‘Who I was?’ He shrugged. ‘I was me. I was just a guy looking for somewhere to settle. Somewhere I could earn a few quid and live quietly.’

Sophia shook her head slowly. ‘No Mortimer, no. You were looking for somewhere to hide.’ She looked at him sitting next to her. He said nothing in response. ‘You needed to lay low for a while, didn’t you?’

He still said nothing; he merely looked at her.

‘Has it never struck you as odd that you never wanted to do something? Most people in their 20s have some sort of ambition. Didn’t you think it was unusual that you were happy to simply arrive, sit down, and do nothing other than be at the beck and call of others?’

She paused and wondered at the sadness in his face.

‘Mortimer,’ she continued softly, ‘despite you thinking at the time that you needed to hide, keep quiet, avoid family and friends, it was because you felt guilt.’

He interrupted. ‘What would you know? Just what the hell would you know about stuff that happened more than 30 years ago.’

She looked at the fire. ‘OK, here’s the difficult to understand stuff I mentioned upstairs.’ She glanced at him. ‘Are you ready?’ He nodded. ‘OK.’ Her look softened.

‘Most people are self-focussed. It’s a human trait. It’s not unusual. People are mostly doing things for themselves. Oh, I know there are exceptions, such as mothers with young children, people caring for loved ones who are sick.

But there are some people - not many - who spend all their life listening to others’ problems, constantly helping in times of need, always watching over those they love, keeping them safe. They always see the beauty in life, they always see the best in people.’

She smiled at him. ‘It makes me sad that you never see the beauty in life. It’s always made me sad.

Your mother always said of her best friend, Judy – do you remember Judy? Well, your mother always used to say, “My Judy – she’s an angel” Do you remember that, Mort?’

He nodded slowly. Memories of his mother were still painful. He still had bad dreams that woke him.

‘Of course, I remember. But how did you know? Who told…’ His voice trailed off as Sophia continued.

‘Some people would agree with your mother. Believe me, Judy was indeed an angel. Being the incredibly special person she was, being and appearing kind and good was just easy for her, it came naturally to her - and there was a good reason for this.

Some people on this earth choose to serve. It is their purpose in life. And because of how you live your life, you’re eventually able to work out and understand that there may be something more you can achieve.

Things become much clearer. You see miracles in the smallest things. Sometimes, you can make miracles happen. You don’t always understand why. It just happens.

There is always something to say thank you for. Don’t you think there is, Mort?’ She didn’t wait for an answer.

‘Some people – those who need the love and support of people like Judy - well, they get over-whelmed by the negativity. They miss the good, the loving and the peaceful.

‘I know that you’ve been hurting for many years; you haven’t recognised beauty and peace; you haven’t recognised the good in yourself never mind others. You have been over-whelmed.’

Mortimer was crying. Sophia reached across and took his hand. You would find more peace and more love if you didn’t try to fight it off, preventing it from getting into your life. I know it isn’t easy for you – I know you must forgive people who have wronged you.

​

But everyone makes mistakes. Everyone.’ Sophia reached over and wiped tears from his cheeks.

‘We must understand what really matters in life. Inner peace, and unconditional love for others – they’re the goals, Mortimer. They rub off on others.’

He looked at her and then moved his head towards her face, kissing her gently on the cheek.

​

'That’s as close as we’re ever going to get, isn’t it?’ His voice had an air of resignation. She nodded. ‘I’m here for a reason. A specific reason. I’m here to set you free, to put you back on track as it were.

You suffered a great loss; you lost a woman you loved unconditionally.’ Sophia leaned back in her chair. ‘It’s a much under-valued expression: the love of your life. Some people use it to describe the one person they choose to spend their whole life with; I know that’s what you meant.’

She sat forward again. ‘But others merely use the phrase when they mention a hobby or a football team.’

‘Huh! They’re clueless,’ exclaimed Mort. ‘You get one shot at knowing the love of your life… Just one.’ He tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. ‘I don’t know who you really are, and I don’t know what you want with me, but I do know that I was lucky – I had time with the love of my life – but it’s over. It’s gone… And it’s always only just the one shot.’

‘Tell me what happened that day. That day out there on the ridge.’

He looked uncomfortable. ‘Why? Why do you need to know.’ His tone was rather curt.

She shrugged. ‘Because I’d like to hear it from you. In this village, everything about you is blurred.

​

No-one’s sure when you arrived, and some people even think you were born here.’ She looked at him quizzically. ‘Some say you’ve never had a job; others say you’ve always had a job. The truth is, Mortimer, you have been the master of mystery about yourself.

​

Very cleverly, you have created memories that are so foggy as to be completely unreliable.’ She rested an arm on the chair and then her chin on her hand. ‘Well, at least to a mere mortal – I’m clear about everything.’ She smiled at him. ‘But I’d still like to hear it from you.’

Mort stood up and stepped across to the hearth. He picked up a log and placed it carefully on the fire. ‘Tell me about the love of your life.’ Sophia’s urging was gentle. ‘From when you met.’

Mort pushed the logs with a with a brass handled poker, encouraging flames to lick high into the fireplace. ‘She was so, so good for me.’ He put down the poker and turned to face Sophia. ‘When we met, we clicked from the first minute. It was that instant. It was that spontaneous. We were that cliché – love at first sight.

‘We never knew why but it worked. I helped her through her pain – she’d lost her husband young – and she helped me through mine. It was as if we’d both had to go through our own agonies to find love with each other.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘Weird really, but it seemed true to us. Even living here, in this small cottage in a dismal village in the middle of nowhere, seemed OK when we were with each other.’

There was no sign of the accent Mort had when he first met Sophia in the pub. His voice was soft and melancholy. ‘Ten years we were together.’ He wiped tears from his cheek. ‘The best years I’ve 

had.’

Sophia sat listening. She didn’t make any movement, nor look to interrupt.

‘I can clearly remember the day it happened; it was a beautiful day. We’d had a lazy morning.’ He smiled briefly. ‘After something to eat Josie – that was her name – she and I decided to go out for a walk. She was wearing a bright dress, one of her favourites. I’ll always remember that. Bright blue it was, with a little flower print.’

His mind wondered for a moment and then he went on: ‘Anyway, we went to the top of the village where the road begins to wind down to Lower Winden.

There’s a path that runs along the top, either way along the ridge, not too close to the edge, but close enough. It’s not the safest place on earth and it’s got worse over the years. Erosion has made it very unsafe and brought the edge closer to the path. The path is about twenty feet from the edge, and it slopes gently away – except at one place, where the ground collapsed a couple of years before. One day there was a small headland, the next it was gone.

‘I don’t know why we went that way, but we did. We could have walked in the other direction. We should have done. It’s gentler, the path is further from the edge. It’s better, and you end up at the woods in the valley, if you walk far enough. We should have gone that way.

‘But Josie insisted. She said she’d never been that way. I always reckoned she was a bit of a daredevil. More than once she mentioned going parachuting and hang-gliding. Stuff like that scares the shit out of me.

‘Anyway, we were walking single file. That was the reason it wasn’t the best way for us to walk. We couldn’t be side by side; we couldn’t hold hands or talk much. We had to shout at each other.’

He returned to his seat. ‘After a while, Josie started larking about – skipping, singing, that sort of

thing. I shouted at her to stop, pleaded with her to stop.’

Mort’s lip was trembling and his fingers fidgeting. ‘She turned, so she could hear what I was shouting, and that was the moment – that was the moment she slipped.’ He put his hand to his mouth and caught his breath.

Sophia reached for his hand. ‘She stumbled slightly and then fell, away from the path and rolled nearer the edge. It all happened so quickly.’

He paused, wiped his face, and sniffled. Then he took a couple of deep breaths. ‘I got down on my

stomach and reached for her. She was looking up at me and she managed to grab my hand.’ He paused and then continued: ‘But then she started slipping again. It was too steep. I couldn’t hold her. It all happened so quickly - she screamed at me to help her. She screamed she loved me...’

Mort stopped talking. The room was silent, nothing to hear other than the subdued crackling of the logs on the fire and the steady rhythm of the clock on the mantel. Sophia was leaning slightly forward, still holding his hand.

‘Oh, Mort,’ she whispered. ‘My poor Mort.’

‘I’ve never been sure whether she lost grip of my hand, or I let her go.’

Sophia’s eyes moistened. She had rarely felt so sad or helpless. ‘They said,’ he looked at her sadness, ‘they heard her scream back here in the village. That’s when people decided it was me, that I was the one to blame. I came back, called the police. Then some of us rushed down the road and looked for the spot where she’d fallen.’

Mort sat breathing deeply, trying to calm himself. ‘But the police believed me. The coroner believed me.’ He took a long breath. ‘I just wasn’t sure if I believed me.’

He sighed. ‘I’m still not sure.’

Back to Chapter Three

Chapter Five