Jonathan Coe

The Accidental Woman

1987. Penguin, 2000.

It was her habit on days which, like this one, were not too busy, to walk into the park to eat her lunch and to escape, for a while, the bustle of the office. She would find a vacant bench in one of the most secluded parts of the park and sit there for nearly an hour, sometimes thinking, sometimes looking around her, sometimes dozing and sometimes feeding the birds. For this last purpose she would bring with her a paper bag full of stale crumbs. Today she also had a packet of sandwiches, egg and cress, bought at a takeaway in Baker Street. These turned out to be disgusting. She ended up eating the stale crumbs and throwing the sandwiches to the birds. That soon got rid of them

Maria's divorce has freed her to move to London, 'to enter, in fact, upon one of her better phases...She did not enjoy her work' but 'recognized with periodically recurring amazement that in all other respects she had hit upon a way of life which rather seemed to suit her.'

Alone, Maria closed her eyes and listened to the sounds around her... It was a winter's day, sunny but essentially cold, and the park was not busy. She could hear two men talking in Japanese, and a baby crying, and a woman saying, There, there, presumably to the baby, and the cooing of hungry pigeons, and the shouts and laughter of distant children. At the back of all this was the loud hum of the city going about its business

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