Relative Strangers by Allie Cresswell

Author:Allie Cresswell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-06-19T04:00:00+00:00

✽✽✽

James and Belinda sat at the end of one of the ancient wooden pews in the chill interior of the village church. They had been welcomed by a kindly but surprised verger, who had handed them a dog-eared service booklet and a musty copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern. Three elderly worshippers huddled together in a pew further back which leaned against an old fashioned, bulbous radiator. The verger and the priest whispered conspiratorially by the shelves of bibles. The organist played a quiet and inconsequential series of chords and arpeggios. Outside, on the spire, crows called to one another. Belinda sat as close to James as was decent and kept her hands clasped on her lap. James, who never felt the cold, unzipped his anorak and then closed his eyes. He didn’t kneel or make any gesture but Belinda could tell that he was praying and she wondered at this newly discovered facet of his character. She sat still, fighting the urge to wriggle or chafe her frozen fingers, respecting his detachment, feeling, at the same time, a breathless excitement at the opportunity which had been presented to her, to be alone with him. Then from nowhere, she remembered the poor families whose holiday had been ruined by that dreadful accident on the motorway, the families missing a member now, and wondered who, in the end, would take the blame for it all. Which inattentive driver or defective vehicle would be cited as the cause? Did it really help at all to have someone to blame when a chair at the dinner table, a child’s bed, was empty forever? Could a family ever recover from such sudden and wanton loss?

Presently James exhaled heavily, his breath making a cloud in the icy air. Then he turned to her.

‘Now at last I’ve got you to myself,’ he smiled, ‘and we can talk. How are you?’ Belinda felt like weeping - not, she was ashamed to say, because of the thought of the accident victims, but just for herself. He really wanted to know, indeed, he already knew, largely, how things were for her. He was so intuitive, a reader of people. He had seen things and discerned the truth from the things he had seen. It had become his habit periodically to take her to one side and gently probe with careful questions. It made her feel so blessed to be singled out by him, and made much of, and it added to her sense of connectedness with him which was so markedly absent from her relationship with Elliot or indeed any other human creature. There was no requirement that she should gush or gloss over things; there was no point. He seemed able to divine the truth. It was this genuine care about her, perhaps even care for her and his intuitive understanding which somehow unloosed her inside.

She shook her head, ‘No change,’ she said, sadly. ‘I always seem to get caught on the wrong foot. It’s only a matter of keeping one step ahead but I don’t often manage it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.