Twelve minutes between addresses.

In the taxi, the day becomes a series of reflections. The flowers are no longer flowers but a gold blur in the glass. The city repeats itself in fragments: headlights, a restaurant, the pale square of a laundromat. In twelve minutes, formalwear loses its stiffness and the couple becomes a pair again. They can say the thing they did not say during the ceremony. They can say nothing.

20:18

“Do you want the radio?”

The driver’s name is Samuel, according to the card on the dashboard, and he asks without turning round, the way he must ask it twenty times a day. Leo looks at Asha. Asha shakes her head. Samuel turns the volume down to almost nothing but leaves it on, so that a football commentary goes on in a whisper under the wipers, and for the rest of the journey somebody, somewhere, is very nearly scoring.

20:23

The first time they are alone all day.

They notice it at the same moment. Since six this morning there has been someone in every room: Mags, Odile, Martin, Mrs. Hale, Benedikt, Priyanka, Ida in her green chair. Now there is a sheet of scratched plastic between them and the only other person present, and his eyes are on the road. Asha takes off her shoes. Leo loosens his tie by exactly one finger. Neither of them says the thing they had planned to say at a moment like this. It turns out they had not planned one.

20:30

One more bridge. A blue sign in the rain.

Leo crosses this bridge on his bicycle every weekday and has never once looked at it. From the back seat, in the rain, it is all cables and running light, and the blue sign for the far bank slides past the window too smeared to read. Asha puts her head on his shoulder. Samuel moves into the slow lane without being asked. On the other side the restaurant is waiting, and Mags is waiting with forty-two cream cards, and none of it is in a hurry.

Build this moment into the schedule, even if the route takes six. The city gives no better pause than a car moving somewhere else.

Editorial note: A work of editorial fiction; people, places and makers are illustrative.