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lips and leaned back in her seat.
      Gavin wasn’t sure how far he could trust that promise, so he closed his eyes, inwardly swearing all the while that if ever he was blessed enough to find himself on another long journey by himself, he’d take a fat book to bury his head in. She was as good as her word, though, which was fortunate, because he found it hard to do a convincing impression of going to sleep. He was so afraid Miss Grey might reappear on the train while his eyes were closed that he couldn’t relax at all. After a while he stopped trying. His phone appeared to have run out of power, like his watch, though he’d charged it that morning. There was nothing to do but gaze out of the window, nowhere else to look.
      Tight valleys ghosted past in the darkening fog. They stopped at stations that seemed almost abandoned, platforms sunk down in a bank of wet slates and brambles or overlooked by the backs of dreary houses. After a while he heard the announcement that Truro would be the next stop. Most of the few remaining people in the carriage were gathering up belongings. He took his bag and went to stand by the door. Someone had pushed the window down. The wheels hissed loudly and the chill air smelled of wet bark. There was almost no light left in the sky.
      He saw Hester Lightfoot join the queue by the door, but she seemed to have lost interest in him. In fact, there was an oddly blank look on her face, as if she’d lost interest in everything. Her lips moved a little; she was talking to herself soundlessly. When the train stopped with a slight jerk, she nearly fell over, muttering as she grabbed the luggage rack.
      Gavin stepped down to the platform, looking around quickly for Auntie Gwen. The station clock showed they were only a couple of minutes late. People hurried, mostly silently, towards the exit, on their way to somewhere more welcoming. He didn’t see his aunt, so he followed the flow out through a ticket hall to the street.
      A few cars idled in front of the station, but none of them contained Auntie Gwen. The mist that swallowed headlights and rear lights up and down the road might as well have marked the edge of the world.
      He went back to check the platform again. A clump of people had formed at the far end, most of them school kids, though he noticed Hester Lightfoot there as well. He wanted to avoid the other kids almost as much as he wanted to be out of sight of her, so he sat on the least illuminated bench he could find and waited until the last of the passengers had scurried away.
      Minutes passed. No Auntie Gwen.
      The night and the cold closed around him.

Three
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Gavin had made two more trips out of the station to check the road when he returned to the bench to find the crazy woman standing beside it.
      ‘You look like you’ve been stood up,’ she said.
      He was about to slip behind his usual no-it’s-OK-I’m-fine routine, until it occurred to him that when she was so obviously right, denying it would sound stupid. Besides, he’d been waiting for more than twenty minutes and was beginning to wonder what he was going to do.
      ‘Looks like it, yeah. It’s my aunt. Being late, it’s her thing.’
      ‘Your aunt, did you say?’ An odd frown wrinkled her face for a moment.
      ‘Um, yeah.’
      ‘May I ask . . . is she a maternal or paternal aunt?’
      Gavin hesitated, suspecting some sort of odd joke, but Hester seemed to mean it.
      ‘My mum’s sister. Maternal aunt.’
      ‘Ah. Idle curiosity only. Is she coming a long way, then?’
      ‘Not sure. I’ve never been around here before. Dunno where her place is. It’s, um . . .’ and he unzipped his bag and dug out the letter again. ‘Here,’ he said, holding the back of the envelope under one of the grimy platform lights so they could see the scribbled address.
      ‘Pendurra! Goodness me, how very grand.’
      Grand? he thought. Auntie Gwen?
      ‘That’s a bit