DON smiled. Chris Rea's 'Driving Home for Christmas' was playing on the car radio and he was ready, very ready for Christmas.
Just the two of them, Don and his wife Jan, cocooned inside their smart, four bedroomed detached house.
THE faces looked out at him from the photograph. All six of them. But it was the girl on the left that had him transfixed.
Who was she, he pondered? A stupid thought really. Judging by the clothes the photograph was taken sometime in the 1920s. She would almost certainly be dead now or if not extremely old and wrinkly.
WHEN Frank awoke it was a beautiful day with a clear blue sky. The sun was exceptionally strong even at that early hour, stronger than it had been for many a year.
But as soon as he opened his eyes he knew that something was wrong.
THE first time I saw Billy must have been about six years ago.
I’d just moved to the area to take up a job as a reporter on the local evening paper and I’d had to do a vox pop – getting quotes from people on a particular subject.
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[1959] He hid in the woods, watching his father and sister, what they were doing. So we heard that, that is. Most of us felt, and all of us gossiped, he was up to no good. Here he lived an estranged life, hidden in the thick of the deep, like a recluse.
At times it was said, you could smell his cooking of venison, or spot him driving his 1952-pickup to town, dilapidated. His one room shack remained on the 1400-acers his father owned, and there he lived quietly, out of sight and out of the minds of the people in town, except for the intermit conversations, and gossip.