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for him, he was beginning to doubt whether she had done so. Seraphina usually wrote weekly and he had not yet received any correspondence from her. I really have to make the effort and tell her all about my new job and how happy I am to be back in the country, he told himself. Oh, I know Seraphina’s only eighteen, same as me, but I’ve always thought she and I would make a go of it, one of these fine days. I know she’s beautiful and I am not, I know she’s clever and I am not, I know she’s going to have a career in teaching whereas I am just a railwayman and will probably never rise any higher than portering because I don’t believe I’m very ambitious either. But Seraphina never seemed to care what I did so long as I was happy. So I can’t let us grow apart just because I’m no great hand at letter-writing and the job here simply eats up all my time. Well, it’s my day off today so I’ll go back to the house, borrow some paper from Mrs Marks, grit my teeth and write Seraphina a really good long letter. It won’t just be about my new job either; I’ll tell her how dreadfully I miss her, how I long to see her again . . . perhaps I might even tell her I like her better than anyone else I’ve ever met. One day soon he would visit her because cheap fares were one of a railwayman’s perks; he would tell her that too.
    But oh, it was such a glorious day! September was almost at an end and in the woods and lanes, copses and hedgerows the leaves were beginning to turn and the berries, shining and scarlet, or richly black, were changing the countryside into a scene of such beauty that even five minutes shut up in the house would be a penance. His free time was rare because he used a good deal of his time off in the station garden and in his landlady’s vegetable plot. I could write this evening, he told himself, because today might be my last chance to get right away from the station and enjoy the fine weather. Sometimes October brought gales which sent the glorious multicoloured leaves whirling from the trees to lie in great rustling mounds in every corner and crevice. Then he would be busy at the station, barrowing the leaves away to the far end of the platform where he would pile them into a great heap interspersed with broken branches, old copies of magazines and newspapers left behind in the waiting room, and any other suitable material. He and Mr Tolliver would choose a calm day and then they would light the bonfire; already he could smell the sweet country smell of burning leaves, hear the crackle as the flames caught a dry branch, see the blue hazy smoke rising into the clearer blue of the sky. He could almost hear Mr Tolliver adjuring him: ‘Add some more leaves over here, boy . . . give her a poke, she’s only smouldering round this side . . . fetch out them old dried pea haulms and chuck ’em on top . . .’
    Toby remembered the little lake set deep in the heart of mixed woodland only a short bicycle ride away. He rather thought it was private property because through the trees, if you looked really hard, you could just make out an old house, grey-stoned, slated, but with windows so grimed that he was pretty sure the place must have been abandoned years ago. So far as he had been able to make out, the trees had encroached on the house so that it had reminded him of Sleeping Beauty’s palace. And there had been fish in the lake; he had seen them all right, clear as clear through the limpid brown depths. Trout perhaps? The lake had had a stream running into it from the direction of the house and running out of it on the other side to dive under a small road bridge. He had discovered the lake by following the stream and had meant to return with his fishing rod to see if he could bag a trout or two, which his landlady could cook for them. He could go today – why not? The evenings were still quite long;