by Alison Giles
I nodded.
‘I could wait for you. Or come back and pick you up.’
‘No, I’ll walk down.’
Fallen leaves, crunched underfoot as I strolled, unhurriedly but with a certain briskness in my step, towards the gate at the far end. I leaned against it for a while marvelling, as though seeing it for the first time, at the familiar view of hedges, fields and woods. Or, rather, at the sense of space.
Less than a year since I first came here, convinced – that day in February – that my journey was a mistake. Smiling, I struggled with the spring latch on the gate and pushed it open sufficiently to allow me to squeeze through. I walked forward to the spot where Father had chosen, in his painting, to place me.
I flung my arms wide, stretching out towards horizons blurred against the mid-November sky. My mental reach encompassed the oak under which Andrew and I had sat that first time we’d come here together, the ponies grazing further down the slope, the rooftops of Cotterly – the chimneys of Wood Edge now identifiable among them – and the hills rising all around. In the stillness of a lull in the breeze, I could almost swear I discerned the sound of the stream bubbling through the dip below. I opened my mouth and breathed in the autumnal smell of nature resting after the activity of summer. I let the taste out gently. ‘Thanks, Dad,’ I said.
I stood for a moment or two longer, relishing the air smoothing across my face. Then I turned. Andrew, and Flora and Ginny too, were waiting for me.
About the Author
Alison Giles graduated from Leeds University in the early 1960s and later trained as a psychodynamic counsellor, working mainly with young people. Now, settled in Kent and with her family grown up, she has turned to writing. Meadowland is her first novel.
About the Publisher
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