Bumping Uglies

Epilogue

As I meandered through Euston Station, marvelling at the enormity of the crowds of people thronging from the concourse to the platforms, I looked at the small orange ticket in my hands and wondered what it represented.

It was the means of getting home, and was kindly funded by the Metropolitan Police as the only material price of keeping my silence, but what was home, exactly?

It was hard to feel anything other than a sense of loss. I grieved for Thatch, who had died to save Ty and me, and who had lived the past year or more to teach and guide me through the world.

I had thought that I might have been teetering on the precipice of love, dangerously close to falling in head-first, and I grieved because that had been snatched away. It was hard to shake the sense that Sophie had played me all along to get to Richard and the photographic blackmail that he held over her. I was sure that I would never see her again.

Lastly, my friendship with Ty - which I had missed terribly when he had been forced away after the last clusterfuck we had blundered into - looked to be unlikely to resume for some time, if ever.

Above it all, I felt empty; directionless, adrift.

The train flew north, and I watched the patchwork green of fields and stone buildings flashing past the window. It gave me a vague sense of longing to get back to Pebble Deeping; to heal and rest and recover. I wanted to tend to the land and forget.

I could see the changing of the seasons out of the train window as Autumn bled into Winter and I felt an overwhelming need to bar myself away, to hibernate, while I took stock of everything. Thatch was right, people needed to change with the seasons. Perhaps in the Spring I could grow again.

It wasn't until the train was pulling into Wolverhampton, and I saw the canals and the disused industrial buildings that rusted quietly as the city flowed above and around them, that I felt the sharp stab of memories of what had happened. I actually tried to close my eyes, but that made it worse.

The subsequent taxi journey out to Pebble Deeping took a heavy toll on what remained of my available cash, but that hardly seemed to matter. I was eventually bundled out of the taxi on the main road at the entrance to the farm because the driver refused to "get shit on his tyres".

There was a nip of frost settling in the air and the majority of the leaves lay on the ground like a russet carpet. I admired the row of skeletal trees that lined the rutted driveway down to the farmyard, with their limbs twisted toward the sky in silent benediction.

I was surprised to see a broad manila envelope jutting out of the normally superfluous post box that was nailed to the first tree trunk on the right.

The list of people that knew where I lived was pretty small, and I assumed that this was most likely some sort of circular. It probably contained glossy and gaudy advertising for double glazing or a cleaning service for the gutters that neither the farmhouse nor the barn actually had.

I was temporarily distracted from the unusual presence of the envelope by the quiet sound of a canine yelp emanating from the long grass verge beneath the boulevard of trees. I thought I caught sight of a scrap of off-white and chestnut fur.

I gave a short whistle, and, in immediate response, Fungus popped her head up then limped feebly out of the grass to sniff at my shoes. She looked more than half-starved, her ribs standing proud beneath her coat that had lost all gloss. I tried to remember how long had it been since Thatch had left her to go to the Hawne basin, presumably at Ty's request?

The dog looked from me to the entrance of the drive forlornly.

"He's gone, girl," I bent down to pat her and gave her crown a ruffle. "You had better stay with me now. Let's get you some grub, eh?"