The Old Girls' Network. Judy Leigh

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      5

      Pauline lay awake that night, wondering if it had been a good idea to welcome Barbara into her home so readily. Of course, they were sisters, family, and Pauline wanted somehow to try to close the gap between them that had stretched over the years. They were both in their seventies now: she’d hoped Barbara would have mellowed. But she might never change.

      That evening, she’d made them a delicious dinner, opened a bottle of wine and chatted nostalgically about their childhood. She’d reminisced about their parents, her beloved father, a holiday in Bournemouth, and for a moment she thought the ice was beginning to melt. Then Barbara had said she didn’t like overcooked potatoes; she remembered the weather in Bournemouth had been dismal that week and now, all these years later, look where they were now: both alone and both old.

      Pauline clamped her lips together in the darkness: if Barbara became too difficult, she would simply ask her to leave. After all, it was her home. She closed her eyes and dragged her thoughts to the summer. It was always fun in Winsley Green during the summer; cricket matches and dancing and fetes. She smiled and drifted into sleep.

      During the early hours the temperature plummeted, and it snowed heavily. When Pauline woke at eight, someone was banging on the front door. She pulled on her dressing gown and padded downstairs. She pushed the door open onto a rigid bank of drifted snow. Shivering, she stared into the bright eyes of Len Chatfield. He had a huge piece of mobile farm machinery parked by her gate, a sort of tractor with a digger at the front.

      ‘Len?’

      He nodded, rubbing his whiskers with a flat hand. ‘Expected snow today. Cleared the path for you. Thought you might need to get your car out, drive into Winsley Green, get groceries. Brought you this. Not much left in the shops.’ He stretched out a stiff arm, clutching a carton of milk. ‘Panic buyers got most of it already, I reckon.’

      Pauline smiled and pushed a hand over her hair, still in its clip and dishevelled. ‘You were right about the snow in April.’ They stared at each other for a moment. ‘Well, thanks, Len. That’s thoughtful. How much do I owe you?’

      ‘Oh, no…’ he began and was cut off by a shrieking voice behind Pauline.

      ‘For goodness sake, shut the door. It’s like Siberia in here as it is.’

      Pauline shrugged. ‘Ah, Len – my sister, Barb—’

      Barbara pushed forwards, stood behind her sister, her hands on her hips, and stared at Len, taking in his shabby overcoat, the carton of milk and the digger at the gate.

      ‘I must say, they go to all sorts of lengths here to do the milk round. Well, come in if you’re going to. Don’t freeze us all to death.’

      Len pushed the milk into Pauline’s hand. ‘No. No time. Got work to do. Sheep. Lambs. Digger.’ He turned and shuffled away, his boots making deep prints in the pure snow.

      Barbara boomed, ‘How very strange. Why on earth do they make the farmers deliver milk around here? And in cartons too. It’s quite incredible. And he’s cleared the pathway for us. How useful.’

      ‘He’s a nice man.’ Pauline murmured to herself, watching him clamber into the tractor by the gate. She eased herself to her full height.

      ‘Right, Barbara. Let’s make a fire in the wood burner, get a good blaze going and have some breakfast.’

      The snow stayed for three days. Pauline spent most of the time in the kitchen cooking, humming to herself as she worked while Barbara read a book about hiking in the Lake District. On the fourth day, a Thursday, the soft snow became dirty slush, and life in Winsley Green returned to its normal routine. The shops had bread and milk again in large supplies and cars swished up and down in the roads, their tyres turning sludge into murky water which gurgled down the drains. The skies were bright; the buffeting wind a reminder that winter had stayed too long. Buds pushed out from bark and stems, sticky sap smelling sweet and a golden sheen illuminated fields and trees, promising warmth. It was mid-April and spring had finally arrived.

      The Jaguar F-type in British Racing Green was motoring briskly down the M5. Bisto huddled in the passenger seat and glanced at the driver, a smart young man in a peaked cap, frowning, concentrating on the road. He must be in his thirties; clean shaven, a rounded determined chin, fair hair like silken corn sticking out beneath the cap around pink ears. The young man had been very kind, offering him a lift from Swindon to just beyond Taunton, which was as far as he was going.

      Swindon. Bisto squeezed his eyes shut and when he opened them, he glanced down at his clothes, mud-stained and unkempt. He hadn’t had a shower in several days and he hoped the young man’s rakish aftershave would conceal his own sweaty stench. Bisto rubbed a grubby hand around his bristly chin, scratching his four-day growth with dirty nails. He pushed fingers through his mane of white curls. He badly needed to use a comb, but he had nothing. No suitcase, no toothbrush, no wallet. He’d lost it all. If only, he thought, and a sigh shuddered from him. It was a lifetime full of ‘if only’… it had all worked out differently to the way he’d hoped.

      He shouldn’t have drunk the two pints of Guinness on the ferry from Dublin. He’d been chatting to a pleasant young couple and dozed off. When the steward woke him up, the boat was almost empty and his rucksack was gone, containing his wallet, his rail tickets and the paperwork for the ferry to France. He was lucky that his passport and iPhone had been in the inside pocket of his jacket. He’d texted his son Barney that he’d hitch a ride to the ferry port and then ring him – they’d sort out a ticket from there. But he’d never made it as far as Plymouth.

      The weather had been awful – drifting snow, blizzards, intense cold. He’d waited ages for a lift from Manchester, been dropped not far from Birmingham. It was then he’d slipped over on the ice into a mound of mud and slush, ripped his jeans and become soaking wet. Two hours later, a lorry bound for London picked him up and he realised he’d miss the ferry, so he’d asked to be dropped off at Swindon.

      He’d stopped in Swindon to see Randeep. They’d worked СКАЧАТЬ