No one would actually spend that amount of time watching one particular stranger. I watched her, trying to be discreet, although it didn’t seem to matter. Suddenly, it was as if she was there standing next to them, right there across the murky water, feeling what they felt, speaking the same words, smoking the same cigarettes. She was over there with them. I watched her. It was all I could do, all I could ever do. Then her breathing became heavier, in and out, in and out. She resigned herself to the tryst across the way, out of her reach, so close she could almost touch them it seemed, on the cold concrete of the small company esplanade. I could have been sitting on a bench on the other side of London for all she seemed to care. For that moment, I was sure that I didn’t exist. That I was hidden in some sort of dirty, grimy fog. I had to try and get her back to me somehow. “Those youths were up to no good earlier …” She continued to look across the murky water at the couple. I continued.
