Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon Read Online Free PDF

about with enthusiasm. Gratitude and warmth shone from Ruth’s eyes, not the wariness Anna might have expected.
    When Anna compared herself to Ruth, she couldn’t see what Martin had gained from the substitution. Though tempted to probe further into his dismissive ‘Things didn’t work out’, she never did, fearful of the not-workings-out that were emerging in their own relationship.
    Saturday was bright and frosty, more cheering than the bleak greyness of the previous week. As Anna came out of the Underground station at Woodford, Ruth pulled up in her black Fiesta, nosing into an empty parking space. Liam got out of the passenger seat, wearing his Chelsea scarf. Anna felt disconcerted, as she always did at first sight, by his resemblance to Martin, the sleek dark hair and dark eyes. Martin was taking him to a home match today, and being allowed to go to London alone on the Underground was a new concession.
    ‘’Lo.’ Liam gave her a perfunctory wave.
    ‘Hi, Liam. Hi, Ruth.’
    Ruth startled Anna with a kiss and a warm hug, which she hastily returned. ‘It’s really great of you to do this,’ Ruth told her. ‘You must have loads of better things to do on a Saturday.’
    ‘You don’t have to come with me,’ Liam mumbled, but Ruth insisted on going as far as the barrier, and seeing him through. Martin, who would meet him at Holborn, considered Ruth over-protective; but now Anna sensed Ruth’s anxiety as they waited for the small and suddenly vulnerable-looking figure to cross the bridge to the opposite platform, where a train was already pulling in.
    They went back to the car. Ruth’s mother’s house was in a village near Epping, and their route took them between leaf-strewn banks and stands of trees. Even in midwinter, the copper of the beech leaves was dazzling; the forest floor was thickly strewn, and the few still clinging to branches were burnished into fiery bronze by shafting sunlight. Anna saw, in a hollow, flecked ice on a pond, with hollies huddling close, a trodden path leading through the stand of trees, and grasses bleached strawy pale.
    ‘I know,’ said Ruth. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I try not to take it for granted, seeing it most days. We used to go for long walks with the boys.’
    That we again; Anna wasn’t used to hearing it from Ruth, and it hung awkwardly in the air for a few moments.
    A stretch of common marked the edge of the forest; then Ruth took to narrow lanes, crossing the M25 and reaching, after another few miles, a settlement hardly large enough to be called a village: a few houses, a post box at the junction of two lanes. A pair of cottages stood together beyond a farm entrance. Ruth and Anna got out of the car. Motorway traffic hummed faintly in the distance; nearby, rooks cawed in the treetops, and wings beat against cypress branches as a woodpigeon took clumsily to the air.
    While Ruth stood for a moment holding her bunch of keys, as if reluctant to go in, Anna couldn’t help looking at the house with the speculative estate agent’s eye she was fast acquiring. Probably built as a farm cottage, with its conjoined twin, it was quite substantial, with a generous front garden and driveway separating it from the lane. An entrance porch was twined all over with brown stems and feathery seed-heads, like old man’s beard.
    ‘ Clematis tangutica ,’ Ruth said, as Anna reached out to touch. ‘Lovely in September. The garden’s gone wild. I used to help Mum with it, but then things got out of hand. I should have got someone round to keep things tidy, but, well … I didn’t.’
    ‘There must be such a lot to think about,’ Anna said, dismayed by the prospect of dismantling a home, a life. The house must be stripped of personality. The similar task soon to confront her parents would be as daunting; to leave their home would mean leaving Rose, acknowledging at last that she would never come back.
    This was easier, by comparison; the house and its contents meant