I remember the day, the ordinariness of it, just another rainy day in what had seemed like a long year of rain. Back then, I still believed in books and that they could make a difference; make a life richer, deeper.
I sat at the table by the café window, so I could look out on the rain-splattered street outside and those hurrying by. Back then, I thought I was a poet and I thought I needed to pay attention to the world, turn everything I saw, knew, felt or wondered about into words on the page; even though those words could never get close to what I wanted to say.
I opened the bag of books, from the town’s most famous bookshop: a maze of shelves and further rooms of more shelves that existed in an underground warren, a labyrinth of books and books and more books. It was a place I could spend the whole day exploring, sometimes.
Now, though, I had surfaced, come back to the world; the treasures I’d hunted down in that maze safe in the bag in front of me. I took a sip of my too-hot black coffee, savouring the moment before I examined my treasures.
As I fished in the bag and pulled out the first of my prizes, she burst into the café in a flurry of wet hair, broken umbrella and rain-soaked coat.
She looked around the café, looking for a seat, noticing the spare one at my table, then looking further, before coming back to check which book I was holding.
‘May I?’ she said, taking hold of the back of the empty chair.
‘Yes, of course, please.’ I said in return as I drew my bag of treasures closer to me… and then my whole life changed.
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