Harbour Street

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Joe pushed through the crowd. It was just before Christmas and the Metro trains were full of shoppers clutching carrier bags stuffed with useless presents. Babies were left to scream in expensive buggies. People who’d been drinking early spilled out from office parties, stumbling down the escalators and onto the trains. Youths used language Joe wouldn’t want his children to hear. Today, though, he’d had no option about using the Metro. Sal had been adamant that she needed the car.

It was just him and his daughter. She was in the school choir and there’d been a performance in Newcastle Cathedral. Carols by candlelight, because even at four o’clock it was dark in the building. Beautiful singing that made him feel like crying. His boss, Vera Stanhope, always said that he was a romantic fool. Then out into the rush-hour evening, and it was just starting to snow, so Jessie was excited all over again. She was a soloist and had hit all the right notes, so the choirmaster had given her a special mention at the end. Christmas was only ten days away, though she was too old now to believe in Santa. But there was snow. Tiny little flakes twisting in the gusty wind like mini-tornadoes.

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