SPYING

She said, ‘You see Jamaica Street was cordoned off?’
‘You know what happened?’ I said.
‘A stabbing,’ he said, ‘three in the morning....on the steps of the hostel.’
‘They get who it was?’
‘They’re appealing for witnesses.’
‘Sober ones?’
I’d got a lift back from her place at lunchtime and because we couldn’t go down Jamaica Street from Stokes Croft we went round St. James Barton and turned left by Mickelburghs.
We’d spent the weekend with friends in West Wales. We’d gone for two walks: the first, the evening we arrived, the “Gentlemans” - more steep than the “Ladies” - to a short tunnel through rock came out to a pool fed by a waterfall; the second, up onto the moor we saw three horses roam free throughout the year. I whistled and waved and one of them raised its head from eating, probably wondered what the fuss was about. We dangled our feet in a cold stream drying them off sitting on rocks in the sun and had a few words with a group of people out walking with between them about ten dogs.
‘Do you know where the car park is?’ said one of the men.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘No.’
‘Is there a Wetherspoons nearby, at the top?’
‘Probably wouldn't be open even if there was,’ she said.
Close to home we saw one of our friends in the field below.
‘She looking for something?’
‘Could be,’ I said. ‘You think we should say hello?’
‘If we didn’t it’d be,’ she said, ‘like we were spying.’