You meet her in the summer, when the sun is beating down incessantly and the heat is almost unbearable. When you meet her the whole city is restless around you, the energy is roiling around you, and it feels as though something is building towards a crescendo. It's the sort of day that feels full of promise, despite the abnormal heat for an English summer day, and you feel like something good is going to happen.
It's a foreign feeling, but one that you welcome nonetheless. God only knows, you will embrace any positive due to happen. It's about time you caught a break.
Although the city is restless, people seem to be taking it easy. It seems like a strange contradiction in your head, but in a strange sense that is devoid of any logic it makes sense. Days like this are for pondering on where life is taking you, for thinking up dreams and plans and schemes. Other days are meant for fulfilling such idle fancies.
Still, it's a busy day for you. You were never one to get caught up in the mood of the people. Places to be, people to see, plans to fulfil. Your mother had always told you to complete what could be done tomorrow today, because it would save you a whole bunch of trouble. So you're being your usual busy self, efficient to the last, taking a short cut through some park or the other.
If you're being honest with yourself, you're not paying all that much attention to your surroundings. Which is fortunate, just this once, because if you had been more aware, you may never have met her. And there is no doubt in your mind that she is the good thing meant to happen to you on this day (in hind sight of course, upon first seeing her your mind had short circuited).
You're paying so little attention to your surroundings that when she bumps into you, quite literally, it takes until you hit the floor with a resounding thump to come back to yourself. Somehow she manages to stay on her feet, although you're not quite sure how. You're certain that you didn't fall with the grace of a lady (later, much later, she will tell you that you resembled a bag of potatoes falling and spelling with tears streaming down her face).
When you finally look up, you know you must gawp in a most unattractive fashion. It's another woman whom had bumped into you, and she is beautiful. She's all dimples and sparkling blue eyes and shiny brown hair, and it makes it hard to look away. You curse yourself later, but at the time you're so stunned that you somehow find yourself comparing her to the sun.
You lay on the floor, legs akimbo and limbs considerably tangled, without the slightest desire to get up, and stare at her in a very undignified manner. She apologises in a rushed and lilting voice, her words running together, and her accent could be compared to music (if you're being honest with yourself, that is exactly what you compared it to at the time).
A hand appears in front of you, and it takes you a second to realise that she's offering you a hand up, not a handshake. You allow yourself the momentary lapse because she's managed to make you rather befuddled. With her help you heave yourself up, with no thought to grace or dignity (after all, it is rather too late for that), and stand before her for a solid ten seconds before you finally find your voice.
She smirks when she hears the polished edge to your voice, and the mischief in it makes your heart beat slightly faster. You're rather glad that it is an internal organ, because that would be rather embarrassing. She introduces herself as Delia, and your heart speeds up some more, because even her name is wonderful.
From your new vantage point you realise how incredibly short she is, which means that her knocking you over should have been almost an impossibility. Yet, she seemed to manage it with abject ease. When you introduce yourself, her smirk seems to grow. And you'll be damned but your heart seems to speed up some more.
It interests you that a stranger can have this effect, when no one has ever managed such a think before. You feel like a school girl, standing before her crush for the first time. It surprises you even more that it is not a feeling you hate, not in the slightest.
The two of you talk for quite some time, standing in the middle of a park that you could not name, blocking the path. You are oblivious to the world around you, to the strangers who stare at you as they pass, to the park slowly emptying around passes in that strange way it seldom does, slipping away never to be caught. When the two of you finally realise the time, it is much later than you had anticipated, but you can't quite bring yourself to mind.
The two of you say reluctant goodbyes, neither one of you really wanting to leave, and turn to head in opposite directions. You find that you haven't the slightest idea where you are, or what you had meant to do with the rest of your day. But for once, you don't let it bother you, because far worse things could happen.
Something niggles at you, as you walk away from the wonderful stranger, namely Delia. It bothers you, to the point that you find yourself stopping to work it out. Just as you are working out what it is, you detect the sound of footsteps running in your direction, pounding the gravel path. You turn, purely out of curiosity, and find yourself face to face with Delia, flushed and slightly out of breath.
She passes you a piece of paper, wishes you goodnight, and turns on her heels once again, with nothing more than a quick smile thrown over her shoulder. When she is out of sight, you turn and walk slowly towards the parks' exit, and read the note. It's a phone number, hastily scrawled on the back of a bus ticket.
You work out what is was that was niggling at you. Delia had managed to make you feel grounded, and the hours the two of you had spent talking in a park had made you unbelievably happy, almost blissfully so. So, you wait until you get home before putting her number into your phone. And then you text her, smiling all the while. And it feels like the start of something good, even if it is too early to call it.
You meet her in the summer, all dimples and sunshine and sparkling eyes. The two of you somehow connect, although you are no more than strangers. You meet her in the summer, and the rest of your life starts with nothing more than a chance collision, a note, and a few simple brave acts from the pair of you.