Sam Thompson - Communion Town

Well, it meant that he had something to forgive her, and she had something to forgive him too. If they could both manage it they would be able to begin.

She left the café and started for home. A week ago here on the high street she had run into Henry the bookseller, of all people, emerging from one of the charity shops with two plastic carrier bags full of paperbacks. When she had said hello he had shuffled and stammered and looked hopelessly shifty in the way that always made her first warm to him and then worry she was being patronising. He had kept on glancing up and down the street, seeming suspicious of the fundraisers with their clipboards and the paired policemen. Then, his brow creasing, he had leant closer and told her that he had seen Simon.

It had happened early one morning in the Grand Terminus: as Henry was queuing to buy a cup of coffee in the concourse, he had recognised a figure standing motionless in the flow of arrivals from the dawn train. There had been no mistaking who it was. He had appeared to be waiting, or listening, and when the station was quiet again he had cast around aimlessly for a while, peering at the floor as if he had lost something. Finally, after picking up a trampled carnation which had fallen from the flower barrow, he had disappeared into the metro. That was all Henry could tell her.

By the time she got back to the house she was beginning to flag, so she put the tins on the kitchen counter and lay down on the sofa. When she woke, she sat up in alarm to find it almost dark in the parlour and the sky outside the colour of slate, but she had only slept for an hour. The days were short but there was still time. She wouldn’t go far at first. She would search for only a brief while today, but tomorrow she would continue for a little longer and then longer again the day after until she was searching all the time, and she would not stop until she found him. What would happen after that didn’t seem to matter. No doubt by then he would have another story to tell, but she would not be anxious to hear it. She wanted no more tellings, no reiterations. She only wanted to begin.

She fed the cats and ate some bread and cheese standing at the counter. Wanting to feel that she was equipping herself for a journey, she dug out an old pair of boots from the back of the bedroom wardrobe. They had once been favourites and their insides were still shaped to her feet. As the rooms darkened, early evening light came up in the windows and faded from blue to grey, offering a last view of the heath and the rooftops. She took the pocket street atlas from the drawer of the hall table, then changed her mind and put it back. She buttoned her coat, and, after consideration, left a lamp on in the hall. Then she locked the house and walked out into the city.

All my love and thanks to Caoileann, always.

For their endless help and support, deep thanks to my parents Dan and Jenny, my brothers James and Andrew, Jane Anderson and Ronan Crowley.

Thank you to Deborah and Windsor Chorlton, Jim and Bernie Curry, Deborah Friedell, Marianne Macdonald, Laurie Maguire, Matthew Reynolds, Mark Richards and Peter Straus.