Perhaps it was raining when she got off the bus, but she was already
feeling better, just standing by the side of the road and breathing
in the wet air. Everything feeling familiar at last. The loose
chippings of the tarmac beneath her feet. The walled-in tree where
the bus was turning around. The frosted glass window of the stop on
the other side of the road. The boxes of vegetables on a trestle
table outside the grocers. The noticeboard by the bus stop behind
her.
The bus turned its circle and drove back up the hill, and the place
was quiet except for the water running along the gutter into the
drain, a steady slurping gurgle, the same song of streams and ponds
and falling water that she'd always known and grown up with. She
looked at the wet grey veils of the sky, smiling for the first time
in weeks, months, wiping the dampness from her face. I don't mind a
bit of rain, she said, beneath her breath, and picked up her
suitcase.
Jon McGregor, So many ways to begin (2006)
