Free The Start of Everything by Emily Winslow Page B

paperback. I’m able to divert to Cambridge on the way from there. On Friday 19th I’ll be catching the train from King’s Cross to get into Cambridge at quarter to four .
Please meet me. Wouldn’t it be good to say hello? I won’t try to steal you away from your work, or from whomever you’re close with now. I only want to see you again. Don’t you want to see me?
It can be whatever you like. But please come .
Wear my red sweater. I like that you kept it .
    Stephen
    I accidentally jostled Trevor’s coffee. “Sorry!” I said. “Oh, sorry!”
    “It’s all right,” he assured me. He dabbed at a splash with a tissue from the box on the windowsill. “Are you all right?”
    Trevor looked hard at me. I folded the letter in half. It wasn’t his job to read them. It was mine.
    I bounced my chin on my neck to tell him yes .
    He turned back to his work. I unfolded the letter. I read it again. Today was Friday.
    And the red sweater. I knew, right then I knew.
    “We should go now,” Lucy said, standing straight in front of me. She knows I don’t like when people talk at me from the side. Everyone was being nice today.
    “You go ahead,” I said.
    I think she was going to say more, but Enid pulled her away. The three of them left.
    I waited until they would be well ahead, then put my jacket on. It was black, too, by chance. My bag wasn’t. It stood out against me. It had the watch in it, for George. He was welcome to it. I don’t wear a watch.
    Great St. Mary’s church is near, just at the end of Senate House Passage. People milled in front of it. I hung back in the passage. My breath puffed in front of me, made visible by the unexpected spring chill.
    I thought of the inside of the church, packed in with people my dad had known. A lady in a green skirt was handing some paper out as more entered. I pushed my eyebrows together. She shouldn’t have worn green. I didn’t.
    I counted the people I knew. Not the green-skirt lady, or the two men in college gowns. One, Dr. Ogilvie in a black suit. Two, three, the sisters who cleaned for us, in elaborate hats . Not the clutch of students wearing jeans; I didn’t recognise them. Four, George . I was supposed to give him the watch.
    Five, Amy Banning, in a dress. Six, Luke .
    Luke. I batted my fists against my cheeks. Not the four men entering together; I didn’t know them. Not the student sailing past on a bicycle. I looked and looked for someone else, someone to count after Luke.
    He and his mother stopped to talk to the green-skirted lady. He looked uncomfortable in his suit, hands in pockets. He leaned and looked around, in every direction from which someone might come: down both sides of the church towards the market, down King’s Parade,down Trinity Lane. I curled myself up around the corner when he looked down here.
    Seven . Dad’s ashes were inside the church.
    I turned and ran back down Senate House Passage. I stopped at the bottom, panting. If people were sitting in the pews already, then Stephen’s train was coming. It was inexorable.
    I ran up Trinity Lane. I ran to Bridge Street and then down, down, down its straight line, through all its changing names: Sidney Street, Regent Street, Hills Road. I knew I could make it in time. I stopped only for crossings, rocking from foot to foot while I waited for each green man to appear.
    The Cambridge train station is situated far down Hills Road, built there so it won’t tempt students to London. The front of it is blocked by bus stops and a taxi stand. My view was further obscured by a sudden flurry. Snow blew into my face, like the sudden fizz from a shaken Coke bottle.
    The waiting-room floor had already gone slippery from footprint slush. Some people curled around their mobiles, calling for lifts, making an obstacle course for the hurriers pushing through to secure their places in the taxi queue and inevitable traffic snarl. Shoes slid and churned against the wet. I hung back.
    The three-forty-five train lumbered