The Bicycle Courier – Part 1: Fridays

The parcel was addressed in careful handwriting: For Jonas, Bogladen, Nørrebro. It arrived every Friday at four, and Freja had delivered it eleven weeks running.

She braked her cargo bike in front of the bookshop, a narrow blue-fronted place with a window full of paperbacks, and unclipped her helmet. She was twenty-eight, a courier with strong calves, a windburnt nose and a rucksack the size of a dishwasher.

Inside, Jonas was waiting with a coffee.

"You are late," he said, with a smile. "Three minutes."

"A swan."

"Always a swan."

He was thirty-one, tall, bespectacled, in a corduroy jacket, with ink on his thumbs and an earnest, absent-minded air. The coffee was black, in a chipped mug that said Reading is sexy. She had never once asked what was in the parcel.

"Today I will tell you," said Jonas.

"You don't have to."

"I want to." He slit the paper with a knife. Inside lay a small book, bound in faded green cloth, its spine gilt. "It is from a friend in Aarhus. We send it back and forth. A poem every week. She writes one, I answer in the margin."

"That's lovely."

"It is a very slow letter."

She held it carefully. Pencilled in the margins were tiny drawings and fragments of verse, a long conversation across two cities. Her throat tightened.

"Can I ask you something?" said Freja.

"Yes."

"Do you ever write one to the courier?"

He went pink. "Not yet. I was afraid you'd read it."

"I'd read it."

"Green?" he said, shyly.

"Green," said Freja, her heart racing. "Very green. Write one, and I'll deliver it myself."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Margin Notes.