‘It can’t be! We both saw him.’ Jill was hovering in the doorway. ‘There must be another door. He must have come through here and gone somewhere else.’

He swallowed. ‘I saw him. You saw him. The fire was lit. The room was warm. There were lights – ’

‘I want to go.’ Jill’s voice was suddenly very urgent. ‘I don’t like this. Come on.’ She was pulling at his sleeve.

‘But it doesn’t make sense – ’

‘I don’t care!’ Jill’s voice rose an octave. ‘I’m going.’ She turned and ran out into the hall again and reached for the front door latch. Fumbling she pulled at the handle and dragged it open. ‘Andy, come on!’

‘Wait, Jill. Wait for me -’ Andy was still standing in the middle of the room, staring round.

Jill didn’t hear him. She had run out onto the path. Two cars had drawn up at the kerb and there were a group of men standing on the pavement. She couldn’t see them properly in the darkness and she paused. ‘Run, love. Get away from the house!’ A voice came at her out of the dark. ‘Quickly. You’re safe now – ’

‘Andy, what about Andy?’ She could feel the icy rain streaming into her face. The wind was lashing her hair. She looked up at the house, then she glanced back at the gate. ‘Andy, my friend. He’s in there – ’

The street was deserted. The car and the men had gone.

She stared. Then she turned back to the house.

In the darkness all she could see were trees. On either side the neat small modern houses with their lighted windows stood square against the rain. In front of her the weeds grew shoulder high and rank. She could smell nettles and dead leaves. The house had gone.

‘Andy?’ Ice cold, her stomach churning with fear, she stepped forward. ‘Andy, where are you?’

There was no answer. The only sound she could hear was the patter of rain on the shiny wet laurel leaves of the hedge along the road. In the house next door, behind the fence, someone flicked a switch and in the window she dimly saw the lights of a Christmas tree shining through the dark.

Moonlight

Turning on the bed-side light Chris sat hugging her knees, her head resting on her arms. The dream had come again, exhausting, terrifying, but oh, so exhilarating and she had awoken from it once more with the strangest feeling that it had not been a dream at all.

It was only a few months since she had moved into this cottage, so different from the house in which she had brought up the children and lived most of her married life. It was mad to move from everything she knew, but it was something she had to do – a sign of independence for a newly single woman, and besides the Sixth Form College in the nearby town was perfect for the twins. It had surprised her when they leapt at the chance of the change, but who understood children? Far from bemoaning the loss of friends and cinemas and urban delights without number, they had talked in a most unteenage way of fresh air and birds and flowers. She had wondered more than once if they had talked it over in that disconcertingly parental way one’s children sometimes did, deciding that it would be a good thing for her to move, to get away from Paul and his new wife. Not that she minded, all that much, seeing them together. When a marriage is over it is over. She was enjoying her new found independence.

She lay back on the pillows and closed her eyes. In her dream she had walked down the path between the beds of herbs and cottagy things like delphiniums and hollyhocks to the long grass at the end of the garden where there were three ancient apple trees. It was waiting for her there: the most beautiful white horse. Without saddle or bridle, its mane like soft silk, it walked up to her and thrust its velvet muzzle into her hands, blowing gently on her fingers. This was the strange part. All her life she had been afraid of horses. Not that she knew any well, but even from a safe distance, though undoubtedly attractive creatures, they looked strong and uncontrollable and dangerous.

Here her dream became stranger still. After flinging her arms around the animal’s neck and kissing it as though it were an old friend she somehow vaulted onto its back, feeling the muscular flanks of the animal beneath her bare legs, winding her fingers into the mane and leaning forward to whisper in its ear. It listened, it raised its head and pricked its ears, then it turned and strode purposefully towards the open (open? it had never been opened) gate. In her dream she was not afraid. She leaned low, encouraging it to go faster as the horse moved smoothly from trot to canter and finally into a gallop, taking her down the fields, across ditches and through gates and on towards the Downs.

By the time they returned her face was flushed, her hair tangled and her legs ached, but she was so, so happy. Slipping off the horse in the garden she kissed its nose and tiptoed up over the dewy grass and in through the back door where the children, music quiet at last, lay asleep.

Staring up at the ceiling, disorientated, she lay still for a moment, then, throwing back the bedclothes she walked across to her dressing table. Turning on the lamp she peered at her face. It was flushed and her hair was wild and tangled, but surely she looked like that every morning? Everyone did when they awoke. She examined her hands. No sign. Of course no sign of their fierce strong grip on the mane, no smell – she raised them cautiously to her nose – of horse.

With a sigh she turned and climbed back into bed.

‘You’re nuts, Mum!’ Mat reached for the cereal box and tipped a helping onto his plate. ‘You can’t take up riding at your age. Besides, you hate horses!’

‘Shut up, Mat!’ Lyn poured herself her own breakfast – a single cup of black coffee. ‘Of course Mum can learn to ride. Everyone ought to take up something new at her age.’

‘Thanks,’ Chris’s dry acknowledgement was lost in the twins’ banter.

‘She might fall off and break her leg or something.’

‘Nonsense. She’d be brilliant.’

I will be brilliant. She didn’t say it out loud. They weren’t listening anyway. Smiling tolerantly she chivvied them out of the house and went to get ready for work. As a part-time receptionist at the local surgery she had found herself the most perfect job she could have wished for. She had met practically everybody in the village and already knew most of their life histories.

Her colleague behind the reception desk that morning, Anita, knew Sandra Hodge, the woman who ran the local riding school. In a lull between patients Chris rang up and booked her first lesson before she had a chance to change her mind.