She looked around anxiously, this matron, as the metallic clinking happened again. And again. She caught an eye and winced conspiratorially, looking to turn into sympathy the curiosity she'd aroused.
There it was again, a rising of the cheek bones and a slight turn of the head. Inside, no doubt, she was cursing each person who turned and looked. And cursing the phone that wouldn't take her coin, and the coin too, which she studied now, conspicuously, to show the curious, her judges, that she was not to blame.
Perhaps she might have cursed herself too, for not having a spare coin. Whatever, she was fully occupied, fully alert, watching for others watching her. Though she probably didn't see the man walking by, in his own undisturbed world, talking into his mobile phone. But it would only be a matter of time before she also would succumb...
Another girl I saw... or Back to HQ
© Farmer 26 January 1996