The Retreat(6)

I opened my work in progress and stared at the blinking cursor. I kept staring. It was too early. I needed caffeine.

Downstairs in the kitchen, I found a pot of coffee and some croissants on a plate with a note saying Help yourself. There was no sign of Julia or the other guests, but there was a man in the garden. He was in his sixties, with curly grey hair and red cheeks. He was fiddling with a lawnmower, scraping dried clumps of grass from the rotors and shaking his head.

He looked up and saw me watching him through the window. He raised a hand in greeting, then pointed at the mug in my hand and winked at me.

I didn’t want to upset the locals, so I made one and took it out to him.

‘Cheers,’ he said. ‘I take it you’re one of Julia’s writers?’

‘I guess so, yes. I’m Lucas.’

He stuck out a hand. ‘Rhodri Wallace.’ He nodded towards the house. ‘Julia’s a lovely lass. I hope this writing retreat thing works out for her, after the time she’s had.’

‘The time she’d had?’

‘You don’t know? Well, it’s not for me to tell you.’

He returned his attention to the troublesome lawnmower and thanked me for the coffee.

I was about to go when I remembered the singing I’d heard the previous night. ‘Are there any children here?’ I asked. ‘Young girls?’

His face darkened. ‘Why do you ask that?’

‘I wondered who the garden swing was for, that’s all.’

He turned to look at it. Now, in daylight, I could see how rusty it was. How it clearly hadn’t been used for a long time.

‘That thing needs taking to the tip,’ Rhodri said, turning away to indicate our conversation was over.



I ate breakfast and knew I should go back to my room, force myself to write. But I still felt uninspired. I had come here to reconnect with the place where I grew up, hadn’t I? Outside, the day was clear and bright. I would go for a walk. That was sure to help.

I headed down the drive towards the main road, tossed a coin in my head and turned left. It was cold despite the brightness and I stuck my hands in my coat pockets and put my head down, not really looking where I was going. I headed across a field towards some distant woods. Snowdrops sprouted from the earth, the first harbingers of spring. Birds sang in the trees. It was so peaceful here.

So why did I feel uneasy?

A woman with a spaniel on a lead passed me as I entered the wood. The sight of the dog stirred a memory, which I tried to ignore, exchanging hellos with the woman.

I walked for an hour, still not keeping track of where I was going, failing to drop imaginary breadcrumbs behind me. The path was muddy and I felt foolish in my canvas footwear, but I was determined to keep going. I was lost in thought. But I wasn’t thinking about the book I was supposed to be writing. I was thinking about Priya.

We met in our early twenties. Recently, I’d been listening to the radio and the DJ said something about the approaching twentieth anniversary of Radiohead’s OK Computer. I reeled, unable to believe it had been two decades since Priya and I bought that album. We used to listen to it together all the time. When ‘Karma Police’ came on the radio, I had to turn it off. It hurt too much.

At the time I’d been working in an office and she worked in my local bookshop. I was in there a lot, one of their best customers, and Priya and I got chatting. She was beautiful and clever and all those things. Funny and sexy and wise. Moody and crazy and restless. She had shiny black hair and little moles that I loved to trace with a finger when we lay in bed.

I told her I was an aspiring writer, and when we started dating, through the period when we moved in together, all of those early years, she supported and encouraged me. When I got my first book deal, she was as ecstatic as I was, possibly more. She told me it didn’t matter when my book failed to set the world alight. She counselled me, told me it was all about building an audience – one reader, one book at a time. She calmed me down when my first publisher dumped me. She celebrated again when I got another deal, even though it was tiny. She told me to keep going.

If it weren’t for her, I would have given up. One day I was going to make her proud, show her that her faith was justified. I fantasised many times about calling her, giving her good news. The bookshop where she worked had gone bust and she was working in an office, doing a job she hated, surrounded by people she had nothing in common with. I was going to rescue her, rescue us.

But by the time it happened, it was too late. She was already gone.

I stumbled on the path and the shot of adrenaline brought me out of the pit I’d been mentally wallowing in. I looked around. I was in a clearing in the woods, with one path ahead of me and three behind me. I had no idea which way I’d come. I looked for footprints but had mostly been walking slightly to the side of the puddle-strewn path, on the grass, so couldn’t see any.

I was lost. I took out my phone, hoping I could find my location on my Maps app, but had no signal. I tried to decide what to do – head back in the direction I’d come from, or plough on. Listening carefully, I thought I could hear traffic in the distance. I decided to carry on.

I passed a stagnant pond, gnats darting about the surface. A dog poop bag hung from a branch. I couldn’t be too far from civilisation. As I headed on, the trees thinned and the path became muddier. Within minutes, I was in a large clearing, in a field of overgrown, yellowed grass.