A SOFT TARGET: CODA

His Day started with its usual row with his eldest son. The pair of them then left for work. Today the father walked rather than drove to his town centre job, which meant that his son would have to walk to the station. He’d miss his train and end up just getting the next one. “Serves him bloody right” thought the father.

At about Ten he received a phone call from his wife, there’d been a number of bombs exploded on Tubes and Busses in London, she was hysterical. Apparently one had exploded just outside of Aldgate Station. She’d phoned the son’s office; which was across the road from the Station; and had been told that he hadn’t turned up. She phoned his mobile but had got no answer. What should she do?

He told her to calm down that he’d come home. He’d informed his boss who ordered and paid for a taxi to take him home. As he travelled the short journey a phrase formed in his head and it drove out all other thoughts: the phrase being: Divine Retribution.

However when he arrived he found his wife was now quite composed. He couldn’t have been on that train, it was far too late and his boss had phoned to say that he was in fact going directly to a customer, but he wasn’t sure which one. That’s why his phone was off asserted the wife, he was with a customer.

As the news of the carnage and suffering flooded in and the dead and casualty count was totted up, he was convinced that his son was at least seriously injured if not dead: Divine Retribution.

He went out into the garden and paced up to the shed then back to the kitchen door and back again. His wife screamed at him to come back into the house for they had news regarding the dead and injured. He went into the lounge, on the TV was a slide show of the victims. Then to his horror there was his blood stained and grimed son.

But he was alive and well. He was being interviewed, they said his composure had ensured that his carriage had avoided the panic that had occurred elsewhere. He had organised the walk along the track to Aldgate carrying a severely injured woman. He was a hero.

"The son smiled and said no, I was only doing what we English are good at, you know mucking our way through a crisis."

Divine retribution indeed.