stood by the crumbling wall. She had picked it up and shaken, hadn’t she? A rowan tree was growing through it now.
‘No!’ She shook her head and backed away. ‘This is all wrong!’
‘There must be a simple explanation.’ Edward put his arm round her again. She was shaking. ‘I suspect you are right. There are probably several old cottages and crofts around here and they all look much the same. I’m sure they all had ancient tractors and they would all keep a bit of spare fuel, living so far from civilisation.’
She nodded. ‘You’re right.’
There had only been one track on the map. One tiny square to represent a dwelling, amid thousands of empty acres of moor and mountain.
‘If we went into the shop in the village on the main road, maybe they’d know,’ she said hopefully.
He nodded. ‘This must have been a beautiful place, but bleak in winter.’ It was his turn to shiver. ‘The ground is very poor. The tractor must have had a job doing anything at all.’
They stood for a few more minutes, staring round, then they began to retrace their steps towards the car.
The old lady in the post office stared at them over her spectacles. ‘You must mean Carn Breac.’ She shook her head. ‘That place has been empty since before the war. Michael Macdonald stayed on there a year or two after his parents died, then he upped and left. He settled in Canada I believe.’ She frowned, searching her memory. ‘If you hold on now, I’ve a photo here.’ She came out from behind the counter and disappeared for a moment into the sitting room which opened out of the shop. When she came back she was carrying an album. ‘Yes, see here.’ She opened it and stabbed at a faded photo with her finger. ‘That’s Michael, and Donald, his father, next to him.’ The sepia shadows showed some half-dozen men ranged against a wall, staring ahead at the camera. The one called Michael had a wooden rake in his hand.
Ruth felt her mouth go dry. For a moment she thought she was going to faint.
‘What do you want with him?’ The post mistress slowly closed the book.
Ruth couldn’t speak. It was Edward who said quietly, ‘We have something of his we want to return.’
‘I don’t know his address.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s so long ago. You could maybe ask the minister. He’s only been twenty years or so at the manse, but I think there are records there. If anyone knows where he went, it will be him.’
‘You think he might still be alive then?’ Edward probed gently.
She shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’
The minister knew the family. Michael James Macdonald had died in Prince George, British Columbia on 24th July that year, at the age of eighty-nine. It was the day Ruth had seen him leaning on a rock by the croft where he had been born.
Edward poured them both a glass of wine and joined her by the fire in the cottage by the loch. ‘Are you OK now?’
She nodded. ‘I still can’t believe I’ve seen a ghost!’
‘You’re a lucky lady. Not only to see one, but to be rescued by him.’
She sipped the wine. ‘How is it that the diesel worked? You’d think it would have gone off. Rusted. Evaporated. Something.’
He stared into the depths of his glass. ‘The other can had disintegrated completely.’
‘Perhaps a farmer had left it there recently?’ She looked at him hopefully.
He smiled. ‘Perhaps. I don’t think you are ever going to know the answer to that one.’
‘And, if it was him, why did he appear as a young man and not the age he was?’
‘We can’t answer that either.’ He leaned back and put his arm round her shoulders. ‘One thing you can be sure of though. He must have loved that place. It must have been very hard to leave it forever. Perhaps he promised himself he would go back one day.’
‘At least he had a happy life, and a wonderful marriage.’ The minister had told them that. She didn’t realise how wistful the words sounded until they were out of her mouth.
Edward didn’t answer. He was staring into the fire.
‘Have you ever been married?’ She realised with a shock she had never even asked him.
He shook his head. ‘Nearly. We thought better of it. Just as well as we haven’t seen each other for five years. Since then I haven’t come close.’
‘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?’
The Last Train to Yesterday
Chloe 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.
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
