In Loving Memory by Winona Kent

Author:Winona Kent [Kent, Winona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781682300770
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2016-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Not knowing what else he could do, or where else he could go, Shaun had walked the several miles back to Betty’s house, following the same route Wendy had taken when she had driven him to the graveyard. He stood now with one hand on the front gate, debating his next course of action. Night had fallen, and the streetlights had been switched on. Yet he could not see any illumination shining through the windows of the house, in spite of the curtains being open. And Wendy’s car was not in evidence on the road.

Shaun opened the gate and walked up the path, then let the knocker drop upon the front door, three times.

There was no response.

He supposed Wendy must have returned to her own house, in Croydon.

Betty’s front door was similar to the front door of Mrs. Collins’s cottage in Stoneford. It had no exterior handle. A key was turned in the lock, which released a mechanism, allowing the door to open inward.

Shaun gave the door a perfunctory push. Locked tight. Of course.

He stood on the path, battling weariness. What he required, most urgently, was a place to sleep. And in the morning, with a fresh mind, he would try and sort out what to do next.

He wondered if, in this altered present, Betty still had an air raid shelter at the bottom of her garden. It would be damp and cold, but better than nothing at all.

He remembered, in the other present, seeing a gate in the high wooden fence behind the shelter. That meant there had to be access behind the garden.

Walking to the end of the block, he turned right, and then walked a little farther, until he discovered a small, unlit lane. Trudging along in the dark, he counted gates, finally arriving at the one he determined belonged to Betty. The latch was on the inside. Reaching over, he released it, and was admitted to a garden not unlike the one he remembered from before.

He could just see, in the darkness, an area with paving stones and large fired clay flowerpots. And a patch of lawn, and a path made out of more paving stones. And, nearly hidden beneath an overgrowth of ivy, a shelter.

Common sense told him he should try the garden and kitchen doors of the house first, in case Wendy had neglected to lock them. But she had not forgotten. The house was inaccessible. And Shaun was not of a mind to break a window, lest he be arrested as a thief. He had once been accused, and very nearly been convicted of, a hanging offence. He had no wish to commit a serious crime now.

He walked back to the Anderson shelter and, remembering the Swan Vestas in the pocket of his trousers, took one out, and struck it against the side of the box, the way Mrs. Collins had shown him.

From the outside, the shelter seemed no different.

But standing just inside its half-buried entrance, allowing the flame to burn down

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