Apportionment of Blame by Keith Redfern

Lamont,” she said sternly.
    â€œSorry.” Another good impression lost, as if the way I looked wasn’t bad enough.
    â€œI was wondering if there was anything you remembered about the accident at the railway.”
    â€œNo. I told you,” she said determinedly.
    I just stood there, feeling the rain running down my face, under my collar and into my shoes.
    â€œI wonder,” I asked cautiously, “if I might come inside. It’s not very comfortable standing out here.”
    She had to think about it, but eventually opened the door and stood back to let me in.
    â€œThank you. I won’t go any further and drip everywhere.”
    She closed the door, probably against the rain, and stood in the hall with her arms crossed. I just felt a fool.
    â€œWell?” she challenged me.
    If she was I. Lamont, I needed to know if she was Ilse. Not much chance, I thought, but it would be useful to know if she was. I decided to play for time.
    â€œDo you think I could trouble you for a towel?” I asked.
    Her eyes were boring into mine, but I saw them lift to take in the state of my hair, and she appeared to relent.
    â€œOh, all right,” she said. “Wait there.”
    I wasn’t going anywhere. Small pools were forming around each of my shoes and I moved to pull the hair off my forehead where it had become plastered.
    Looking round the hall, everything seemed bare. No pictures on the walls and no furniture save a half-moon console table, pushed against the side of the staircase.
    She returned, from what I took to be the kitchen, and gave me a rather elderly, thin towel. Better than nothing.
    I began to rub at my head and immediately I could feel the moisture coming straight through the towel to my hands.
    â€œCome into the kitchen,” she said unexpectedly. “It’s warmer there.”
    I thanked her again and followed her along the hall and into the kitchen. It wasn’t much warmer, and it appeared to be stuck in a 50s time warp. There was a Belfast sink with two taps high above it, just below the window sill. An aged gas cooker stood alongside it, and then there was one of those wooden kitchen cabinets with patterned glass fronted doors and a pull down hatch to form a work surface. It would have been the height of modernity soon after the war.
    A plastic cloth covered the table under which two chairs faced each other.
    â€œSit down, if you want to.”
    There was something about the way she said “down” which struck me as unusual, but I couldn’t place it for the moment.
    â€œThanks, but I’d rather stand. It will be more comfortable.”
    I didn’t want to stay long with my clothes so wet.
    Looking round, I realised there was little to see. The walls had been papered, but not very well. A picture hung on a wall, but there was nothing else which could be called decoration. And there was certainly no clue as to who she was.
    She stood facing me across the room, her arms folded. Classic pose, I thought.
    â€œDo you live here alone?” I asked her. You have to start somewhere.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHave you been here long?”
    â€œNo.”
    This was fun. Banal questions with monosyllabic answers. Useful though. She said she had not been there long, yet she was there long enough to feature in the phone book. So not long was at least a year.
    She was watching me very carefully. Perhaps she was shy and felt a little inadequate with company. But there was a certain uneasiness about her.
    â€œDo you like country life?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œI won’t be here long.”
    â€œOh?”
    Now I was being monosyllabic, and getting nowhere fast.
    â€œIt’s too quiet here,” she said.
    â€œWhere did you live before?”
    â€œLondon.”
    â€œAh. There’s more life there.”
    She almost smiled. I continued to feel the water soaking from my trousers into my legs and on down.
    â€œI wanted