THE LONG WAY ROUND

He was coming out his front door when I arrived and he said, ‘I’ve got to go and meet Wag at the Thali, we’re getting some food,’ and he held up one of the tiffin’s you have to have for a takeaway from there. ‘Can you wait,’ he said, ‘You got time?’
‘Well,’ I said looking at my watch, ‘I’m running out but I can wait.’
‘Wait inside,’ he said and unlocked the door he’d closed behind him.
Inside I sat down on the sofa’d been moved to a side wall from the window bay we’d put it after carrying it back from the far end of Greenbank. There was a book on the nearby table I picked up, opened, read some, there was a knock on the window.
‘Where is he?’ said Wag when I let her in.
‘He’s gone to the Thali, said he was meeting you there,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you see him?’
Inside, me on the sofa, she in the chair against the back wall, we chatted. My phone rang. ‘Hello,’ I said.
‘I’m down here but she’s not,’ he said.
‘She’s here,’ I said, ‘sat right here.’
‘Is that him?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and he’s just hung up on me.’
‘Didn’t he say goodbye?’
‘No, just hung up,’ I said. ‘Mmm, that’s not like him.’
We chatted. Then he came back pushing the front door open, slamming it shut.
‘Where were you?’ he said.
‘I was down there waiting but you didn’t turn up so I came up here,’ she said.
‘Which way did you come up?’ I said.
‘Through the alleyway.’
‘Well, I didn’t come that way, and I wouldn’t,’ he said.
‘That’s why you didn’t see each other, and,’ I said to her, ‘the alleyway is the long way round.’