Night Out

Not for the first time, Jack found himself standing in the street watching the last bus depart.

It happened with the kind of regularity you could set your watch by. It was the third Saturday night in a row he'd dawdled in the pub and missed the bus.

He checked his pockets. There wasn't much more than £2 in assorted change, he determined with a quick glance. It wasn't enough for a taxi back to the village.

He was going to have to walk. Again.

Jack pointed himself toward the village and began walking briskly. It was going to take him an hour and a half and it was starting to rain. As he got to the outskirts of the town he started to regret his choice of footwear. The fancy Italian shoes he'd spent a week's wages on were surely great on the streets of Milan, but country lanes caked in mud in northern England weren't the place for them.

He had walked for fifteen minutes along a lane which had no lights or footpath when a car raced around the corner ahead, heading straight at him and blinding him with its headlights. Jack shielded his eyes from the brightness and realised that the car was really heading straight for him. He dived into the hedge at the side of the road.

The driver gave him a blast of the horn for his troubles.

Shocked, soaked to the skin and now with pieces of foliage stuck in his hair, Jack exited the bush. Something on the road caught his eye. It looked like a purse.

He bent down and picked it up.