Читать книгу Rules of the Road - Ciara Geraghty - Страница 14

I don’t have my mobile with me. It’s charging back in the apartment. But then, on the corner, I see a bright-red London telephone box.

Which could be a Sign.

I step inside the box. The phone is stained with rust and the smell of urine makes my eyes water, but there is a dial tone when I pick up the receiver with my sleeve-covered hand, and there is a number for directory enquiries, which I am going to have to call despite the astronomical cost of the service according to the instructions above the phone. I push many pound coins into the grimy slot before an operator says yes, she has a number for a Vera Armstrong on Archway Road – I remember the address from the envelope on Iris’s laptop – and would I like to be put through and I say yes I would and the operator says, One moment please, and now there is a ringing sound on the line, which means that somewhere in London, along Archway Road, a phone is ringing. I imagine an old-fashioned telephone – a black Bakelite perhaps – on a polished hall table with curved feet and a little drawer where she keeps, I don’t know, coupons maybe. Or knitting patterns.