I saw her as soon as I walked in. She sat at the corner table, the tiny one with the bench seat that barely seats two, and gives you the view of the whole room. She wore rust-coloured jeans, and her black hair had a dazzling russet splash running through her fringe. She had an owl amulet around her neck, and her hair hid her eyes. The table in front of her was covered with unfamiliar-looking cards, laid out in an intricate pattern. I was curious, but there wasn't any time to stop. I was on duty in just a few minutes.
 
I ran through the door marked Private, narrowly missing Doug, his coat in his hand.
 
'Hey, boss. Got to go. Need to pick Mary up from the day care centre. You said it was okay?'
 
'Of course. I said you could. Give your ma-in-law a hug from me. Everything going okay this afternoon?'
 
I kissed him on the cheek as I squeezed past. Doug was my oldest friend, and I couldn't run the place without him. I could handle the arguments about games rules, and balance the books, but only Doug could bake the best vegan brownies and the lightest scones in town. I checked in on Sarah, who was waiting tables, and put my head round the door of the kitchen. Doug's partner John was plating up the last couple of lunch orders.
 
'Jenny! Hi, gorgeous. Doug was fretting that you weren't going to make it,' he said.
 
'I'm sorry. The bus was late, and the traffic was all gnarly round the Three Oaks roundabout.'
 
'It's fine. Don't be daft. Drink your tea. It's there on the side.'
 
I blew him a kiss, chugged down the mug of builder's tea the colour of terracotta, just how I like it, and took the two bowls of seafood stew through to the café.
 
The Board Room was the first games café in town, and after a slow start we are doing okay. People come for the board games, from snakes and ladders to the fantasy tabletop role player games, and stay for Doug's incredible cooking. We have customers that come alone and get drawn into other people's play, and others that come in groups. We even had a proposal, with an engagement ring hung around a tiny orc's neck. There are kids on Saturday afternoons, and retirees during the week. I love it. The atmosphere is just amazing.
 
I scanned the room to see if anyone had an order, needed a table clearing, or wanted to ask an in-depth question about the finer rules of double word score in Scrabble. I picked up a tray and the woman in russet looked up at me. Just as she placed a card down on the table, I heard a crash in the kitchen. I thrust the tray into Sarah's hands and dashed through the door. The kitchen floor was covered in shards of glass. John looked puzzled, his hands in front of him as if he were still holding the bowl that was now in a million pieces across the floor. A single bead of blood dawdled across his palm. Sarah came in behind me, put the tray down on the side, and told me to go back into the cafe, she would help John clear up. I pasted my best smile on, opened the door and told everyone that it was all fine. There was still an odd pressure in the air, and people's voices seemed muffled. I thought I caught a half smile from Russet in the corner, who went back to her unfamiliar game of cards. I pinched the bridge of my nose, thinking that my sinuses must be playing up.
 
I didn't think I had looked away, but I must have, because there was now a second woman beside her, dressed in pale jeans and a shimmering grey silky top. Her hair rippled and shone like quicksilver. The monochrome was broken by a glorious splash of deep pink lipstick. Silver reached across, and picked up and laid down a card. My ears popped and the pressure lifted. I heard someone laugh, and another person call my name for a coffee refill.
 
Silver looked at me, her head tipped to one side. She held out her coffee cup. I realised I had the filter jug in my hand but no memory of picking it up, or putting a cup on the small table. I poured the coffee, and she topped it up with the jug of hot milk beside her. She smiled at me and it left me inexplicably happy. It was as if her smile were just for me. Russet pointed at her cup, a glossy dark mug that I didn't remember seeing before. I poured out coffee and she drank it straight off, black and scalding hot.
 
I waited at tables, sorted out an argument about how you spell sturgeon, and gave a teenager a spare ten-sided die, with a promise that if he lost another one, he would be washing up for a week.
 
I saw Russet lay down a card. She smiled at Silver, pleased with what she thought was a particularly clever move. Silver frowned a little and pursed pink-slicked lips.
 
Outside, the sun went behind a cloud, and I flicked the lights on. The air became heavy with humidity. The change in pressure started a headache. Behind me, an elderly woman knocked a cup off her table. It smashed to the ground and the sound sent a zig zag of pain through my head. I span round.
 
'Shit. What now?'
 
I never usually snap at customers, even in moments of stress. Even when they lose stuff and break stuff. Something was really getting to me today.
 
'I'm sorry, Mrs Ross. Got a headache coming. I think there is a storm brewing.' The quiet and normally unflappable Mrs Ross looked close to tears.
 
I put a fresh mug of tea on her table, and called for Sarah to bring a dustpan and brush. The sound levels in the café were rising, as if people were talking over music, but there was nothing playing. I could almost feel a baseline thump, like a band rehearsing in a room upstairs. There was an eye-wateringly bright flash of lightening, and all the lights went out. One of the Scrabble players screamed and knocked the board to the ground in an avalanche of plastic letters. Down on the edge of the water, the Greek statue that had been there as long as I remembered – the odd one with the tall plinth – toppled into the water. The lights came back on and rain fell outside, hard and deafening against the glass. The café was silent.
 
Russet stared hard at Silver, as if challenging her to something. As I walked towards them, the air seemed to crackle, and my hair tried to stand on end. Silver studied the cards, touching them with a pale finger tipped with a glossy metallic nail. She started to pick up one and then another, then set them both back down. Russet started to smile a smile that was beautiful but not quite nice. But then Silver grinned with almost childlike joy and picked up a card, slapping it down on the other side of the table.
 
The sun came back through the clouds, and Sarah slipped a piece of shortbread into Mrs Ross' hand with a grin, tapping her finger on the side of her nose.
 
Looking at me, Silver triumphantly gathered up all the cards and slipped them into her pocket. She drained her coffee, raising the cup in a salute. The door slammed, and they were both gone. I went over to clear the table and saw a piece of gold leaf stamped with an owl, and a silver rod with snakes twined around it. Doug came back through the door and looked at the table.
 
'That's a ghost coin version of Charon's obol. And a caduceus. They are beautiful. Where did they come from?'
 
We sat in the setting sun, looking over the water at Ferryman's Wharf. Behind us, John and Sarah cleared the tables and tidied up, the blue plaster on John's hand showing up in the gloom. And Doug told me the story of Charon, who took the souls across the water from the land of the living to the land of the dead in return for a coin, and Hermes or Mercury, the messenger of the gods who slipped between the worlds of the mortal and the divine.
 
I'm not sure who paid the ferryman today. But whoever it was took the ten-sided die with them.

I never used to talk to people on buses. I just wouldn't. I would create a zone of no talking by ostentatiously reading my book or the freebie papers people leave in dishevelled piles. If anyone said anything I would reply non-commitally without even looking up, and then carry on reading, my coat pulled tight around me.

I never meant to be rude, but that half hour on the bus was my 'me time'. In the morning it was my time to step away mentally from John and his incessant nags and digs. The verbal punches and kicks where he would undermine me, slowly but surely sapping every scrap of confidence. In the evening it was how I would switch off from work, trying to untangle myself from the stories of physical abuse from the women who streamed through the shelter. Trying to forget the sight of all those bruises. I didn't see the irony. I didn't see a lot of things then.

He sat down next to me, breathing a heavy Monday morning sigh. He was pleasant looking, or at least the bit between his hat and scarf, was. He wore thick gloves and heavy boots, and was probably slim, but it was difficult to say under all his layers. I was reading Women Who Love Too Much, and he looked down at my book and grinned. He tried to make conversation, but I smiled, nodded and went back to reading. The same happened each day that week – he sat next to me, whether there were spare spaces elsewhere or not, swathed in woollies. He tried to talk, I let him down gently and read my book.

The next week, I saved a seat for him. Not obviously, just putting my handbag down next to me on the seat, and moving it as I saw him coming down the aisle. Still not talking but exchanging smiles. He wasn't there the Monday after, and I felt oddly let down. Tuesday, I was scanning the line of people climbing onto the bus, when I saw him running up the road. He flumped down in the sear next to me. I was dying to ask him where he had been the day before but that would have meant breaking my rule. He fished in the pocket of his voluminous coat and got out a book. I spotted its handmade cover, pink paper with a title written with a Sharpie – Men Who Sit Next To Women Who Read Women Who Love Too Much On The Bus.

I couldn't help it. I laughed. And then we started to talk. He was Harry Willcox, single, recently split up from a long-term relationship and gently, wittily self-deprecating about men and women. He made me laugh. And he made me talk. I told him stuff that I had never told anyone else, about John and his words. It was my morning therapy. We would get off at the same stop in town, and chat before our ways parted at the War Memorial, at top end of Broad Street. Over weeks and months, we grew close, but I was still too absorbed in my relationship with John, still too convinced that it was all my fault. Still not able to see a good thing for what it was.

"Linda Carbone, that man doesn't deserve you. You are beautiful, clever, funny and really rather wonderful." He leaned across to kiss me. That was just all too much. I ran out in front of the bus, just as it pulled away.

Harry doesn’t travel on the bus any more.

Neither does the driver.
​
But I always do. There's usually someone to sit next to, whatever the time of day or night. I listen to their stories. I tell them that I know not all bruises are visible. And if there’s no-one, I read, my coat pulled tight around me.

It started at the bus stop, at the end of what had been an incredibly long day. As the lowest of the low, with just one foot on the publishing ladder, I got all the 'special' jobs. Meaning, the ones that no-one else wanted to do. And they often seemed to be the ones that involved getting home to your tiny and faintly cabbage-smelling studio 'flat' at obscure times of night. "You'll be all right, Jen, won't you," they'd say cheerfully as they headed off home to 2.4 children or dates in overpriced bars, with the implication that you should be grateful for every single one of the exciting opportunities that the job offered.

As it slid towards midnight, I hit send on the final email and locked up with a sigh of relief. I was ready for a break, a week off for rest and relaxation. Nothing planned, just chilling.

I saw the night bus coming and I ran across the road, a tightly timed dash through the traffic. The bus pulled up short with a screech of brakes, juddering to a halt halfway on the pavement, and so did the car coming in the opposite direction.

It was then that the whistling started; a low musical whistle in the dark that made my scalp prickle. I saw a man walking along the opposite pavement, lit by the sodium lights and muffled against the night. The whistling faded as he walked past, and it was only then I realised that I had been holding my breath.

I put my key in the door, grateful to be home at last, and I heard the whistling again. Low and quiet, carrying a tune that tickled the edges of familiarity, but that I just couldn't place. I leapt inside and slammed the door, wedging it shut with a sculpture left there by the previous tenant. The whistling stopped, and I threw myself down on the single bed that, piled up with cushions, doubled as a sofa by day. Half an hour later, I gave myself a stern talking to about how sound travels in an old house, especially one divided into as many microscopic flats as humanly possible. I finally slept, but with unsettled dreams that I couldn't remember in the morning, other than the tiny snatches of almost familiar tunes.

The next day I pottered around the flat or wandered along the river. I'd almost forgotten about the whistling until that night. As I started to drift away into that place between awake and asleep, I heard the whistling in the dark for a third time. I felt cold all over and hid under the covers.

Over the next few nights it came back every time I found myself alone in the dark, the tunes getting clearer and more distinct.

I was convinced I was losing my mind. I thought about seeing a doctor, but I knew all he would say was tinnitus or stress or mild depression, and had I thought about losing weight and exercising more. Instead I just longed for the long, light days of summer and left the radio on low. The next two nights the muted voices of Radio 4 and the World Service were there as I woke in the morning and fell asleep at night. But the whistling in the dark started to leach through, like damp through plaster after a storm. There was no-one I could tell, and I really wasn't sure how much more I could take.

For no conscious reason, on a walk around the quiet daytime streets I stepped inside a church. I'm not sure what I wanted, or even what I expected, but perhaps I was subconsciously looking for peace. As the darkness of the building enclosed me, I flinched. I was alone; it was dark. But there was no whistling, just a sense of peace. I must have spent hours there, perhaps even dozed in the silence, because when I stirred myself I was stiff from sitting, and the windows were dark. The main door was shut but I slipped out of a small, unlocked door at the foot of the tower. The whistling followed me home, but I felt calmer, and slept well for the first time in a week. I sent an 'I'm off sick' email into work to give myself an extra few days, and spent the next day in the gloom and silence of the church.

That evening I heard a younger and an older voice speaking quietly together in the pews in front of me. I slipped further into the darkness, not wanting to disturb the intense conversation, and a few words and sentences carried across to me.

"Father, I don't know what to do. I don't know how much more I can take. I see shadows in the corner of the flat. Sometimes I hear a radio playing quietly. It's as if they took her stuff but left her behind. The other day as I opened the front door to go in, it slammed and a sculpture, one I’d found in a cupboard, fell behind it, holding it shut. It was all I could do to open the door. Whistling helps – maybe it just keeps my spirits up. A bit of old-fashioned bravado."

He laughed, but it was strained.

"Would you like to pray, my son?" the priest said.

They bowed their heads and I felt sick, dizzy, and faint. The whistling started up again. I ran out of the church, and no-one stirred. No-one except the younger man.

That night, I sat on the floor in the darkest corner of the flat, my arms wrapped around my knees, and the darkness pressing. The radio on low. I heard whistling and quiet footsteps. And I knew that the haunting would continue.
​
For as long as I stayed there.

This is based on my story of the same name, published in 2007 in Read By Dawn Volume Two - I've adapted it to be read aloud.

Behind him, her door slams shut, cutting off all chances of return. He is in the street, on the street in fact. All his belongings are in her cupboards, on her shelves. His wallet and keys are in the jacket slung over her chair. He can’t go back, at least not tonight.

In the distance, he sees the vaguely familiar face of a neighbour. He raises his hand and sets off down the street, as if being the wrong side of a slammed door is the most natural thing in the world.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
The argument was devastating in its finality, and has left him alone in a place he came to only for her. The stupid, pointless fight had started over something and nothing, but as fights increasingly did over the dying days of their relationship, it descended into a battle about his distance and his guilt over something he still cannot remember.

He becomes more frantic, tasting her taunts in his mouth and spitting out the bitterness of the phrases. The few people treading the narrow pavements hear his mutterings and see his pale face and cross the road. He keeps walking.

He decides to hitch to where he has some friends. But it’s getting dark and he has become entangled in the back streets of her unfamiliar northern city. The Victorian redbrick terraces menace him with their hard eyes of glass and doors set in gaping toothless mouths. His heart and his footsteps beat harder and faster.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
His anger turns to fear and he lunges blindly round a corner, finding himself in an alley enclosed by dark, windowless buildings and ending in a brick wall, broken only by a door.

The door is painted a fading, blistered green. The surface around the handle is splintered, as if someone – something – tried to break it down, escape from the alley. The broken wood is discoloured and darkened by the passing of winters. Nothing has moved in this alley for many years.

He turns—this, obviously, is not a way out of the hated city. But... the entrance has disappeared. He is trapped in a box of red brick walls. He looks to the sky, now completely dark and howls in child-like fear. When he stops, he hears a choking wet sound. And a name, his name, one he no longer uses. He begins to remember.

And so does it. In the depths of the alleyway, in the dark, oily shadows of a storm drain, it stirs. It is awake. And can now see a way to escape.

Behind him, from the drain, he hears footsteps. A hard, clipping tap, the sound of a child's party shoe on stone flags.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
He spins around. There is no one there. In front of him, the door. Behind him, the footsteps. The footsteps get closer, bring with them the sound of water and mud. He sees something in the shadows. He half-remembers a reaching hand.

Panic-stricken, he runs toward the door and snatches at the handle – he will try anything to get away from the approaching footsteps.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
The door opens easily, on oiled hinges. As he steps quickly inside, it slams behind him. The second door to slam behind him this day. But this time he breathes a sigh of relief. The sound of the footsteps is blocked out.
He stands inside a beautiful living room, his shadow etched black on the carpet. The furniture glows the deep, rich brown of long cared-for wood. He knows this place, and it brings a sense of comfort, of reassurance, as if he has come home. The door, behind him, now has a glass pane in it, and through it he sees a path leading down through a garden to a lake. He walks to the door and places his hands flat on the glass, feeling the warmth of the sun against his chilled hands. Down by the lake, a pretty blonde girl in a white frock and shiny black party shoes laughs and sings. She is balancing on the old stone flags at the edge of the water.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
Seeing him, she turns to beckon him out.

He feels a chill watery wash of fear. As he goes to the door, words of warning on his lips, the sun winks out. The lake disappears, its surface rippled as if by a thrown pebble.

And he feels guilt from the forgotten aftermath of a child's mistake; guilt for what he didn’t do and guilt for the forgetting.
​
He turns and the room is now filled with piles of mouldering furniture where before has been warmth and beauty. The old door is there again in a blank wall, and the footsteps echo once more in his ears. This time they are almost at the door.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
As he runs through the house, he catches glimpses of rooms he remembers. A warm kitchen smelling of baking bread, a stinking bathroom, a beautiful dining room, a dark bedroom with a rotting child-size bed. And always, the wet tapping of the footsteps.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
Just as he sees the polished wood front door, he trips and falls, hitting his chin hard on the chilly black and white floor. As he scrabbles to find his feet a tendril of wet cold, a child-sized hand, wraps around his ankle and he smells the damp stench of stagnant water.

She drags him back and the chipped and cracked marble tiles scrape his belly. His bruised and bloody fingertips scratch at the floor. He catches hold of the edge of a broken tile. Stopping with a jolt that almost tears his spine apart, he wrenches his leg free, leaving skin and sock and shoe in her clutches. Leaving a bloody bare footprint on the stained marble, he falls out of the door into an unfamiliar, well-lit street. When he turns, he sees only an ordinary red brick terrace, not the house that was far away and a long time ago.

He waits a moment, and the footsteps begin with a a quiet tapping ringed with water that becomes louder.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
As he runs, the steps quieten. With a silvery scar winding around his leg up to the knee and a shuddering limp, he leaves the city, hitching lifts with the few drivers brave enough to take a one-shoed, wild-eyed and silent young man with dried blood on his chin. In the new city he listens for footsteps, and eventually he hears them, very distant and quiet.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
When they get too close, he moves again. And again. To another city, another town, another village, and the footsteps go away. For a while. For a very little while. But then they start again, quiet at first.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
Each time they find him a little more quickly, they are a little louder, bring a little more dampness with them and come a little closer.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
One day, because he stays somewhere a little too long, perhaps the footsteps will get a little too close...
 
[tap tap tap tap]

"Hello. Hello?"

Static. Then silence. Then a dialling tone. The calls had been happening for years. The phone company had checked the line again and again, but with no success. So, I just lived with them. Assumed that there was some kind of glitch. Mildly irritating, but not a big deal.

And then, after a while, the calls started to change. A voice – a very distant voice – that I could almost hear through the crackling. It sounded like a woman, saying something and ending with a sob. But each time, the line went dead.

The calls were on and off. Sometimes days, weeks or even months would go by without one, and then there would be several in a day. I still couldn't quite hear the voice, or what it said, however hard I listened.

The phone stayed in the hall, even when we decorated the house and rearranged all the furniture. When we got cordless phones, the base unit and the chargers stayed on the old-fashioned telephone table. And when we all got mobiles, it was almost the only call we got to the landline. I could have blocked the calls, I could have moved the phone, I could have changed my number, but I didn't. I wasn't sure why, but it just seemed important. When the calls didn’t come, they featured in my dreams. Never quite directly. Just a ringing phone, or a half-heard woman’s voice.

And then the phone rang again, late on a Tuesday night. This time the line was clearer. A familiar voice. She said “Mum”. And I realised I knew what she would say next.

"Mum. I can't go on. I can't do this anymore." She sounded desperate, and I dropped to the floor, clutching the phone. I tried to make her hear me and my shouted words of comfort. But she couldn't. She sobbed, and the line went dead.

I have lived in this house since I was a baby – my mother was only 15 when I was born, and my gran took us both in. My mother ran away about a year later. We spoke on the phone sometimes, and I saw her every now and then, but the occasions became fewer and further between.

Late one Tuesday night, when I was 15, my gran answered the phone. It was my mother. Gran didn’t know that I was close behind her, that I could hear every word. My mother said, “Mum. I can't go on. I can't do this anymore.” Gran called the police. They traced my mother, broke into her shabby flat and found her unconscious on the floor, next to a pile of sleeping pills and a bottle of cheap vodka.
​
I haven't heard the voice since. Not for many years. But I know now why I can never move away or change my number. Because one day the phone could ring again, and I might be able to make her hear my voice. I know that nothing will change. Nothing can change. But perhaps I can let her know that I'm okay. 

Amanda, forty-ish. She’s in a dark shirt, sleeves rolled up, a dark mid-calf skirt and old black boots. Her hair is pinned up on her head. She is wearing a wraparound apron that covers her clothes. There’s a tin bucket and scrubbing brush at her side. She’s leaning on a wooden broom.
 
Hello, do come in! You’ve come to look around. Do bear with me, I’m still tidying up. Actors – such messy people. Just look at this stage – it’s had everything dropped on it over the years. Fake blood. Greasepaint. Tea. Unmentionable things that time we did the Nativity. And muggins here gets to clear it all up of course.

This little theatre’s a part of my life. I met my husband here. He was in East Lynne – you know, the one with the line ‘Dead! Dead! And never called me mother’. There’s a picture of the cast over there. The lady mayoress played Isabel Vane. She was – shall we say – statuesque. Not quite a beautiful and forlorn young woman. He was so wonderful in the play, and so good looking. I started to help out at the theatre just to get to know him. Not on stage, you know – I could never do that – but making tea at rehearsals, helping with props, sweeping the stage after shows. I love hearing that buzz as the audience settle, and then the moment of quiet as the curtain rises, just before the applause starts.

Have you seen all the posters and photos in the entrance? They are from every show we’ve done. You can see my John in them. I’ll show you on your way out. They’ve got a bit dusty, but I’ve only got one pair of hands.

Watch your step – that’s the trapdoor. It’s a bit wobbly. John played the Demon King in a show for the children. They all screamed as he rose up out of the stage in a cloud of smoke. I have to admit that I did too.

John’s such a good actor. I go through his lines with him every night when he is in a play, and his work is so good about letting him take time off for a Wednesday matinee. I think they like having an employee with his name in lights.

There haven’t been any shows lately. I think people are a lot busier now.

​That, up there? That’s the bar. It’s so beautiful. The wooden bar is as smooth as silk. When I polish the wood, the room fills with the smell of beeswax and lavender. It’s dark up there now but when the lights go on, the stained-glass lampshades glow and the wood shines.

We’ve got a green room, and dressing rooms for the ladies and gents. No room for one for the star, but everyone mucks in together.

My John’s in Hay Fever. There’s the poster over there. They say it will all be over by Christmas, but while we’re waiting, people still need to have some fun.

As the curtain fell, I was backstage as always, with my broom and my bucket and my scrubbing brush. I heard planes, and an explosion. No-one left their seats. I wonder where it landed. Those poor folk.

Mind how you go down there – it’s really uneven, and the light’s not working. I’ve been waiting ages for them to sort it out.

Anything else you want to know? I’m sorry you’ve had to do with me, but there’s no-one else around. It’s just I’ve got a lot to do. I need to check out the dressing rooms, as someone always leaves something behind. And I’ve got to get the stage clean. These stains are hard to shift.

The curtain goes up at 3. Always a matinee on Wednesday. Don’t be late – everyone loves Hay Fever.

The old stable was quiet that late Christmas eve night. There was the sheep that had lambed the night before, far too early, asleep in the straw with her skinny and startlingly white twins. The old horse dozing and snuffling gently, occasionally shifting a foot. A couple of half tame farm cats slumbering in the wall-mounted hay rack. And me.

Now that had been a row. Fuelled by the presence of the flaming elf on the shelf, the lack of the Christmas Eve box that "everyone has got, Daddy", the fact that the shop had run out of Brussels sprouts and I should have gone earlier when I was asked, and all the other irritations and tirednesses and not meeting expectations that come along with Christmas, I just exploded. And, so, instead of being lovely-and-cuddly-Christmas-jumper-wearing-reading-stories-in-front-of-the-fire-and hanging-up-the-stockings-Dad, I was in-a-flaming-temper-and-storming-away-from-crying-children-and-hiding-in-the-stable-Dad. And yes, I know, it's not big and not clever and not fair. And I felt horrible. But I knew I couldn't go back in. Not yet. That would show that I was wrong and I wasn't. Well, I didn't think I was. Or was I? Oh, I don't know.

I must have fallen asleep. That's the only way I can explain it. And there must have been a power cut. Because when I opened my eyes the stable was colder and darker, and the light was no longer streaming in from the yard. I sat up; all of a sudden, I'd stopped being grumpy-dad and turned into worried-about-Marion-and-the-kids-dad. I reached into my pocket for my phone, ready to turn the torch on. But it wasn't there. And neither were my trousers. Instead I was wearing some kind of rough fabric tunic, tied round my waist with a piece of cord. I looked out into the yard in the cold light of the moon, and it was my yard but it wasn't. The gates and walls were there but the house was smaller, rougher, more like a hut, and the windows glowed in a soft yellow flickering light, not the harshness of electric bulbs.

I sat back down, abruptly, and that's when I saw her. A girl, she couldn't have been more than 20, holding a baby wrapped up in linen. There were still streaks of blood on his tiny wrinkled face, and she tenderly wiped them away with her thumb. I smelled the tang of blood and shit and sweat and earth and damp straw. The smell of birth. A man was with her, and he looked down with such love and grief at the two faces, one sweat-stained and exhausted and joyful, the other small and perfect and sleeping. I could see the tears on his cheeks and in his beard, glinting in the moonlight.

I looked around, and I swore the sheep and her lambs, and the horse, were watching the figures. Even the cats' eyes glinted green in the darkness. At the door, silhouetted against the frosted cobbles, there was a goat and a cow peering in, and between their hooves there were mice, rats and rabbits, a dove and a couple of hens. The only sound was the purring of the cats.

I stood up suddenly, and hit my head hard on the hay rack. The world flashed white, and the last thing I remember, before tumbling unceremoniously into the straw, was all those sets of eyes looking at me and the sweet sleepy smile of the girl. And then dark.

The cold woke me up this time, and the light – a sharp bright morning, full of frost and sun and farm noises. I was laying in the straw next to the sheep and her twins. I rubbed my head. No bruise. Checked my pockets. There was my phone. And no girl or baby or goats. Just my wife's voice.

"Morning sweetheart," she said. "Assumed that you'd fallen asleep after lambing her – it must have been after two that you came out. She looks fine – daft old girl."

"It's not… Christmas morning… what…"

"You're still asleep – it's Christmas eve, you daft old farmer. Did you have a nip of something to keep the cold out? There's a brew on in the kitchen." She started to walk back to the farm house, and then turned back, a touch of exasperation. "I don't suppose you…"

She sighed.

"Well, we'll just have to…"

The sprouts! And if it was Christmas eve… that was the weirdest dream.

"I'll nip out to the farm shop first," I said, standing up and shaking the straw out of my jumper. Graeme's still got some Brussels, I think. And if not, he can share his. He owes us for letting his tup out early and getting the old girl here up the duff. And how about I get the girls something for Christmas Eve. A book or a game or something? They've actually been quite good, I suppose."

I grinned. And she grinned back. A real grin, rather than the strained smile I've seen a lot lately. As I turned towards the stable door, something white caught my eye. I stooped to pick it up. It was a scrap of white linen, with the fleeting smell of new life. Sometimes, we do get a fresh start. However unlikely it seems.

It was a cold night, that Christmas eve night, as we walked back from the pub. Warmed from the fire and the food and the beer, we hunkered down inside hats and scarves and coats and boots, trying to hold onto the heat as we stepped out of the door. Every surface glittered like diamonds, reflecting the chill light of the distant stars. Behind the long snaking dry stone walls, sheep huddled together, and the night was so still and quiet we could hear them breathing. The hills rose up either side of us, crisp white with snow and bathed in the cold light of the full moon. Etched with the blue-black shadows of the winter trees and the footsteps of the fox.

As we dropped down into the village, the windows of the church glowed with the flickering gold of candlelight and the warmth of centuries-old stained glass. Around the edges of the door leaked light and sound, the sweet melancholy of In the Bleak Midwinter and the quiet rumble of prayer.
​
Tiny white and blue lights edged the trees, lighting our way as we walked through the streets, our footsteps muffled and creaking in the snow that had only stopped falling a few hours before. We tiptoed into the house, not wanting to break the mood of stillness, and stayed silent, arms around each other, bathed in the glow of the damped down fire and the lights of the tree. And as we stood there, the church bells pealed Christmas through the cold night air. 

This was her hourglass, and when I flip it over, I can hear her voice, bickering with me about how long to boil an egg. Telling me I've thought long enough, and it's time to put the Scrabble letters on the board. Asking me to tell her when the time's up so that she can pour the perfect four-minute cup of tea. Laughing as I time her putting up her waist length hair to go to work. Insisting that she was only going to be out in the garden for five minutes, and grinning when she came back to find me standing in the doorway, hourglass in hand.

It was in my pocket that night. I was home before her, and I was getting ready to make bread. I'd mixed the yeast and the warm water and the sugar. The timer was broken, so I'd decided to let the hourglass run through four times to give the mixture time to froth. It wasn't really necessary but watching the sand run through the glass in the sleepy warm afternoon sunshine was soothing, almost hypnotic. The sound of the crash took a moment to work its way into my befuddled head.

It was all done by the time I got to the garden gate. A man sat inside the deep red Jaguar, his hair falling forwards, his face blank and white. And tucked underneath the gleaming front bumper, her bicycle. She was face down, still and quiet, her tweed skirt rucked up around her knees, her white silk shirt growing pink. And a cascade of late cabbage roses and heady sweet peas scattered around her. When I close my eyes, all I can see is her pink lace slip, her favourite, almost frivolous under the hem of her sensible skirt.

The ambulance arrived in seconds, or in days, I'm not quite sure which, and I was shooed away by the capable and set-faced men in uniform. We didn't have a car, but Mr Jenkins, our neighbour, drove me over to the hospital.

They wouldn't let me in to see her. I was only her landlady, the spinster she shared a house with. I found the hourglass in my pocket – it must have been in my hand as I ran out of the door. It was wrapped tight in my fingers when I heard her voice, quiet, tense, asking for me. But still they wouldn't let me in. All they wanted to know from me was whether she had any family, and where they were. I told them what I knew.

They left me alone, and I turned the hourglass over and over, but I didn't hear her voice any more. I must have dozed in that hard wooden chair, because the next I heard was an auxiliary, rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the polished floor, with an elderly woman on her arm. Later, a frantic call for a nurse, running feet, and then a doctor, walking quietly, a man in no hurry. And I knew.

On the long, cold bus journey home, the hourglass turned and glinted under my fingers, under the early morning streetlights, and all I could think was at least she didn't die alone.

Her brother came to clear her things, and he treated me civilly, distantly. No discomfort, just the politeness reserved for staff. He told me about the funeral, and seemed surprised when I turned up. I sat at the back, looking at the grieving family in the front two rows. I said my silent goodbyes. And I never had another… tenant.

I've still got the hourglass, and now, watching the sand running though, it feels I'm seeing my future running through into my past.

I might give it to my niece, when she marries her girlfriend next weekend, in the registry office right next to the beautiful park. We will have a picnic in the sunshine, she said.

I might tell her what I have told no-one else, about the woman who, in a different life, could have been her aunt.

I think she might understand.