She rounded the corner, only to see her ride home pull away.
If she had been just thirty seconds earlier she would have caught the bus and accidentally kicked the man’s briefcase over, spilling his papers. Between them they would have gathered them up, smiling at each other. She would have said how sorry she was and he would have suggested she make up for it by buying him a cup of coffee the following evening. They would have gone steady for a little over a year before marrying.
Two days into their honeymoon in Rome, he would have left the hotel to buy a newspaper and would have been hit by a truck. He would have died at the scene. As a result of this, the grief, together with the strain and frustration of working with the local authorities to get all of the required paperwork sorted so that she could arrange to have his body sent back home, it was all too much. This would have taken a heavy toll on her health. For several days she would have suffered from what she thought at the time was a bout of influenza. However, when it was eventually diagnosed it would have turned out to be Meningococcal disease. As a result of the late diagnosis without treatment, she would have died the following day.
All this… if she had caught the bus. But she didn’t. She went home on the late bus and found her flat was in the middle of an extensive power cut. This meant that she couldn’t prepare her usual mug of hot cocoa before going to bed.
She was extremely annoyed about it.