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greenery and dirt from off her skirt when something
attracted her attention. It did not shine or sparkle, nor was it brightly
coloured. It was the shape that caught her eye. A minute cross with slightly
flared arms of equal length, sticking out of the soil that had been disturbed
by her fall.
    Jan leant forward to pick it up. At first she could not. It
was attached to something, but after working at the ground with her fingernails
for a few seconds she extracted it from the earth. It was a ring. She began
trying it on, pushing out the soil that was caked inside its tarnished band.
    “You’ve found it, at last.”
    Jan gave a start and dropped the ring into her lap.
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
    Jan looked up. At the top of the bank, silhouetted against
the bright green leaves and sapphire sky, stood a figure of a girl about the
same height as herself. Jan shaded her eyes and squinted but could not make out
her face. The girl was standing directly in front of the sun, her dishevelled
hair like a halo around her shining head. She stepped forward. Jan called out.
    “Be careful, the ground’s very steep and slip…” Jan’s voice
faded away. The girl was so sure-footed that she obviously did not need a
warning. She came down the bank as serenely as if she had been descending a
flight of stairs.
    She reached the bottom of the slope in less time than it took
Jan to lift the ring from her lap – then she dropped it again. The skirt
the girl was wearing was identical to her own. So was the coloured T-shirt. And
her hair…
    A story Jan had once read bubbled up from deep within her
unconscious, about a girl meeting her double in a wood – her doppelganger
– and how the legend said that to do so was a premonition of one’s own
death.
    “Are you alright?” The girl’s voice was soft, with a strong
Suffolk accent. She sounded very concerned. “I’m sorry. I was so excited to
discover you had found the ring that I forgot to ask whether you had hurt
yourself when you fell.”
    “No, I’m fine, thanks,” Jan smiled as the superstition
vanished from her mind. “Is this yours, then?” She held the ring up. The girl
took it with one hand and held out the other. Jan grasped it and pulled herself
up.
    “It was mine once,” replied the girl, “but you found it, so
it’s yours now.”
    Jan stood there, expectantly. But the girl did not move. In
spite of her words she seemed loath to relinquish the ring. Her head was bowed
down, her hair hanging over her face. She was obviously inspecting Jan’s find
with keen interest. Then, suddenly, without looking up, she thrust it back into
Jan’s hand.
    “Please,” she said, “it’s yours.”
    “No … no, I couldn’t.” Jan shook her head, but found herself
clasping the ring.
    “You must take it,” the girl snapped insistently; then, more
softly, “as a token of our friendship.”
    “Oh!” Jan was taken aback. She tried to make out the girl’s
expression in order to ascertain the sincerity of what she said, but she was
playing with a knot of her unkempt hair and pulling it diagonally across her
face. Only a single eye showed above a pallid cheek. It was cornflower blue on
the rim of a tear.
    Jan stared at the girl, momentarily unnerved by the contrast
between the sudden assertiveness in her tone and the desolation that reflected
in her eye.
    “Thank you,” Jan said, eventually, as she slipped the ring
upon her finger, still staring into the stranger’s eye. “If we’re to be
friends, we ought to swap names,” she smiled. “I’m Jan, short for Janet.”
    “I’m Margaret … Margaret Hase.”
    She spread her left hand and held it out for Jan to see.
    “Look, our rings make a pair.”
    They both broke off their gaze. She was wearing a ring of a
similar style to Jan’s, except that it bore a circle, instead of a cross, and
was cleaner and shone brightly in the sun. She placed her hand over Jan’s so
that they could see both rings side by