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 barely 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 cliched? The two theatre ticket stubs in a pocket, a broken pearl ear ring in his jacket, the programme for an art
