‘Where are we going, Snow White?’ joked the taxi driver, turning to stare at her.
‘King’s Cross station, please.’
He started off, saying over his shoulder, ‘Where are you off to, then, love?’
‘Durham,’ she said, hoping he wasn’t going to talk to her all the way. She was in no mood for a light chat with a taxi driver. She had too much on her mind.
‘Never been there—what’s it like?’
Nerissa stared out of the window at London’s busy, crowded streets and thought of the wind off the moors, the open sky, the dinosaur contours of the green and brown hills with their rounded shanks and bony shoulders lifting against the horizon.
She had missed it, ever since she’d left just over a year ago. She realised suddenly how much she ached to see it again.
‘Cold, at this time of year,’ she said. ‘Durham is almost in Scotland, you know.’
‘Don’t fancy that much; give me lots of sun, that’s what I need, especially in winter.’ The taxi driver began to tell her about his holiday in Spain and how hot it had been there last month on the beaches of Torremolinos. Nerissa heard one word in every three.
She caught her train by the skin of her teeth. She had reserved a seat but her compartment was halfempty anyway, and got emptier as the journey continued up north. The train was an express and only stopped at a few stations—the important cities along this route. At intervals someone came round with a trolley containing sandwiches, crisps, drinks, but she wasn’t hungry so she just had a coffee midmorning. She spent the long journey staring out at the changing scene—the smoke-blackened chimneys of London, the grey and yellow London brick, the dull red tiles in the endless rows of little houses as they flashed through the suburbs, and then the flat, rather scrubby fields and hedgerows which succeeded them before they broke out into the real countryside of the heart of England.
By the time they were in the Midlands the sun was quite warm on the window, summer’s last, flickering, expiring flame moving over the landscape, the autumnal trees, the stubbled fields, the mist-hazed hills in the distance.
She had not been north since the spring, since that visit with Ben, since her marriage.
Had she changed? she wondered, trying to remember how she had felt before she’d met Ben, how she had felt as she’d made that first journey southwards to work in London.
She grimaced, still staring out at the countryside flashing past. Of course she had. A lot had happened to her in London. She was very different from the girl who had left the farm all those months ago.
Would they notice? Did it show—was it visible? She bit her lip. Philip would see it; he knew her better than anyone else in the world. He would know at once that the Nerissa who had come back to them was not the same girl who had left the north a year ago to work in London.
Except that Philip might never get the chance to notice anything about her.
She flinched at that idea, her skin white, stretched, taut. Stop it! she told herself. Don’t even think it. He is not going to die.
She looked at her watch; they were running to time. They would pull into York any minute, not much longer now. Her uncle would meet her at Durham. He would have the latest news.
As the train slowly steamed into Durham she collected her case and her other belongings and a moment later stepped down on to the platform, her long, slender legs admired by one of the porters hanging about waiting for someone to require his services.
‘Carry your bag, miss?’ he asked, but she shook her head.
‘I can manage, thank you.’ She hurried away with her case; it wasn’t very heavy.
She saw her uncle before she reached him and waved, breaking into a run.
He hadn’t changed, which was one comfort. Still tall and loose-limbed with iron-grey hair, a weathered countenance, deep-sunk pale eyes, John Thornton was a man who spent most of his days out in the open and it showed. Sun and wind had given him a skin like leather, the horizon-gazing eyes of a sailor and the slow patience of a ruminating animal—like those he looked after on his farm, the wiry upland sheep of the Northumberland hills.
‘Nerissa—thank God you’re here. We need a miracle.’
He bent and kissed her cheek, took her case from her. ‘I was afraid your husband might not want you to come.’
‘Ben’s away, abroad.’
Their eyes met, exchanged wordless understanding. ‘How long for?’
‘A week,’ she said, and saw her uncle’s face tighten.
‘A week? It’s going to take longer than a week.’
She had realised as much, had known as she left her home that she was going for a long time. She hadn’t been able to face telling Ben; she had known how he would react. His pride would never have agreed to letting her come. He would see it as a betrayal, a choice between him and Philip, and in a sense she supposed it was, but in another sense she had had no choice. She had had to come.
‘How is he?’
‘Bad.’ The monosyllable was flat yet filled with pain.
Her eyes stung with unshed tears. As they walked out of the station Nerissa slipped her hand through her uncle’s arm in a gesture of silent comfort.
He squeezed her hand against his side with an affectionate look, but didn’t say anything. He was not a man who said much; he had spent so much time alone in the fields that he had almost lost the habit of speech. That was one reason why she had grown up saying so little, why she was disturbed by noise and busy city streets. Silence had been her environment for so many years.
‘You’ll want some food; they never have anything worth eating on the train these days,’ he said as they drove away.
‘I’m not hungry!’
‘Nay, you must eat!’ He shook his head at her, half smiled. ‘Grace told me to make sure you did. Won’t do any of us any good if you get ill too! We’ll stop at a pub on the way, get a bite to eat there.’
They stopped at a pub just a stone’s throw from the hospital, found a seat in a corner, then John Thornton went up to the bar to order them both a ploughman’s platter—chunks of local cheese with pickles and salad and home-made bread.
‘How’s Aunt Grace bearing up?’ Nerissa asked, sipping her glass of cider which had a strong, homebrewed taste of fermented apples, rich, golden, autumnal, sending a warm glow through her and making her feel slightly less strung up.
Her uncle looked sombre. ‘She never leaves him. She’s sat by his bed ever since it happened, talking to him. She’s certain he’ll hear her voice and start to wake up.’
A pang hit Nerissa. She bit her lip. ‘How long is it now?’
‘Since he went into coma? Three days. We thought…hoped…he’d come out of it sooner, but he hasn’t, and the doctors can’t tell us when he will…if he will.’ His hands curled into helpless fists on the table between them.
‘Of course he’s going to get better! You mustn’t think like that. It isn’t like you to give up.’ She gently uncurled his fingers, held them tightly. ‘You know Aunt Grace won’t stop talking until he wakes up in self-defence!’
He gave a reluctant chuckle. ‘You bad girl, you! Lucky for you she can’t hear you!’
Nerissa smiled at him. ‘Have you finished your drink? Shall we go?’
If only took a few minutes to reach the hospital. She had spent a few days there once, years ago, when she’d had her tonsils out. The smell of polish and disinfectant and