Truly I do Read Free

light that hung over her cottage
garden.
    There was a
man outside the gate, standing astride his bike, staring at
her.
    Julie-Anne
couldn't think who he was. She didn't recognise him. In fact, she
decided, she'd never seen him before. She stared back. He was
wearing good leather shoes, baggy blue corduroy trousers and an old
looking blue tweed jacket. She could see that he had a good tan
left over from the almost forgotten summer, it looked good against
his curling blonde hair. He seemed to be about her age, maybe a
little older, and he had the traces of pretty laughter lines around
his pretty blue eyes. She liked him, she decided. But what was he
doing there? She carried on watching to see what he would do next.
Her heart began to race when he got off his bike, leaned it against
her oak tree, and made his way to her front door.
    Julie-Anne
didn't know if she would get up to answer the door.
    She did.
    "Hello," she
said.
    "Hi!" he
answered brightly.
    She looked at
his face, warm and nut brown against that misty white sky.
    "I hope you
don't mind, I've decided to come and see you," he was explaining,
"you see I realise that you are not all right, that you need help.
You shouldn't be left sitting all alone there. It's all very well
people saying that time will heal but, well . . . hey . . . you
know!" He beamed at her as if he'd just made a bright decision.
    "What?" She
mumbled, hearing her own voice for the first time in how many days,
realising the stupor she'd been living in. "What do you mean?"
    "I just mean I
think you need a friend. I thought I'd come and talk to you, get
you out of that window seat. Maybe even take you for a walk?"
    Julie-Anne
frowned. "Take me for a walk? Who are you?"
    He grinned
sheepishly. It made his attractive face even more endearing she
thought. He spoke and his voice was like warm honey to her
exhausted mind.
    "I'm Russell.
I am . . . that is, I was a history teacher in the school up the
road. Only I've just been fired - or I resigned - or both. So you
see I thought I'd take some time to come and see you, cos' I've got
plenty of time now and you look like you need a friend."
    "I see. Why
were you fired?" She looked around to see if anyone else was
lurking in the lane to come and interrupt her. The late afternoon
was still, quiet and darkening quickly. She should feel uneasy but
she didn't. "You can't come in!" She announced decisively.
    "Oh. Okay
then. Well, how about if you come out?"
    They both
looked down at Julie-Anne's black dress. It was looking very limp
and creased. Julie-Anne began to laugh at herself. It was an
hysterical laugh, one which ended in wretched, gasping, tears.
Suddenly feeling dreadful she stared into Russell's face, her
liquid brown eyes horrified. Quickly she clasped her hands over her
mouth and retreated inside, slamming the door behind her.
    That evening,
alone, in the cool autumn gloom, in a fit of unbridled fury,
Julie-Anne vented her rage and smashed quite a lot of the more
exposed, modern crockery around her home before storming around the
place ripping down shattering and splintering every picture of her
lost . . . gone . . . stolen-from-his-life husband. Wildly she
rampaged from room to room yelling tempestuously, saying nothing
that made any sense. She hated everything. She wanted everything to
go away . . . but it felt as if everything had gone away . . . she
wanted everything back. Oh how she wanted her safe old life to just
come back. Eventually she'd exhausted herself.

Chapter
two

    In the morning
Julie-Anne awoke on the stairs feeling greasy and bruised and
beaten. It was time, she felt tentatively, time to make a fresh
start. It was time to "get on".
    She took
herself to the shower, peeled away that black taffeta dress and
stepped delicately under silvery droplets of warming water that
soothed and washed her skin. Relaxing, Julie-Anne woke up to
herself; lathering scented soap over her firm belly and drawing her
palms up over the sensitive skin of her