Earlier this week I read online that a former colleague from my old office in Soho in London had moved to Dubai. ‘Small world,’ I thought.
Then I heard he was living with one of my current colleagues. ‘What a coincidence,’ I chuckled.
It got me thinking about the time I was in Kumamoto, a town in south Japan. Few tourists venture so far south, so I was surprised to see a British ‘one man band’ playing instruments in the street. After all, how often do you see a one man band, let alone a British fellow wailing away at tunes in south Japan? We stopped for a chat and he gave me his CD to have a listen to later, as this was in the days before iTunes.
Two years later, I was strolling through Manchester in northern England, and who should be performing in the street? Yep, my old friend, the one man band from Japan! We stopped for a chat for a second time, but he didn’t give me a CD.
Soon after, I was in a jazz bar in Vietnam when someone tapped me on my shoulder. It was my former colleague Liz, who lived in Laos. We’d worked together two years before but not kept in touch, as this was before facebook.
Another time, I bumped into a classmate from university in Hong Kong, three years after we graduated. A flight attendant, she was in the city for one night only.
Then there was the time I sat opposite Chris on the tube in London. He’d been my neighbour when we’d lived in Japan five years before. We remarked on the coincidence, then went our separate ways until we met again five years later – after he’d opened a cafe next to my house.
But that was nothing on the time I bumped into Varsha, also on the tube in London. We’d met while hiking China’s Leaping Tiger Gorge the year before.
Walking home from work last night, I had a distinctive feeling I was being followed, but when I looked behind me, there was just a sea of strangers.
‘I’m being paranoid,’ I told myself.
Still, as I crossed the road, I was sure I heard footsteps right behind me.
Varsha?
Stopping at the traffic lights, I looked left, looked right.
But there was no Varsha, no Chris, no Liz. Not even that one man band.
‘No one’s following me,’ I told myself, unable to shake the feeling that someone was, in fact, tracing my every step.
Twenty minutes later, I pressed the button for the lift in my apartment block and got in.
Then a woman from my office block got in.
She’d followed me!
Why would she follow me?
This wasn’t normal behaviour. Was I at risk?
Jabbing the button to keep the door open, I was about to dash back on to the street when she called after me.
‘What floor are you on?’ she grinned. ‘I’m on the sixth.’
‘Oh really?’ I replied. ‘What a small world.’
