217 Babel Street | Harry's Taxi
From the corner of his eye, a blur of white lit by headlights.
At first Harry thinks it is a sheet, caught in a branch, flapping in the wind. But it is a girl - a young woman - thin, gangle-limbed, dressed in white, trying to flag down the cars on the opposite carriageway. The students, braying in the back, don't notice.
Thursdays to Saturdays is where the money is, picking up from nightclubs. Just his luck to pick up students though. No tip.
Coming back twenty minutes later, she is still there waving at the cars.
He slows, sees her squinting into his lights, white face tear-shiny, hair messed. Not licensed to pick up fares, he reminds himself, and presses down his foot.
Twenty yards along the road he skids to a stop, thinking of Margaret's own tears that morning.
Opening the back door, she's gasping from the run.
"It's OK love," he says quietly. "It's OK." Between sobs she says how boys she'd met at a bar took her to a house party. They got her drunk, but when she didn't want to have sex, they'd thrown her out. Tra la la. The old familiar song.
"You want to go to the police station, love? Or the hospital?"
"Want to go home," she slurs.
And then, looking in the mirror he sees her start to chuck up, through her fingers, over the back seat, over her white dress.
And that's the end of that night's work.