Lost in Norfolk
An excerpt from the Passion of Sidra, in When Her Hand Moves by Omar Imady
It could have been any Saturday, but it wasn’t. The air that blew frailly over the forearms of Susan Chard smelled of burnt toast. Her satnav glowed fluorescently on its wobbly stand, stuck to the windscreen like a sink plunger, and for the third time, the voice of the navigator insisted that she turn right. No matter how hard she strained her gaze through the heavy mist that had settled over the tarmac ribbons of country roads, no right turn materialised. No road, no street, no lane, no alley. Nothing that by any stretch of the imagination could be construed as a turning. The irritation that only the voice of an erroneous satnav can produce boiled over. She allowed herself seven and a half minutes to compose herself following the tirade she directed towards the machine, the ineptitudes of modern technology, and the what-the-hell-kind-of-place-can’t-be-reached-by-satnav place she was trying to find, before she brushed the crumbs off her chest and lap, sucked in her stomach rebuckling her belt, wrapped the green and white chequered scarf around her ears which were always cold, and stepped out of the car into the gloaming. On foot, with feet tingling from the three-hour drive, phone in hand cutting a rectangle of light through what was now a persistent drizzle, Sue Chard turned right.
“Excuse me…? Excuse me, sir. Excuse me!”
The man’s dog turned around before he did. Each of its eyes were a different colour. In its refusal to give her directions, Sue’s phone had forced her to seek human interaction. This man would not have been her first choice, but unfortunately for her he was her only one. She crossed the damp excuse for a lane.
“Do you know where I can find the High Street?”
Dog and man cocked their heads. A broad, slow grin stretched across his face. Each of his eyes looked in a different direction, neither of them at Sue.
“No.”
The dog turned its head and continued its path into the soggy distance. The man followed.
#women #witches #whenherhandmoves #spirituality #passionofsidra #novella #fiction