“You alright mate.” The driver glanced at him through the rear view mirror.
“Yeah fine.” Roger gave nothing away, adjusting his underwear through the thin fabric of his trouser pocket. The warm feeling lingered, spreading to his cheeks as the taxi moved through the traffic toward a view that was at last vaguely familiar.
He had never been unhappy, or for that matter particularly glad. He was endowed instead with a good dose of Yorkshire cynicism that precluded unseemly extremes of emotion, like a thick coating of industrial fallout that burrowed into the crevices. But of late that had changed. Life had been a long continuous procession of Monday mornings until Irene, now he was guilty of being most un-Yorkshire like. He felt sand blasted like the city he had left as a child and prone to outbursts of giddy laughter. His altered persona stared bleary eyed into the stained bathroom mirror back in his digs after a long night of personal discovery with Irene with a sense of deep and uncommon satisfaction.