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“I won’t be in next week. I’m going home tomorrow.”
That was what Barry had said a month ago. Julie hadn’t thought much of his comment at the time. Now she couldn’t get it out of her head.
Warming her hands on her cup of coffee she stared out the rain soaked kitchen window at her garden. The grass was long and weeds were cropping up in the flowerbed. At eighty one she was too old to maintain it herself. That was why three years ago she had employed a self employed gardener named Barry Jones.
She took a seat at her rickety kitchen table. The house was quiet and had been since the death of her husband eight years ago. Her two sons never visited and she had very few friends. It was why she looked forward to Barry’s visits once a week. After finishing work he would come in for a cup of tea and tell stories from his exciting life. He had never stayed in one place for long, joining the army aged sixteen, leaving it ten years later to travel the world on a cruise ship, then returning to make his money gardening when he had been made redundant.
She grabbed the newspaper lying on the tabletop. It was five days old and she had read it cover to cover, but she could only venture to the newsagents for a new one when the weather was fine and with the aid of two walking sticks. She would have to go out at some point though as she was running out of food. If Barry was still here he would have bought some supplies for her.
Given his past she knew she shouldn’t have been surprised when he had disappeared. But the way he had completely vanished unnerved her. He didn’t call her and her phone didn’t even connect when she tried to call him. When she had visited his house two weeks ago she found it empty and abandoned. When her son had called her last week she had asked him to check Barry’s website and he found it had been taken down. After saying he was going home, Barry had disappeared from the face of the earth.
She sighed and closed the crumpled newspaper, before slumping into her seat and listening to the rain beating against the window. She wondered what she could do today. She could barely face another day in front of the television watching Cash in the Attic, but there wasn’t much else for her to do.
She heard the sound of the letterbox opening and shutting, and she slowly hoisted herself out of her seat and used her walking stick to shuffle to the hallway. Only one letter was waiting for her on the mat, a postcard depicting a Cornish fishing village. She recognised the handwriting immediately, and her spirits lifting she start reading. The message began “Dear Julie, I’m home now...”
Copyright Michael Foster 2012
Copyright Michael Foster 2012
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