Lost in the Flames (28 page)

Rose lifted her gaze and looked across the street again to Jacob’s window. The room behind the glass was dark now. Someone had turned out the light.

Later that year Rose was gone too, found by the postman beneath a cold December sky as the snow sheeted down, layering her in white as she sat on the bench in front of the house as if asleep, not waking now from a dream she had been having for more than sixty years. With no family left to speak of, her things were taken away and sold at a local auction house. The frames that held her photos of Jacob in his RAF uniform were bought as part of a jumbled job-lot in a cardboard box.
Their new owner took out the photos and dropped them in the bin, and he sold the frames for a fiver apiece at a car-boot sale on a grey Sunday morning in the rain.

Raised on a mixed diet of Enid Blyton and war comics the author has always loved working with words. After studying English Literature at university he taught English living in Italy, Spain, Crete, Brazil and Venezuela. He is married and lives near Oxford though they still have a rather run-down home in Italy.