To New Beginnings

BANG! The car door slammed loudly behind my next customer as she bounced into my taxi. I turned my head to see a woman no more than forty sitting in the back seat, staring at me with wide eyes through the rearview mirror.

“Follow that car”, the stranger said, pointing towards the red Corsa adjacent to us.

I turned my head around to the woman and through furrowed brows asked: “Huh? Why?”

“There’s no time, just follow that car”, she said frantically as we both noticed the car in question rolling out of its parking space and beginning to move further away from us.

And so with the car in front edging further and further from us, I put my car into gear and moved out into the busy streets of London. At 1:00 AM on a Saturday morning in the center of London, losing the red car which was still a complete mystery to me, wasn't exactly difficult. 

“Come on, you’re losing him”, the lady shouted at me while raising her hands in frustration. After this outburst, she slumped back onto the seat dramatically, giving me a better view of the urgent stranger in the back seat of my car. I initially thought she was middle-aged, but with the street lamps outside the window illuminating the view that bit better now, she couldn’t have been more than thirty years-old. She was quite pretty but looked exhausted. The dark shadows under her eyes matched her intense energy more than her looks. If I had walked past her on the streets of London, I would have thought she was just another yummy-mummy walking to her next Pilates class. But after this introduction, I couldn’t picture her as anything other than an overwrought, mysterious woman that has just jumped into the nearest taxi to her and sent the driver on a confusing excursion. 

“Can I just ask, why do you need to follow this car so badly?”, I asked while glancing at the woman in the rearview mirror. 

Her eyes shot up to meet mine in the mirror. Her eyes bored into mine for a beat longer than I felt was comfortable before I looked away and sighed. 

“Can I at least ask you your name?”, I asked. 

“Lola”, the woman muttered.

“Nice name”, I stated, “But look, I need to know why I’m following this car-”, but before I could finish my sentence, the mysterious woman named Lola shot forward and pointed towards the car in question. 

“There it is, there’s the car!”, Lola shrieked at me. 

I looked where her finger was pointing and saw the red car turning left, with only two cars between us. I clicked the left signal and continued to follow the car that seemed so important to the woman in the back seat. I don’t actually know why I was following this woman’s orders, it’s not as if I was that desperate for a single fair. I could easily just pull over and force her out of this taxi and into another one, letting her erratic behavior take someone else on a wild goose chase. But for some reason, I was interested in why she so desperately needed to follow this car in front. I needed to know her story.

“Ok, I’m following the car as you asked, now you need to tell me what we’re actually doing here”, I squeaked. I was getting frustrated and it showed in my voice.

“The man driving that car is who my best friend is cheating on her boyfriend with, so I'm following them both”, Lola said, “it’s been going on a while and she refuses to tell me about it and we tell each other everything. She’s hiding something”.

“Oh”, I exclaimed. Now I was definitely invested. “Let’s find out what she hasn’t been telling you, shall we?”, I said, before speeding up to gain as little space between us and the red Corsa as possible.

“About a month ago, I saw the name ‘babe’ with a heart after it pop up on her phone, and once I questioned her on it, she brushed it off as changing her boyfriend’s name on her phone”, Lola explained. She continued, “we’ve never lied to each other, but I’d seen her boyfriend’s name, Shaun, pop up on her phone just 10 minutes after that, so I knew she was lying, I just didn’t know why”. 

She glanced at me through the side of her eyes. “You probably think I’m crazy, don’t you?”, Lola asked me, before sitting back in her seat. 

“No, not at all”, I declared. Truthfully, I could relate to her. Well, not completely, but I understood what it felt like to be driven to insanity by someone you thought would never lie to you. 

“Actually, I know how you feel”, I began, “I actually found out I was adopted just a couple of years ago. My whole life was turned upside down and I didn’t know who to trust. The people who I thought were my parents are nothing but strangers to me now, as are my real parents because I never had the guts to reach out to them”.

I sighed and looked at her through the rearview mirror again. “So I get how it feels to be betrayed by someone who you’re meant to trust wholeheartedly”, I said and looked out the front window. 

“Wow, that’s harsh, I’m sorry to hear that”, Lola said, “my problem feels really stupid now”, she giggled cautiously. 

“Yeah, sorry to unload on you like that”, I chuckled. I immediately regretted what I had said and felt the unwanted wave of embarrassment wash over me.

“No, honestly, it’s kind of nice”, Lola sighed and sat forward, “it’s put my problem into perspective now, I should probably just leave all this alone. If she wants to keep it a secret, I should just let her, right?”

As I was about to agree with Lola’s newfound revelation, her phone rang. “Oh my god, it’s her”, Lola gasped before picking up her phone.

“Hey, Sharon, how are you?”, Lola shakily said while looking up at me through the mirror. I couldn’t hear what was being said on the other line, so I sat in silence and waited.

I glanced out at the car where Lola’s friend, who I just learned was named Sharon, sat in the passenger seat. It had pulled over to the right and turned off the engine. I pulled in behind the car in front but kept enough distance to not raise any suspicion and turned the lights out. I squinted my eyes, trying to get a better view of the infamous Sharon that I’d never met, yet have been so invested in all night. No luck. Both of the cars on the street had their lights off, so I only had the dim street lamps to give me any light, which proved useless in trying to see anything past two feet in front of me.

“No, I’m just… I got a taxi back home. Where did you run off to?”, Lola questioned into the phone before resting her chin on her palm. Again, silence blew throughout the car, leaving both of our breaths as the only noise that could be heard. 

Suddenly, I heard Lola give a frustrated huff before saying: “Yeah, well I'm glad you got home safe, bye”. She ended the call and sat the phone down beside her on the seat and looked down at her feet in defeat. 

“She blatantly lied to me, can you believe that? Said she was home when she’s right in front of us”, she said. Lola’s eyes filled with emotions that were trying to spill out as tears, leaving me feeling a surge of sympathy for the woman in front of me. Feeling betrayed by someone you hold close is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

“Look, maybe there’s a reason she’s not telling you who she’s with or why she’s doing this, and maybe it’s not that bad”, I said, trying to make the broken woman in the back of my taxi feel even slightly better. Lola looked up at me, this time into my eyes as I had turned my head to completely see her rather than through the mirror. 

Suddenly, something came over her. Lola grabbed her phone and unbuckled her seatbelt. I went to say something to her as I saw her hand reach for the door handle to let herself out of the car, but she stopped and stared right into my eyes before saying: “No, I’m sorry she can’t just suddenly start lying to me, this isn’t her, something’s wrong and I’m going to find out what”. And with that, Lola bounced out of the door and headed towards the car that she’d been so intent on following all night. 

It was none of my business, I was just the taxi driver, I thought. So I sat in the driver's seat and waited for the scene to unfold in front of me. But instead of witnessing a confrontation like I’d imagined, Lola stopped suddenly halfway between mine and her best friend’s car. She stood in the same spot for a very long minute, before watching the car pull out into the road and drive away from the disheveled woman. I could get a better look now and saw a woman around the same age as Lola, but looked different in nearly every way otherwise to her. She had long brunette hair, in comparison to Lola’s short blonde bob, and had large glasses perched on her nose that she pushed up as she looked over at the man driving. I couldn’t get as clear of a view of the man driving, but he seemed fairly attractive, if not slightly average looking. The thing that struck me about both of the people in the car, was that they seemed completely unfazed as if they hadn’t even noticed Lola walking toward them. Now that I think of it, the low lighting of the street would probably have concealed her until she was right at their window, which of course never happened. 

Once the car was completely out of our eye line, Lola slowly made her way back towards me. Once she sat in my back seat again, I turned to see how broken she truly was. Her cheeks were stained with tears that seemed to have no ending in sight. Her eyes were puffy and she seemed as defeated as I had ever seen a person. 

“What happened? Are you ok?”, I questioned against my better judgment. She seemed as if the last thing she needed was a flood of questions, but I was so confused. She didn’t look like a woman that had only been angry with her friend. This seemed like much more than that. 

“I love her”, Lola whispered, “I really did love her”. I sat speechless, looking at her through sympathetic eyes. I really felt for the woman I’d only met around an hour ago. She was so beaten and broken from heartache, how could I have not seen it before now? 

“Please take me home”, Lola said, before giving me her address. Only 20 minutes away, with traffic.

“Of course”, I answered, before pulling out into the street and towards Lola’s address.

The whole car journey was sat in silence. She didn’t seem like she wanted to speak and I didn’t want to make her feel worse than she looked like she felt. Once I’d pulled up outside her home, I cut the engine and turned around to speak to her again. But before I could say anything, Lola finally spoke. 

“It wasn’t just that I loved her. She was there… she was there with my husband. My husband’s having an affair with the woman I love”, Lola spluttered before bursting into tears. I stared at her, sinking in this new information, as I watched the sobs wreck her body. I couldn’t find the words to offer her anything positive, so I sat stunned and silent. 

“I’m so… I’m so sorry, I don’t know what to say”, I whispered before continuing, “can I call someone for you? I don’t want you to be alone”. She turned to grab her purse from her handbag, but I reached out and grabbed her hand before she could get anything out of it. 

“No, don’t, you don’t need to pay, you’ve been through enough”, I said, with all the sympathy I could muster in my voice. Her tear-stained eyes met mine and I felt an overwhelming feeling that this woman was meant to get into my taxi an hour and a half ago. The feeling of fate was undeniable to me. Whatever that meant for me, I didn’t know, but I felt as if I needed to keep this woman in my life. 

“Come on, I’ll help you into your house, I hope you like red wine, I have some in here somewhere that I was saving for myself tonight, but why not share it instead?”, I smiled and searched for the rogue bottle of wine. Lola nodded her head encouragingly before breathlessly saying “thank you”. 

I found the bottle under the passenger seat and grabbed it, before showing it to Lola. “Cheers to new friends and new beginnings”, I stated, ushering the bottle of wine toward her. Both Lola and I giggled together, feeling the first wave of happiness flood throughout the taxi all night.