It hadn’t occurred to her that at seventy-seven the trip to Shrewsbury might be too much for her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken the train; for years now, if she’d wanted to go shopping for clothes, or even just fancied a day out to Chester or Llandudno – or that nice Cheshire Oaks place in Ellesmere Port, she’d go in the car with Megan Paris House, always making sure she paid for their lunch and half the petrol. But this time she’d said nothing to Megan; as well as they both knew one another, she wasn’t sure what her friend would make of it all. This occasion was different… Yes, a very different kind of event – and very special, and she didn’t want anything that Megan might say to spoil it. Taking the train saved Amelia Roberts from having to explain.

She’d never liked crossing Barmouth Bridge on the train; when the tide was high and the wind blew in off the sea, the windows would be splashed by the waves and it was all too unnerving… And since those worms had been eating away at the wooden piles she’d decided the bridge probably wasn’t safe anyway, despite all the thousands of pounds British Rail had paid to repair it. As the train pulled slowly out over the swollen estuary she willed herself to think about something pleasant for the next five minutes; after that she could relax and enjoy the countryside.

It was her Jack’s smiling face that came to her: fresh and freckled, his green eyes ablaze under all those foxy curls. They were dancing; one of the regular Saturday night dos in the assembly room with the local third-rate dance band playing all the songs from Top Hat and Follow the Fleet (that had just shown in the White Cinema) led by Eddie Jones; despite blackheads and dirty fingernails from shovelling in the coal yard, he sang Cheek to Cheek thinking he was every girl’s answer to Fred Astaire. She felt Jack squeeze her to him as they moved across the dance floor; in her Jack’s arms she wondered about the things that never were because of those German bullets on a beach near Boulogne. Their years of married life together. Their children growing up and having families of their own. How well Jack would have aged with those high cheekbones and how he would have enjoyed their grandchildren. None of it hurt like it used to. Was that because old age had brought her wisdom or had her heart just hardened after fifty-eight years a widow? She was just glad that it had stopped hurting. Had anyone been sitting opposite Mrs Amelia Roberts as the train crossed over the estuary bridge, they may have seen the fingers of a gloved hand dance on the arm-rest to an inaudible rhythm and perhaps glimpsed the quiet smile on a face that looked at peace with the world.

When the train pulled away from the coast in its faltering dash across Montgomeryshire towards Newtown, the late summer countryside emerged from the clinging shroud of coastal mizzle and the bright sunshine enlivened the land’s fading colours. Mrs Amelia Roberts’ face flushed, though no one sat close enough to notice, as she remembered that she’d left the chamber under her high brass bed with the previous night’s two offerings unemptied. She wondered, if fate were to play some cruel tricks on her that day, a train disaster or a heart attack, what Betty-next-door would think when she took her spare key and began to rummage. And she laughed to herself when she thought about the other little treasures Betty might find that would make the piss pot seem incidental.