Alan Tong was the worst driver in town. He had an accident of some kind almost every week.

Alan lived with his mother. His mother was always worried about him. Every day she worried that police would appear to arrest him. This wasn’t a foolish worry because they usually visited Alan’s house about once a week to send a speeding ticket or to serve him notice to appear in court (法庭).

Most of his accidents were caused by his carelessness. He drove through red lights. He turned left or drove at night without proper lights. He overtook other cars on hills. In short, there wasn’t a traffic rule that Alan had not broken, and he had had so many accidents that it was a surprise that he was still alive. But luckily for Alan, he had never hurt anyone in his accidents or even gone to the hospital.

Although Alan wasn’t popular with the police, he was very popular with his lawyer. Alan’s lawyer, Mr. Tsui, had earned a lot of money from Alan’s cases and always felt very excited when he saw Alan coming into his office.

One day Alan was working in the garage, painting his car when his mother walked in. “What are you doing?” his mother asked.

“Painting my car,” Alan replied.

“I can see that,” his mother said, “but why are you painting one side of the car red and the other side blue?” “Because every time I have to go to court for a traffic crime, there are always two witnesses (目击证人) . “What color was the car?” the judge always asks, and the two witnesses always give the same answer. Well, in the future, one witness will say it was blue. Mr. Tsui will then say to the judge, “Your honor, the witnesses cannot even agree on the color of the car involved in the accident.” And the judge will have to dismiss the case against me.

I had to knock on the taxi to get his attention. Finally, the driver, a man about 60, looked up from behind the wheel and apologised, “I’m sorry, but I was reading a letter.” He sounded as if he had a cold or a cough.

Since I was in no hurry, I told him to finish his letter. He shook his head, explaining that he had already read it several times and almost knew it by heart. Curious, I asked whether it was from a child or maybe a grandchild. “This isn’t family,” he replied, “though he might just as well have been are regular member of the family. Old Ed and I grew up together.”

They were always friends. But since he moved away from the neighbourhood 30 years ago, it’d generally just been postcards at Christmas time between them. A couple of weeks ago, Ed died. “I should have kept in touch.” He repeated this, more to himself than to me. To comfort him, I said sometimes we just didn’t seem to find the time. “But we used to find the time,” he said. “Take a look.” He handed the letter over to me.

The first sentence “I’ve been meaning to write for some time, but I’ve always delayed it.” reminded me of myself. It went on to say that he often thought about the good times they had had together. When I read the part where it said “Your friendship really means a lot to me, more than I can say because I’m not good at saying things like that”, I found myself nodding in agreement.

We had gone several kilometres and were almost at my hotel, so I read the last paragraph: “So I thought you’d like to know that I was thinking of you.” And it was ended with “Your Old Friend, Tom.”

“I thought your friend’s name was Ed,” I said.

“I’m Tom,” he explained. “It’s a letter I wrote to Ed before I knew he’d died. I never put it in the mailbox. I guess I should have written it sooner.” His face was pale as he wiped his eyes with a handkerchief.

When I got to my hotel room I didn’t unpack right away, I had to write a letter and post it.