The downpour started as soon as she left The Willows. Thick grey choked the sky, swallowing the wispy pair of clouds she’d watched from Esme’s bench. They must still be up there, high in the stratosphere, invisible now behind a sudden storm.
She longed to go back, return to the perpetually sunny courtyard and Esme’s bench where she’d felt seen and heard. If only she and Alan could converse like that, listen to each other’s hearts. But they were both equally pig-headed. They couldn’t go on like this, tiptoeing around each other pretending everything was fine. One of them needed to bring this situation to a head.
Heather leaned into the gusts that drove the rain like needles into her face, dragging Stan behind her, his sodden fur weighing him down like a lead X-ray apron. Water was already pooling in the potholes along the lane. Should she run or walk? Her mathematical brain wrestled with the calculation and decided it made no difference. If she walked, she’d get hit by a certain number of droplets over a certain period of time. If she ran, she’d hit more droplets over a shorter time. It was the kind of equation Tilly would stay up all night trying to solve.
Before she’d decided whether to make a run for it, she reached the notorious Bridgestone Lane blind bend. The narrow, winding lane was a popular shortcut to the school, and twice a day laden people-carriers duelled head to head. Occasionally, a New Forest pony would decide to stand in the middle of the road, and not even Darlingford Dings and Dents could repair the damage a pony could do. Nor the vet hospital mend the damage a large vehicle could do to an animal like that…
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