Bold Step

 That winter was bleak - they so often are around these parts - but this one particularly so, with the canal frozen to solid black in parts, my thoughts drawn involuntarily to the child, murdered and buried at the bottom near the lock gates much further up some time ago now but the memory still ringing like an alarm in my imagination each time I took the ancient bridge over to the path up on my way to the room . 

I visited each day, whatever the weather, having promised to pick up the mail which was left in one of the boxes in the communal hall-way. I didn't like leaving it there. 

To begin with, everything was done in half light because I hated the glare of the central bulb which hung, without a shade, from the middle of the ceiling in the small sitting cum kitchen room, didn’t want to take candles in case of fire so one day I took a small lamp and decided to leave it on even after I left since the hallway was often very dark even in the day with no-one coming to replace the broken lights in there at least I wouldn’t stumble once I’d managed to get the key in the lock and shove open the slightly warped door which needed planing it had warped in the dampness of the atmosphere 

Once in I could sit at the small table near the window and look out across the valley and the brooding sky for as long as it took my heart to slow to something approaching a normal rhythm after the getting here which was always arduous and tense to me at that time 

Then, with steadier hands, I would open any post found in the box in the hallway and write a brief report about that and any other observations about the place to its owner, who sometimes acknowledged items with yes I’ll deal with that thank you and always ended with - is there nothing else ? which aroused my curiosity so much so that one day I could bear it no longer and instead of replying no that’s it, wrote instead ; Is there something in particular you’re waiting for ? 

There followed a long pause.