The Third Shadow

Seventeen

~~~~~

Beeston, I remembered - this was the part of the city where Sarah lived. Fortunately, only one Bracewell was listed in the phone directory for this area. My sat-nav did the rest.

The city seemed strangely deserted; only a smattering of umbrella-huddled shoppers were out braving the rain, a few hooded teenagers dawdling on their way home from school. I was directed to an anonymous looking terraced street fifteen minutes or so beyond the city centre. A first floor light suggested someone was at home.

Easing the van into a vacant parking space diagonally across the street, I sat for some moments contemplating the veined rivulets of rain racing their way down the windscreen. Now I was here, I wondered what I hoped to achieve. What I was going to say. Hi Sarah, was just passing...

I hadn't even remembered to bring an umbrella from Italy with me, I realised, rooting vainly inside the holdall on the passenger seat. A bit like visiting the moon without a tank of oxygen.

Sighing, steeling myself for a soaking,  I unclicked seatbelt. As I did so, the front door suddenly spilled a figure out onto the street. Slender, frail somehow despite her youth. The elder of Sarah's two daughters I could only presume. I tried to remember the name: Alison? Alice? Frowning aganst the rain, a tangle of strawberry blonde hair fell over one shoulder as she struggled with her umbrella. The black clothes and heavy eyeliner reminded me a little of Ellie at the same age. Her expression wasn't angry or defiant though, just a pure, striking melancholy.

The umbrella finally opening, she scurried off in the opposite direction, my neck twisting as I followed her progress, watched her disappear around the corner. A crafty cigarette in a friend's bedroom, I wondered? A clandestine meeting with some hand-crawling, undeserving lad? Something like that, I hoped. Something normal, hers the same secrets as sixteen-year-old girls everywhere.

*

From upstairs came the dull thud of pop music; from the kitchen, the sharper clatter of cupboard doors being opened and closed as Sarah sought out teabags and sugar. In the meantime I was left to study the backyard view through the window in front of me as I towelled myself dry on the settee. Ankle high weeds sprouted between the flagstones; sections of perimeter wall were in desperate need of repointing. An upturned ladies' bicycle bore only rear wheel, the front propped against the wall, puncture repair postponed. The sense of conjugal absence was almost tangible.

"Two sugars you said, right?"

I'd said one in fact, but smiled anyway as she placed my mug down onto the coffee table before me. Her own she took with her to the armchair to my right, hands cradling its warmth. I'd forgotten how nippy England could be even in June, had been wildly optimistic with the choice of clothing I'd packed. Inside my skull, I could feel the beginning of a headachey cold - a still-distant yet approaching thunder.

"Took me a couple of moments to place you," she said. "Thought it was another ruddy journalist." This explained  her less than welcoming scowl at the front door. "Well, I mean, been so long, hasn't it?"

I took the opportunity to study her a little, could conclude only that the intervening nine months had been less than kind. Crow's feet had appeared at the corners of her eyes; the centre parting in her hair was now peppered grey. She was much paler than I remembered, had put on a good stone or so too. Still those eyes though, that intense, disarming emerald.

"Maybe I shouldn't have come." That I'd voiced the thought out loud surprised me a little. "Only likely to stir up bad memories for you."

She sipped at her tea, gazed at some indefinable spot on the wall in front of her. "Oh, don't worry. Just waking up in the morning is enough for all the memories to come flooding back." Turning her neck to me, she then attempted a smile. "Really Mr Jacks, it's great to see you again. You were so kind. Christ knows how I'd have got through those first couple of days without you."