He shook his head. ‘No. I’ve done my bit for British youth. I’m a straight academic now. Writing books on education.’ He glanced at the window. ‘Nearly there.’ He handed her her papers. ‘Will you be all right now?’
She nodded. ‘Thank you again. I’m really grateful.’ He smiled again as he rose to his feet and then he was gone, back to his own seat, where she could see him busy packing his briefcase.
When they disembarked from different doors she saw him striding ahead of her, out of the station and into the darkness.
For the rest of the week Abi was nervous coming home. She watched jumpily as the train began to empty, aware that in her bag at last was the rape alarm she had always promised herself she would buy. And she kept her eyes open for her rescuer, unable to keep the image of his smile out of her head. Their mutual station served dozens of small villages. He could have come from any one of them, but there was no sign of him again. Until Friday.
It was on the last leg of the journey that he knocked on the door of the compartment where she was once more sitting alone, and slid it back with a smile. ‘May I join you for a moment?’ He was formally dressed today in an immaculate grey suit and sober silk tie. ‘I trust you’re none the worse for your adventure on Monday?’ He paused a second then, not giving her the chance to reply, went on, ‘I’ve discovered something about the woman in the compartment and I wondered if you would like to hear about her.’
She looked up and met his eyes. ‘You make her sound rather intriguing.’
‘She is. Or rather was.’ He paused. ‘Something about her disappearance puzzled me, as I think it puzzled you. It nagged at my brain until I began to remember a story I’d heard, and yesterday afternoon I had some time to spare so I went to the newspaper library to check. I found her. Or at least, I think I did. The woman who spoke to you was a ghost.’ His eyes held hers soberly, challenging her to laugh. She didn’t. A cold draught tiptoed lightly across her shoulders.
‘She was called Sarah Middleton. In the 1950s she was travelling on a train on this line when she was attacked. She managed to pull the communication cord but by the time they found her she was dead. When they interviewed the other passengers later someone who had been in the same compartment with her said she had been very agitated. That the man she was with was very aggressive. When the passenger got off, she tried to alight as well, but the man pulled her back. Apparently she was screaming, “I must speak to the driver”.’
Abi closed her eyes. She shivered. ‘Why on earth didn’t he help her?’
‘He thought it was none of his business. He assumed the man was her husband. He even thought she might be drunk. Didn’t want to interfere. And you weren’t dreaming. Apparently, she has been seen several times by different people over the years, travelling this stretch of line.’
‘Poor Sarah. Did they catch him?’
He shook his head.
‘So her spirit can’t rest.’ She shuddered. ‘That’s a terrible story.’
The train was slowing. He glanced at his watch. ‘I photocopied the newspaper stories. I haven’t got them with me – I wasn’t sure if I would see you again – but I could send them to you. Or perhaps I’ll keep them on me in case I do bump into you again. I go up and down this way several times a week to visit the British Library. I live in Seaton.’
‘So do I.’ She hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘You could always drop them in.’
They walked together to the car park and found their cars next to each other. Their houses, they discovered, were in adjacent roads. How they could have failed to meet or even see one another in the post office on Saturday mornings filled the conversation for the next five minutes.
‘After all, you could hardly miss me.’ Grant laughed. That was his name. Grant Stevenson. She glanced, suddenly a little shy, at his six-foot frame and the black face, unusual in this lonely part of East Anglia, and she laughed with him.
Before they parted, she had discovered that he was a widower with three children all in their twenties, that he was forty-five – twelve years older than she – that he had published three books, two on educational theory and one on local history – hence his memory of the story of poor Sarah Middleton – that she was invited to supper the following evening and that, undeniably, she found him astonishingly attractive.
Moving On
In the spring the garden came to life like a friend she had not seen for months. It smiled. It reached out and she reciprocated. It nestled round the cottage like a silken scarf and kept it safe. When Roy turned one Saturday morning from the window and delivered his ultimatum she felt as though her friend had been violated before her eyes.
‘That’s it. I’m not commuting any more. I’ve had enough. We’re selling up and moving to London.’
The trouble was she had always felt guilty about his travelling. Each morning he was out of the house by 7.15 – in the glorious dawn at some times of year; but at others scraping the ice from the car and setting off up slippery ungritted country roads to stand on a platform in the cold north wind at the mercy of the railway system.
And she? What did she do? In spring and summer she drank coffee when he had gone, then slipped out into the balmy air with her forks and trowels and secateurs and breathed the sweet air and felt the warmth of the sun on the back of her hands. In winter, sometimes she sat by the Aga and read or listened to the radio with Sally-Su, all huge Siamese eyes and charm, on her knee. Sometimes she crept guiltily back to bed.
‘There’s no need for you to get up. No point in both of us suffering.’ He said it with a smile. He meant it nicely, but she had always got up with him; climbed from the warm cocoon. Without acknowledging it perhaps she had, if she were honest, heard an edge to his voice, but she had never said anything.
‘I’m amazed you’ve let me make that journey every day! You’ve just watched me go and never given it a thought!’ His voice had grown harsh suddenly. So suddenly she couldn’t believe it. ‘Most wives would have got a proper job to help; most wives would have offered to move long ago!’
‘Most wives?’ Libby shook her head as though warding off a blow. He, after all, had chosen the cottage, insisted they buy it, convinced her that she didn’t need a job and that she would love the country when, years ago, he had uprooted them from all their London friends, at the time as if on a mere whim.
But that was when they thought there would be children. Instead, a long while later there had been Ching-Miaou and then her daughter, Sally-Su.
Libby’s guilt and her misery stopped her rational thought processes. She stood by while people tramped through the cottage and discussed cutting down the old apple tree to make room for a garage. She was there in body to look at new houses in narrow car-lined terraces, to glance up at the low-flying jets and nod and smile when told ‘you’ll soon find you don’t notice them at all’, and she stood dully with the measuring tape while Roy explained how she would enjoy choosing new curtains and carpets and sorting out the furniture to get rid of the dead wood. In spirit she was hiding in the garden at home. Hiding and crying.
Sally-Su was far stronger. She spoke her mind. Every intruder and every change brought forth complaints. When at last it was too late to stop her human beings making the supreme mistake and she was in her cat basket on the way to London in the car her wails became first vituperative then heart-rending, then sullen and finally despairingly lost.
It was some time before it dawned on Libby that it still took Roy the best part of an hour to reach the office. But now she did not get up with him. She stayed in bed, sometimes until mid morning, not even reading. Just cuddling the sulking fabric-shredding monster which had once been a loving cat. It was impossible to find a job. A middle-aged woman with no qualifications? In the country she could have found any amount of part-time work easily had she wanted it. Here they laughed at her. Laughed!
Roy’s hours were longer now. He stayed at the office late and sometimes went in all day on Saturdays, so she saw him barel
y at all. Neighbours, guarding their privacy, did not do more than smile defensively and scuttle away. She was drowning.
Then, one morning – it was 4th of July, a date she thought later with a grim smile, that reeked of significance – she woke up.
Roy had not come home. A phone call at nine the night before had informed her that as the meeting was running late and there was an early start next morning he would camp down in the office. She had thought nothing of it. His microwave meal was still in the freezer anyway. She hated her London hob and split level oven. TV and bed were an unchallenging alternative to watching Roy eat.
The early night meant she woke to see the sun streaming in across the carpet. Somewhere a blackbird was singing. She lay, staring up at the ceiling and knew suddenly without a shadow of doubt that Roy was having an affair, had probably been having an affair even before they had moved.
Once she started looking it was so obvious. The long blonde hair on a jacket – oh please, that obvious? That clichéd? The two theatre ticket stubs in a pocket, a broken pearl ear ring in his jacket, the programme for an art exhibition he would never have gone to on his own in a million years. And then it all began to fall into place. His new interest in modern decor, the different trendy expressions in his speech, the quote the other day from an article in Marie Claire.
For a while she sat, her head in her hands, then she straightened. The sun was still there. It had reached her bare feet and she could feel the warmth caressing her skin.
She wasn’t sure of the actual moment when she realised she was free. She ought to be distraught. She was hurt and insulted and angry but at the same time an imperceptible, almost subliminal lightness had begun to form around her heart.
There was a quiet chirrup from behind her. Sally-Su jumped onto the bed. The cat sat facing her, eyes inscrutable.
‘You knew, didn’t you?’ Libby spoke out loud. ‘You should have said. We needn’t have moved. We could have refused. We needn’t have made it easier for him.’
She stood up and padded downstairs, the cat, tail high, paws mincing, behind her.
‘But we don’t have to stay here. We can go home, back to our friends. It won’t be the same house, of course, but it would just be you and me. And we’d find somewhere with a little garden which we could make beautiful.’
Almost without thinking she reached into the cupboard for a tin of sardines. ‘I wonder if she really wants him. Was it just the chase, do you think? Take him away from his wife just for fun, then, when she’s got him, get bored, move on to find the next married man. Or does she genuinely love him?’
She hooked her finger into the ring pull and levered off the lid. Sally-Su was sitting on the work top only inches away. She did not move. Every muscle was tense, her eyes sapphire blue, only the tiniest black slits showing the concentration of her mind.
Libby lifted out a sardine on a fork. ‘Shall we share them?’ She licked a drop of olive oil off her finger tip. ‘Then I’m going to ring our solicitor to see what we need to do next. And then –’ she dropped the sardine on a saucer – ‘you and I are going to start to plan what we are going to do with our freedom.’
He had the grace to look abashed when she confronted him; but then the relief showed through all too soon. ‘I’m so sorry, Libby. I wouldn’t have hurt you for the world!’
But he had. He had hurt them both.
They put the house back on the market and this time Sally-Su showed no interest at all in who looked round. She did not like this London home and she did not care who walked around it. She lay curled on Libby’s bed and ignored even the most heartfelt compliments from the strangers who came to stare. Had she known how much London house prices had escalated in the intervening months she would have sat up and pricked her ears. Even splitting the value of the place she and Libby would be able to afford something deep in the country which would meet with her approval.
Libby found it just eight miles away from where they used to live. The cottage would need a lot of work and so would the garden but it had the basics – an inglenook fireplace, a lot of charm and an old apple tree with gnarled branches perfect for climbing – from a cat’s point of view – and from Libby’s it was close to all their old friends. It was like coming home. Only one thing worried her. How was she going to support herself? That was a tricky one. His job had always more than paid for them both. In fact he had actively discouraged her from working, hated her occasional part time jobs – a matter of rather strange old-fashioned pride, or even possessiveness, she thought – which was why she had spent so much time and energy on the garden. It hadn’t mattered then, the garden had been just about enough. But now suddenly her world had changed. ‘You needn’t think I’m going to support you so that you can swan around doing nothing all day in the country while I work myself into the ground up here! No solicitor would countenance that for a minute. You are perfectly capable of working. In fact you’ll probably remarry.’ He was rapidly working himself into a frenzy of self-righteous indignation at all the money he might have to give her.
There seemed no point in reminding him that her life of leisure had been his idea. And that in fact leisure had been the last thing on her mind and was the last thing on her mind now. Life suddenly was full of possibilities, limited only by the presence of one small cat.
And strangely it was the cat who got her the job. Sally-Su was ecstatic at the new house, inspecting it, her tail erect, commenting loudly on every feature, inspecting the furniture to make sure her favourite bits had arrived safely. (‘You can have that, it’s all scratched and smelly,’ Roy had said about more than one item. From the selection he rejected Libby decided his new love did not like antique furniture. Good!) While she was thus occupied, the phone had rung and it turned out to be the local antique shop with whom Libby had left her number to enquire about a small table she had seen in the window. As she was talking Sally-Su came to stand near her, voicing her own opinion loudly. The shop owner heard her down the phone and laughed. The conversation became extended. He was a cat lover; he adored gardens; he was a widower; he could show her the new restaurant that had opened in the last few months; he needed someone to watch the shop while he was out buying more stock …
Sally-Su liked the sound of this new gentleman; he was obviously a cat person and from a cat’s point of view things were shaping up rather nicely. Once she had inspected him she would decide whether he could stay in their lives. She smiled as only a cat can smile. Anyone would have thought she had arranged the whole thing.
‘You’ve Got a Book to Write, Remember?’
‘It’s a lonely house.’ Brian Foster glanced at his passen ger. ‘We only ever used it for holidays.’
Caro nodded. ‘I know. I’ve read the particulars.’
Brian had arranged to collect her from the station following her telephoned enquiry about the ad in the Sunday Times.
Isolated cottage.
Breathtaking views.
‘As I told you,’ he went on, ‘it’s just too far to come often enough to justify keeping it.’ He shrugged, squinting through the windscreen at the single-track road ahead. ‘Are you planning to go back south tonight?’ He glanced towards her. She was a striking woman. Tall. In her early forties at a guess, she was staring straight ahead, seemingly uninterested in Brian or his attempts at conversation.
He swung the car onto an even narrower road. ‘I wish the weather was brighter,’ he said with a sigh. ‘But I suppose it’s better to see it at one of its less glamorous moments.’ Two other prospective buyers had already seen it at its less glamorous moments and both had high-tailed it back to civilisation.
She put a hand out to the dashboard to steady herself as the old Land Rover lurched through a pothole. He grimaced. ‘We – I – keep this car up here and fly to Inverness from London.’
‘How long have you had the cottage?’ She didn’t look across at him as she spoke.
‘Five years.’
‘And there is vacant possession?’<
br />
‘That’s right. I’m staying up here long enough to sell it; then I’m off.’ He tried to keep his voice light. She needn’t know about the heartbreak, the anger, the misery the cottage had caused. ‘You should be able to see it about now,’ he added. He pointed. ‘White blob on the shore of the loch down there.’
She sat forward and stared across the rain-soaked moor. ‘What’s that other building near it?’
‘That’s the broch.’ He slowed the car as he approached a water-filled gully which crossed the road in full spate. ‘Our local piece of heritage.’
‘It’s a ruin?’
‘For a couple of thousand years. It’s Iron Age they think.’
He did not speak again until they drew up outside the cottage. It was a charming place, Patricia had seen to that. Whitewashed with a neat fence to keep out the deer. Pointless that had been. They could jump fences twenty feet high as far as he could see and had made short work of her pretty garden. Now there was heather and bog myrtle and foxgloves in the flower beds, just as there was outside the fence. Nature’s way of telling you that you were here on her terms, not yours.
They climbed out and stood for a moment, Brian staring out across the rain-pitted waters of the loch, Caro at the cottage. He heard her sigh softly and his heart sank as he pushed open the front door and ushered her inside.
The room was dark, smelling rich with peat smoke, simply furnished with a small sofa, a round table with four chairs, an empty bookcase. At the far end a sink and cooker and a small dresser formed the kitchen. He went over to the table and reached for some matches. ‘As you see, no electricity, just calor gas and oil lamps. That does – did – us fine. All mod cons.’ He forced himself to smile. ‘Spring water and even plumbing. The bedrooms are here.’ He strode towards a small lobby. Two rooms led off it, one with a double bed, the other with bunks. Both were cramped and dark and looked out onto the wet hillside behind the cottage.
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