Barbara Erskine - Sands of Time

‘Oh.’ Her voice was bleak.

‘Until now.’ He hesitated. ‘This is going to sound very corny, but when you find something precious you need to hang on to it otherwise you are going to regret it all your life. Our relationship – Sarah’s and mine – just wasn’t that precious.’ Once again he paused. ‘Why did you and Murray end yours so quickly?’

She thought for a long time. ‘I suppose I wasn’t that precious to him. Not in your sense of the word. And perhaps -’ She paused thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps after all he wasn’t that precious to me. I gave him a second chance. I wasn’t prepared to give him a third.’ She shrugged. ‘That doesn’t show me in a very good light.’

‘It shows you as a realist. And your Michael Macdonald. Presumably he was as well. He knew the croft couldn’t sustain him. In his eyes he had no choice.’

She stood up and went to sit on the floor by the fire. ‘It’s a sad little story.’

‘No.’ He followed her. Kneeling down he reached over and kissed her gently. ‘It’s actually a wonderful story. Why are we letting it make us sad? It had a happy ending. He came home. And he helped a damsel in distress. He made choices, but they seem to have been the right choices. After all he had children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren to succeed him. No doubt one day they will come home and stand where you stood and stare at the tiny croft which is their heritage. But I wonder if they will see him as you did?’ He raised his glass. ‘Let’s drink to his memory. And to our future.’ He grinned. ‘Who knows, maybe I’ll come and haunt this place when I’m eighty-nine!’

She laughed. ‘Perhaps you will. And maybe you’ll still be coming here in the flesh!’ She clinked her glass against his. ‘Who knows?’

Chloë awoke with a start and stared up at the ceiling, her heart thumping. Dusky pink curtains across the window intercepted the harsh red glow from the eastern sky and filled the room with a warm eerie half-light. With a groan she rolled over and groped for the alarm clock, peering at it myopically as her sleepy brain tried to work out the time. Five minutes before the alarm. Pressing down the knob to pre-empt the angry buzz she put it back on the bedside table and swung her feet to the floor.

Drawing back the curtains, she sighed.

Red sky in the morning

Shepherd’s warning

Already threatening bars of cloud were hovering above the fields beyond the garden. By the time she left for the station it would be raining. She was peering into the mirror, trying to put on her eye liner before inserting her contact lenses when she heard the first rain pattering down on the leaves outside the window.

‘Damn!’ London was never fun at the best of times for a rushed business day. The smart sandals she had planned to wear would have cheered her up. In the soupy dirt of wet pavements they would never work.

She tucked in the lenses and carried out a quick survey of the face that zoomed suddenly into focus. Short reddish-brown curls, artfully casual. Eyes – not bad – a deep hazel green. Skin good. Still fairly unmarked by time. Nose, small and ordinary – not what romantic books would call tip-tilted – more of a small conk really. Mouth, definitely a bit big, but Edmund used to say that was attractive. The expression in front of her degenerated into a fearsome scowl. Edmund and his opinions were no longer to be considered. Off the scene. Out of the plot. Finito.

She claimed one of the last spaces in the car park – the regular commuters long gone, before dawn – and hauled her briefcase out of the car. Behind her: cottage, garden, and two tolerantly patient cats who would welcome her home, if not with the gin and tonic she might have liked, then at least with expectant glances towards the tin opener! It was better than no one. In front of her lay noise, bustle, meetings, rush. She loved the contrast.

A spatter of September leaves whirled into a puddle near her. She grimaced. Mud on her boots already and she had twenty yards to go to the footbridge which led up and over the line to the ticket office which was on platform two, the only platform still in use.

Behind her, hidden by a skimpy hedge liberally threaded with old rusty wire, lay the old railway hotel, derelict behind its boarded windows. On fine days the pigeons cooed and strutted on the roof and basked on the broken tiles. Today they sat disconsolately, their feathers puffed, while a loose hoarding banged in the wind. She shivered suddenly and pulled up the collar of her coat.

‘Good morning, Mrs Denver.’ The figure beside her raised a hand. She had barely noticed him park next to her and climb out beside her. ‘One of your days in town?’

Chloë smiled at him. The new man who had bought the Beeches on Thorney Road. She groped for a name and came up with a blank.

He grinned. ‘Miles. Miles Rowton.’

‘Of course.’ She smiled. He had a nice face. Square, almost ugly, deeply lined between nose and mouth and at the corners of his eyes, but nice. Probably in his forties. Once she might have been interested. Not now. What she wanted now was the peace and stability of her own company.

They reached the footbridge in silence and he paused with old-fashioned courtesy to allow her to go up ahead of him. The wind and the sweeping rain precluded conversation. She climbed, trying not to be aware that he was close behind her, concentrating on the steep metal treads, her hand on the cold wet rail, its black paint dimpled with rust.

Afterwards she supposed she had stumbled. The world seemed to do a strange somersault and for a moment she thought she could hear music carried in the wind. Then it was gone and she was standing near the top of the long flight, panting, clutching the handrail with both hands.

‘Are you all right?’ He didn’t touch her. He merely stood there, two steps below her, so his face was level with hers, registering surprise and mild concern. Apparently he could not see how her heart was pounding or the sheen of sweat on her face.

She took a deep breath and shook her head slightly. ‘Sorry. I must have tripped.’

Mary! Mary wait!

Where had the voice come from? Her head was swimming. She glanced down the flight of steps and clutched more tightly at the rail, knuckles white.

‘It’s a bit slippery in this rain.’ Miles Rowton was beside her now. Then in front. ‘Shall I lead the way?’

Hadn’t he heard it? She shook her head a little, trying to clear the sound from her brain. There was no one near them. No one else anywhere in sight. He glanced over his shoulder at her and smiled encouragingly. She must look perfectly normal then, or surely he would have stayed at her side.