Sex, death and a snake in the grass: 19 linked short stories, fiction for the Internet. Read in narrative sequence using the left-hand menu or follow characters through the in-page links
3
The children having left home, Dan and Fiona had moved to a small house at the edge of a village. With Trotsky, their aging spaniel, Dan soon found a regular morning route for their walks: across the field, through the copse and into the field beyond. Sometimes he used to play a bit of half-hearted 'fetch' with Trotsky. But mostly he just liked to walk, listening to the birds and watching how things changed as the seasons moved.
There came a day in winter when Dan was a little late going out, after a bit of a row with Fiona. When he got to the second field a young woman was there before him, walking her two collies. She was there the next day, too, and he saw her again a week later. As is the way of dog people, they soon started chatting, mostly about their dogs. And it wasn't that they planned to meet regularly. It was just the way things often turned out.
But one day in early March Laura didn't come. Dan walked around the field for a while in Trotsky's meandering path. Laura wasn't there the next day, either. By the third day, he was beginning to wonder if she was ever coming again. Maybe she was ill? He shook himself. This was ridiculous. Dan hardly knew the woman, and here he was thinking more about her than he was of his own wife.
Just then, an odd sensation suddenly washed over him. It was exactly as if somebody had pressed his 'reset' button. For a moment he stood stock still in the field, lost in thought.
On the way home Dan noticed a few early bluebells nodding under the hazel at the edge of the copse. He was astounded by their vibrancy against the darkness of the soil. Up ahead he could hear Trotsky, barking happily, and his heart leaped.
