken invitation there. The impact of them was to resonate with me for months.
I knew Neera only in passing. She was a near neighbour in the suburban village I lived in. I guess I'd put her in her early 30's. She was of Asian origin, India or Pakistan I'm guessing, but spoke with an impeccable English accent which led me to believe she'd been born here.
She was around 5'4", curvy with shoulder-length, wavy black hair and innocent brown eyes. I couldn't really describe her figure in any more detail as she always wore a huge overcoat that hid it. We'd exchanged the time of day on occasion while waiting for the bus into the nearby town, and I'd seen her out and about with her husband and young boy from time to time.
In short, it was all very much the respectful neighbour scenario, safe small talk, and polite nods in the street because it was the done thing in our little part of Eastern England.
To be honest with you, I never really gave her a second thought at first. I lived a few doors away and worked as a lecturer at a sixth form college a few miles down the road. I think she worked at a scientific research place a mile or two away from my college but couldn't be sure. About the only thing I did know, is that she caught the same bus as me from time to time.
As time passed, I started driving to work rather than relying on public transport. On the way home I'd pass the bus stop in town that I used to wait at, and got into the habit of checking if anyone I knew was waiting there. The village I lived in was a new development, and bus transport to and fro was haphazard to say the least. I considered it the neighbourly thing to stop and offer anyone I knew a lift home.
One winter day I was driving home from work during rush hour. The time of year meant it was dark, and as a final touch, it was raining hard. All in all a filthy day.
Traffic was heavy and the going was slow. As I approached the regular bus stop just before turning onto the main road out of town, I saw Neera standing there. She looked soaked and utterly bedraggled and I could see several carrier bags filled with shopping at her feet.
I flicked on my indicator and pulled over, lowering the passenger side window as I did so.
"Neera, want a lift home?" I called. She looked at me gratefully and nodded.
I jumped out of the car, not caring about the queue of traffic behind me, helped load her shopping into the boot, and she got into the passenger seat.
As we got underway she smiled at me and said "Thanks," and they were the last words she said on the entire trip home.
I negotiated the heavy traffic back to our village, a journey of some eight miles. With the weather and the traffic it took all of my concentration to get us home safely. Neera spent most of the time looking out of her window.
As we pulled into her street and up to her front door, she looked at me again and smiled. I switched off the engine and helped her unload the shopping from the boot.
It was then that she uttered those words that were to plague me for months.
"You can pick me up anytime."
Why had she said that? Was it harmless flirting, an invitation for something more, or just simple gratitude for being rescued from the rain?
Almost a year passed, and the humdrum of routine life continued.
I had seen Neera from time to time in our village, but never had the opportunity to give her a lift home again or even speak to her apart from saying hello in the street when either she or I were accompanied by our spouses or kids.
It was the following winter when everything changed. I was working late one day due to parent's evening, and sometime in the middle of the afternoon it began to snow.
By the time parent's evening was due to start the town was in chaos. The English are not the best at coping with winter weather, and even a few inches of snow is enough for the entire place to descend into chaos. The roads became gridlocked, public transport ground to a halt, and parent's evening was cancelled. My boss announced that it was time for everyone to make their way home as best as they could.
My wife worked at a travel agents' in the town centre, and as the bus service had ceased for the day she and one of her colleagues, Anne, had made their way to the college where I worked. Together, with Dan, another lecturer who also lived in our village, we decided to brave the roads and try to make it home.
My wife was driving. Dan was in the front passenger seat, and Anne and I were in the back. Conditions were terrible. The snow was coming down hard. It was dark, and the world and his wife were on the road trying to make it home. It took us more than two hours to make it across town, a journey that would ordinarily have taken only fifteen minutes. We never made it out of first gear and laughed (at first) at the fact that the pedestrians were travelling faster than us.
We eventually crawled onto the road where the bus stop was. By this time we were all thoroughly fed up and had resigned ourselves to the fact that this journey was going to take an eternity, assuming we made it home at all that is.
As we got closer to the bus stop my wife piped up "Isn't that Neera there?"
I looked, and sure enough it was. She was standing there in that big overcoat of hers, bags at feet, along with a smattering of other people. I guess none of them had heard that public transport had been cancelled. Or perhaps they had no other option but to wait, on the forlorn hope that something would turn up.
"Pick her up." I said.
My wife pulled over and I jumped out.
"Come on Neera, you'll be here all night waiting." We threw her shopping into the boot and she got into the back of the car with Anne and me, thanking us profusely.
The journey resumed. In the back, Neera was on the left, I was in the middle and Anne was on the right. The weather showed no sign of letting up and as we turned onto the main road out of town we started to encounter abandoned cars. We crawled along at a snail's pace, visibility limited to the rear lights of the vehicle in front and the heavy snowfall surrounding us.
What conversation there was soon dwindled away into silence as we realised that the journey home was likely to take hours. The traffic showed no sign of letting up and Dan asked if he could put the radio on, to which my wife murmured "sure."
With the five of us in the car, it was getting hot. I turned to Neera, who had now adopted her customary pose of staring out the window and suggested she would be more comfortable without her overcoat on. She glanced at me and then leaned forward to wriggle out of it; her movements cramped and awkward in the confined space.
There was nowhere for it to go but over our laps. To the right of me, Anne followed suit, and soon the three of us in the back were covered by a blanket of snow damp coats, hats and scarves.
Neera was wearing a grey trouser suit, obviously formal work attire. She continued to stare out of her window as the voice of the radio announcer droned on. I on the other hand was dwelling on those fateful words that were uttered a year ago.
Neera's right leg was pressing against my left, a hardly avoidable situation given the confines of the back seat. My left hand was resting in my lap, underneath the blanket of coats. All in all we were the picture of serenity and disinterest to anyone who happened to glance our way.
Inside though, I was a roiling pot of emotions. What did she mean by those words? Was she into me? Did I dare try to find out?
Under the pretext of making myself more comfortable, I wriggled around and retrieved my phone from my coat pocket, and made a show of looking up the traffic information for the remainder of the homeward journey; I had already looked it up just before we picked Neera up, and knew damn well what it would say (lots of snow -- stay off the roads), but it gave me the excuse to position my arm so that It lightly pressed against Neera's hip.
She didn't move. Neither did she acknowledge me in the slightest.