Joe and Dianne Through The Looking Glass

Chapter 10 - Quickstep Week

She heard them before she saw them. It was one of those rare Autumn mornings which make you just stop and wonder at the ordinary magic of the world around you. A thick fog had settled on the city overnight and muffled the streets in a cloak of dense grey. Although it was well after dawn, the street lights continued to glow at the centre of brave orange halos through the mist and the limbs of trees reached down as if stretching out gnarly fingers to grab unsuspecting passers-by. There was no wind to speak of and drifts or orange and yellow leaves lay in knee deep piles in sheltered corners. Fog had always fascinated Alice ever since she was very small and a teacher had pointed out that fog was really just a cloud at ground level. She remembered quite clearly walking to school in the fog, her mittened hands held out in front of her whispering to herself "I'm inside an actual cloud, I'm walking inside a cloud" over and over again. Somehow the magic of that moment had never left her and even today she had found herself swirling her fingers through the air on the walk to work in an unconscious echo of her childhood.

It was now past nine o'clock and still the fog lingered on, the damp in the air so thick that droplets of water formed on Alice's eyelashes as she cleaned children's eager finger marks from the outside of the café window. It was then that she heard them. The thick fog was disorientating and at first she couldn't place which direction they were coming from but there was no doubt that it was them. It was the girl's infectious giggle she heard first followed by his deeper chuckle. Alice paused in her attack on the window and looked left and right, expecting them to loom out of the fog at any moment but it took a few minutes before their silhouettes began to emerge. She made out the girl first, her bright red hair like a beacon, distinguishable before the rest of her body became clear. She was looking back over her shoulder and laughing at her companion who was a few steps behind her, his strange camera held at arm's length in front of him. It was immediately apparent there was something very odd going on and that this was the reason for their shared laughter. The petite ball of energy, usually so graceful in her movements, was walking awkwardly. Her legs seemed almost painful as she stretched each one out to take a step and then let it take her weight. She reminded Alice of an old women, joints stiff from arthritis hobbling down the road. It was evident that the red head found the whole situation funny, her progress down the narrow pavement was punctuated by her comedy groans and amused giggles and it was clear that the boy was delighting in watching her discomfort. He had stopped to film her as she staggered away from him and although his face was partly obscured by the camera he held up, Alice could see the broad grin on his face and hear the laughter in his voice as he teased her. The girl reached the café and gave Alice a grin, rolling her in eyes in mock exhaustion. She leant on the wall, turning back to entreat her companion to hurry up. He slipped the camera into his coat pocket and started after her but to Alice's astonishment he began to gingerly make his way up the street with exactly the same strange hobbling gait. This time it was the girl's turn to laugh as his elastic face stretched itself into an astonishing variety of comedy pained expressions.

Alice slipped inside the café and made her way behind the counter, her forehead creased with the effort of thinking quite what identical activity they had both pursued beyond a sensible limit to produce such a similar result and quite why with such stiff legs they had both decided to turn up to whatever their shared work was in training gear yet again. Surely a day of rest would be a much saner response to what was evidently an over training injury? Alice shook her head at the confidence of the young, she remembered exactly what it had felt like to feel your whole life stretching in front of you and to know that you could go anywhere, do anything and that nothing would hold you back, to be invincible. The pair burst through the café door taking the step up with painful caution and then collapsing into giggles as they both took a hissing indrawn breath to express their mutual agony at the same time. They selected food and drinks and seated themselves at their usual table in a flurry of happy chatter.