Kitty's Countryside Dream by Christie Barlow Page B

disappearing through the stone archway that led down to the station platform.
    For the next twenty minutes or so I dozed in and out of consciousness. Feeling a light tapping on my shoulder, I raised my head to find the guard standing in front of me, his hand stretched out, waiting to stamp my ticket. Once he was satisfied, he moved quickly onto the man with the newspaper before exiting the compartment and moving on to the next.
    Now I’d been travelling for almost an hour, my surroundings were becoming more familiar, and I recognised the outskirts of the town I used to live in, the place where I grew up. I spotted Lucy’s semi-detached Victorian house, with its long, narrow, well-tended garden. Lucy had been my best friend at school for a short while. She’d lived a few streets away from me and we were alike in so many ways. Our love of books brought us together. Unlike most children we knew, we preferred the company of a good book to playing outside in the street. We would sit side by side for hours on the floral-covered ottoman in her bedroom reading until her mother called her for tea.
    I never knew what happened to Lucy; my last memory of her was watching in despair whilst she waved frantically from the back window of her father’s Fiat Strada as it followed a removal van out of the street. I never saw her again. She’d left a forwarding address and we wrote letters to each other for awhile, but as time went on those soon dwindled.
    Finally arriving at the station, I hung back, waiting for the passengers to file out of the carriage. Through the window, I could see the station was busy with the hustle and bustle of the weekend travellers. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry, striding fast, weaving in and out of the crowds of people. Stepping the platform, I clutched my bag tight against my body and followed the masses towards the exit sign.
    There was a lengthy queue in front of the booking window; an irate passenger was shaking his fist, arguing with the assistant who was safely tucked away behind the toughened glass. There were groups of commuters huddled together, chatting and smoking, whilst others sat on the benches reading newspapers or books. Onlookers eagerly waited, with continued glances at their watches, the arrival of their trains. There was commotion and noise everywhere and stampedes of late passengers running towards the doors of train carriages.
    Pushing the turnstile, I was relieved to be away from the disorder of the platform. Breathing in the fresh, cold air, I began to walk briskly along the street. I’d only walked about 100 yards when I began to feel nervous; I felt an unsettled presence behind me, but weirdly there was no one there. The street was unusually quiet and I continued walking up the crest of the hill. Taking in the view, I saw the old church was directly in front of me.
    Pushing open the weathered wrought-iron gates, the grand entrance to the graveyard, I noticed one of the ornamental statues was broken and had toppled to the side; it was now lying on the ground, in desperate need of restoration. There were gravestones that were forgotten and lacked attention, overrun with dense weeds, whilst others were immaculate, dotted with flowers that had been strategically arranged in the silver aluminium pots standing in front of the stones.
    Feeling the tears well up, I crouched before my parents’ stone, running my fingers over the chiselled words.
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    In Loving Memory of Julian Lewis and his beloved Wife
    Alice Lewis
    Reunited
    Treasured parents of Kitty Lewis
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    T hey had finally been reunited ; my mother and father laid to rest side by side. The emotion was surging through my body, the free flow of tears rushing down my cheeks. This was the first time I’d set eyes on my mum’s name chiselled into the headstone. It all seemed so final, seeing the words carved out in stone. I felt empty and alone. Wiping away my tears, I rearranged the pretty fresh flowers