A Meeting

Sophie McCook

The day started on June 27th. My alarm woke me unexpectedly at 5am. Too early for my flight, I switched it off and went back to sleep. I wonder now, considering the subsequent events, that it might have been trying to warn me.

The meeting with Script Factory was to give me feedback on my first feature, recently optioned. A big first. A big date. As it happened, I managed to confuse the flight number with the plane time and so missed it.

The re-arranged date coincided with our family trip to Suffolk to visit my parents. In terms of exotica, London is darkest Peru. I've always loved it, wanted to be part of it. After ten years of cocooned motherhood, a day on my own in London was the thing of un-real muggy dreams.

I caught the first train, the 6.55 commuter. About half-way, the train stopped as if it had lost confidence in its journey. It waited twenty minutes. I looked at the Ipswich siding. Trees with carrier bags, bushes with beer cans. I pictured myself dashing into the underground and arriving, sweaty and stressed at Script Factory. If I didn't make this appointment, my short film career would be killed at birth.

The train sulked into Liverpool Street late at 9.05. We all stood up but the doors didn't open. We sat down again. Finally, an essex monotone:

'East Anglia Rail regrets to inform customers they must leave the station.'

We all groaned; me and them. An inconvenient bomb threat; the threat being that I would be late. Stepping off the sprinter train, I ran. Liverpool Street was shiny and creamy. I noticed this because there were no people. Only a policeman blocking the tube entrance and a lady in a beige knee-length coat, running in her heels from the underground. Her face was set. 'Real Londoners, late for real jobs.' Is what I thought.