their way. They had seemed such a devoted couple. But she sort of half commuted to London, which made her an outsider, and she kept her grief or her relief – for who knew how she really felt about her husband’s departure – to herself.
‘Are you going up to town again tomorrow?’ he asked suddenly.
She shrugged and then realised he couldn’t see the gesture. ‘I’m not sure. I should be in theory, but – ’
She grimaced, her knuckles whitening on the phone. He misunderstood her hesitation. ‘I know. In this weather it’s grim, isn’t it? You are lucky not having to go regularly.’
‘How do you know I don’t go regularly?’ She was intrigued by the comment and a touch of amusement showed in her voice.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t. I suppose I assumed I would have seen you at the station before if you did.’
‘That’s probably true.’ The cat stretched luxuriously, secure that the conversation was well under way.
‘So you will ring me if you need anything?’
‘Yes, I will. Thank you.’
‘Chloe -’ He was anxious not to end the conversation. His own life was unbearably lonely. Moving to a new area had seemed sensible after his wife died. Now he knew it had been madness. ‘The voices. What did they say?’
She laughed. ‘Aren’t the voices in people’s heads confidential?’
‘It depends. If they are internal voices, voices from God, then yes, perhaps they are. But if they are external, real voices, then perhaps not.’
‘What do you mean, real voices?’ She couldn’t tell him she was still hearing them. The voice did not sound like God to her. It sounded like a desperate young man with a local accent.
‘Ghosts?’
The icy shudder which swept over her body was totally involuntary. For a moment she couldn’t say a word.
‘Chloe, are you there? I was only joking.’
‘The trouble is -’ She found there were tears in her eyes, ‘I think that you might be right.’ This was mad. She was letting him wind her up. ‘Look, Miles. Thank you for ringing, but I’ve actually got quite a lot of work to do tonight. Perhaps we can talk about this some other time?’
She didn’t work though. After she had hung up, all too aware of the disappointment behind his apologies for having taken up her time, she sat for a long while gazing into the fire. She was wondering what his name was, Mary’s young man, and what he had done to make her threaten to throw herself under a train. She thought she could probably guess.
She had felt like killing herself when she first found out about Edmund’s affair. Only it wasn’t just an affair. It turned out that it was the great love of his life and it was she who had been the mistake. She stroked a silken purring tummy gently and was rewarded by an ecstatic stretch. Was that why she had heard the voices? Because she understood?
It was very late when she at last went to bed and, exhausted, she slept dreamlessly, aware of two small solid bodies curled up on her duvet. It was only at dawn that they awoke and crept out into the garden to create mayhem amongst the birds, leaving her to turn restlessly over and bury her face in the pillow.
She did not go to London. Partly because her reports were not written, her sketches not finished, partly because, she had to admit, she did not want to go near the station. It was the perfect autumn day, warm, glowing, the air sweet with berries and nuts and damp leaf mould beneath the trees. She took her lap top and her phone out to the small summer house in the back garden with all her books and papers and she spent the morning there engrossed in her work.
Miles had been standing there for several minutes before she looked up and saw him. Instead of his city suit he was wearing an open-necked shirt and a heavy knitted sweater. He smiled apologetically. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’
She stretched her arms above her head and switched off the lap top. ‘You haven’t. You have rescued me from all my good resolutions.’
‘I too work at home sometimes.’ His eyes were silvery grey, startlingly alert in his tanned face. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed how good-looking he was. ‘In fact in about three weeks’ time I shall be giving up the day job altogether, so I thought today was too good to spend on the eight-fifteen. I did go to the station though.’
‘Oh?’ In the orchard a light breeze had got up and she felt a small shiver tiptoe across her shoulders.
‘I wanted to get a good look at that old hotel in daylight. Normally in the morning when I go for the train I’m comatose.’ He grinned. ‘It was a beautiful building once. I asked Peter at the ticket office what he knew about it. He said if I wanted to know I should go and see the old father of one of his colleagues whose own father was on the railway before him apparently and he can recall all sorts of stories about the station in the early days.’
The wind had grown stronger and she was shivering. ‘And did you go?’
‘I thought you might like to come with me.’
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to know.’
She led the way into the kitchen and brought a bottle of wine out of the fridge. ‘Her name was Mary. She threw herself under a train. He was running after her. Trying to save her.’ She shook her hair back out of her eyes and he saw the glint of tears.
‘How do you know?’
‘I don’t really. It sort of fits.’ Behind her one of the cats had come in from its hunting. It was sitting on the dresser carefully washing its face with its left paw. He accepted a glass of wine and stared round. The kitchen was pretty, attractive, cosy. All the things his own was not. ‘If you don’t want to come I’ll go and see him on my own. I’m just curious about what happened. I won’t tell you if you would rather not.’
She smiled. ‘I don’t think I would be able to contain my curiosity. I’ll come. If I don’t I won’t be able to stop thinking about her.’
Or get his voice out of my head.
Jim Maxell was ninety-four. His memory was as clear as crystal. But he shook his head at their request. ‘People have jumped, of course. But not a young woman. Not as far as I recall. The Station Hotel closed in nineteen fifty- four. It sort of went down hill, became less and less popular because the line was used less and less then when they closed the maltings up the lane that was the end of it. It used to be packed before the last war. Village people used to take the train in to market and then come back with money in their pockets. I can remember it just as you described it, love, noisy, smoky, the lamp-light spilling out across the pavement. There were quarrels a plenty.’ He gave a chuckle. ‘I can remember many a woman fetching her man a slap across the face for one reason or another – and vice versa!’
And with that they had to be content.
Over a ploughman’s in the pub in the village Chloe and Miles discovered they had more than an interest in a possible rail tragedy in common. Both alone, both in their own way bereaved, they felt their way cautiously forward: music, painting, books, gardening, cats. Exchanging a shy glance of complicity as they decided to consult the old newspapers in the library they even found they shared a taste for the death by chocolate pudding which was the pub’s speciality. And they were both, did they but realise it, now the centre of the village’s latest and hottest gossip.
The town’s modern library had the local paper on microfiche. Without names or dates it was not going to be easy to find out the truth – if there was a truth – behind the story. And secretly neither wanted to, not too soon. Further visits to the library would, after all, inevitably require further visits to small local restaurants to fuel the energy needed for research.
But before they could do that Chloe had to visit London again.
She promised him that she would tell him when she went, but something stopped her. The phone call from her largest client had come quite late. They needed the sketches the next day and the sketches were ready; there was no need to spend more time on them. All she needed to do was deliver them herself. Promising to be there by ten she sat on the sofa staring at the fire. Outside it was raining again. The wind had risen and she could hear the branches of the trees thrashing in the wind. The two cats were coiled together, yin and yang, in the old armchair that Edmund used to consider his own. She stared at them, remembering how they would vie for the favoured place on his knee and every night compromise in a love knot just like the one which they had made tonight. And like
