Past Remembering by Catrin Collier

Author:Catrin Collier
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909840614
Publisher: Accent Press
Published: 2012-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Ronnie had deliberately placed the alarm clock out of reach on the tallboy opposite the bed. It was the only way he could guarantee that he would get up in the morning. When it rang, he reluctantly forced himself into consciousness, folded back the bedcovers and fumbled his way through the blackout. Silencing the bell, he hitched up the cord on his pyjama trousers, pushed the curtains aside and stared out at the murky silhouette of the mountain that flowed down to the back wall of Laura’s house.

Dawn was still two hours away. He wondered how he’d managed to run the Tumble café nineteen hours a day for all those years before he had married Maud. This was only the second morning he’d had to open up for the early morning tram and train crews, and he felt as though he were sleepwalking.

Allowing the curtain to fall, he switched on the light. The sight of Tony still lying in one half of the double bed irritated him. Pulling back the bedclothes, he folded them over the footboard before picking up his crutch and the dressing gown that had been Eddie’s.

Tony creased his eyes against the light. He began to protest, but as the symptoms of hangover penetrated his awareness, his mumblings turned into a moan.

‘It’s morning,’ Ronnie announced in a deliberately loud voice. Scooping his clothes from the chair next to the bed, he limped to the door.

‘My head hurts like hell.’ Unable to face moving to the bottom of the bed to retrieve the sheet and blankets, Tony curled into the foetal position and pulled the pillow over his head.

‘And so it should after what you drank.’

‘It’s worse than it’s ever been before.’

‘Probably because I hit you.’

Tony lifted the pillow fractionally higher. ‘You hit me?’

‘You needed curbing.’

‘What was I doing?’ Tony sat up and reached across to the washstand. Lifting the huge water jug to his lips he drank deeply.

‘You can’t remember?’

‘Not much. Bloody hell, I thought I was parched enough to drink anything but this water is foul.’

‘It’s been standing there since I arrived.’

‘You haven’t refilled it with fresh?’

‘I prefer to wash downstairs.’ Ronnie opened the door and padded down the stairs on bare feet, wincing as his soles came into contact with the flagstones in the passage. Only the soft glow from the fire illuminated the kitchen. Switching on the light, he picked up the kettle, filled it in the washhouse and put it on the hob to boil.

Leaving his clothes on one of the easy chairs he walked outside to the ty bach. There was a smell of daffodils and bluebells in the air. Summer was following close on the heels of spring, and it occurred to him that it would be the second summer since Maud had died. When he had returned to Wales he had thought everything would remind him of her, but if anything it had been easier to carry on with his life here, than it had in Italy. The longer

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