The silence: like the hush of a grey morning after the season’s first snowfall, or the quiet, the long and dark quiet just after twilight, in a graveyard where the flowers in cracked vases are brittle and brown; the sound of the fog; the voice of a shadow; the protection of the draperies drawn over the locked window, muffling traffic and wind and footsteps on the pavement.
The silence
She rolled over and held her breath, listening.
that whispered
She opened her eyes and held her breath, staring.
you’re alone all alone
Your imagination, Joan, she told herself as her arms grew rigid at her sides and the soles of her bare feet began a soft annoying tingling; it’s your imagination.
Listening.
Staring.
Finally sitting up and switching on the bedside lamp in one hurried move, blinking away the glow to search the room without climbing from the bed.
She smiled and shook her head.
The wardrobe doors were still tightly closed, the basin under the mirror wasn’t filling with things crawling to get her, the table and chair against the opposite wall hadn’t been turned upside down. There were packages on the floor, books stacked on the vanity; the room’s only armchair was still set by the window.
Everything was where it should be; nothing had been moved.
And outside, two floors below, the guttering roar of taxi cabs, the rumble of trucks, a group of pedestrians whose heels sounded like horses.
The world hadn’t gone away; it was all still there.
A ghost of anxiety made her yawn, receding echoes of an empty nightmare had her checking the room one more time, but the clock on the night table finally forced her out of bed, and she stretched, touched her toes, rolled her shoulders, pushed her fingers back through long brown hair that reached down to her waist. Another yawn that popped her jaw as she opened the door a crack and peered down the narrow hall to see if the other guests were stirring; closing it again and stripping off her nightgown, slipping into her robe, grabbing up a small bag that held her makeup, and all her brushes.
She grinned, almost giggled; I’m a convict, she thought, making a break for the wall.
A rush then into the bathroom before anyone could spot her, still not used to having to share sink and tub with people she didn’t know, hardly passed two words with, and she especially couldn’t let them see her before she dressed. Certainly not in the morning. The only time it had happened, two days after her arrival, she’d thought she would nearly blush herself to death.
Now she was more confident; the bed-and-breakfast almost felt like home.
Tomorrow, she told herself, I’m going to be naked and dare them to come.
The tub filled, steaming; the basin filled, sputtering; and she winked at her reflection in the spotty mirror. It was Saturday. No definite plans to fill the hours until dark. Nothing to do but hang around, play the tourist, maybe find a seat for a show.
A shrug—why not? Making schedules for herself was boring—and twenty minutes later she was down in the breakfast room, at a corner table by herself, munching a triangle of charred toast and avoiding the others, who never looked at her, never spoke to her beyond a brief morning’s greeting marked with polite absent smiles.
And that was fine with her.
She didn’t invite company, didn’t want it, didn’t need it.
She had come all the way to London as a test, to see if she was really and truly a grown-up after thirty-seven years; she had no idea what she would receive if she passed.
But she knew full well what she would get if she ran home too soon—a smug chorus from her friends of I told you so, Joanie.
Those same friends who seldom left the county when vacation time came around, and never left the country at all because the world was too big and, they claimed, too frightening, too cold. There were terrorists, airplane crashes, rapists in every nation just waiting for foreign victims, and why would she want to give up a sure thing at home for something so filled with the uncertain and the unknown?
There be dragons? Joan had asked, and they hadn’t understood.
She, on the other hand, had gone to college; she had even once been married. And when at last the television commercials had done their job, made their promises, she was determined that she might even learn what romance had to offer.
A grin as she finished her tea.
Romance. That’s what she told her friends because that’s what they wanted to hear. What she really meant, however, was adventure—which was, at the last, just something different than what she had, and no longer wanted. And so far, the adventure had consisted of taking the tours and listening to the guides and falling in love with everything she’d ever seen in the movies, read in her books, dreamed of at night when she dreamt herself a queen.
Not great; not terrible; but no damned adventure.
She rose with a sigh, and lingered for a few minutes in the foyer reading the theatre notices and museum discounts pinned to a corkboard on the wall. Then she went outside, took a deep breath, and glanced up at the sky.
There was blue, there was sun, there were trees whose leaves dappled the pedestrians with shadow. A delivery van. A dog walking its owner. A park at the end of the block where flowers accented the green.
A breeze that had her hair tickle her nose, and she decided to walk. Nowhere in particular. Just walk, and look, and perhaps something would strike her fancy and give her a good day, something she could bring home to show that she hadn’t hidden after all.
That’s what they thought she would do, of course—hide among the other tourists, hide in the hotel, hide in the largest stores where she was no different than the others, and where she wouldn’t be alone. They didn’t credit her with enough courage to go into the small places, the dusty places at the bottoms of steps at the bottoms of narrow lanes, where she would be the only one browsing through the aisles; they certainly didn’t believe she’d take in a night club, let a strange man hold her hand, let another stranger hold her dancing.
Her best friend had told her she was making a mistake, that she was, inside and out, a small town girl the city would eat alive; and London, for God’s sake? Once off the plane she’d never be seen again.
Joan felt the heat in her cheeks then, the anger that never failed whenever she heard the warnings, the cautions, the well-meaning fears that were little more than insults. She ducked her head and shook it, raised it again and felt better. And an hour later, after window shopping and dodging traffic, she stood on a corner on Charing Cross Road where it struck her that maybe she ought to take her first train ride ever. It didn’t matter where; it would be a true and honest adventure, her first time beyond the city and wouldn’t they be amazed.
She nodded sharply.
She smiled sweetly at a glum young man in gleaming leather who collided with her as she wheeled about and fairly marched through the nearest Underground entrance. A moment at the map on the tiled wall, and she decided that Victoria Station was the place to go. Waterloo somehow had echoes she didn’t trust.
And once at Victoria, bracing herself against the noise and the smells of food and all those people, she examined the dizzying lists of stops, puzzling at the times that didn’t seem to make sense. She almost panicked. She breathed deeply. And finally, in exasperation because the adventure seemed to be dying, she reached out a finger and brushed a smudge of dirt away from a place called Kelworth Market.
It was the right place.
She knew it.
This was what she wanted. There were no historical or literary associations right to mind, nor did it appear that British Rail had made it a vital part of its schedule. A village perhaps, or even less than that.
No tourists.
Just her.
A flutter about her heart as she paid for the ticket.
A chill and hollow in her stomach as she hurried for the gate when she realized the time and feared she’d miss her train.
This is dumb, she thought as she rushed toward the front, dodging school children in uniform who paid her no mind; when you get there, you idiot, you’re going to find out there’s no train back until tomorrow and no place to stay.
She giggled.
A matron in foxfur glared over her glasses.
She hauled herself into the first car and immediately found a place to sit facing forward, pressed close to the window and rested her forearms on the table between her seat and the one facing.
Dumb, Joanie Ash, this is truly dumb.
A bit sheepishly she shrugged at her faint and fading reflection in the dust-stained window, and winked when the train began to pull away.
Last chance, she warned a. . .
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