Bow Lane

" My eyeballs were burning. I could n't breathe in or out.." Oh, you should n't have said that to your friend at the very the moment we happened to pass each other on Bow Lane this lunchtime.  What was going on? What happened? What was the in extremis event that got you to this point?

 I've been thinking about this ever since. Can't ask you because I don't know who you are, and to be honest, I've only a vague recollection of what you even looked like. Young woman...mid twenties..office wear...and that's about as good as it gets.

But the words, and then how you said them, with such lightness, almost gaiety in fact. I'd really only expect to come across a remark like this coming out of the mouth of an action novel hero, or perhaps, a piece to camera clip from a survivor of something truly harrowing. Yet you were talking about it in the same tone as I could imagine someone buying a cup cake