Free Lost in the Flames by Chris Jory

be retiring soon and he’s got me lined up to take this place over. The landowner’s agreed, it’s just a matter of time, Vera and me will be in the farmhouse and you can take over cottage number one, no problem at all, you’ll be my main man.’
    Webster nodded. ‘That sounds too good to be true, Norman. I might just take you up on that.’
    They ate their lunch out in the fields, cheese sandwiches in wedges so thick they could barely get their lips around them, and when they reached the yard again at the end of the day Rose and Vera were chatting either side of the cottage door.
    ‘Look who it is,’ said Rose, smiling at Webster. ‘Been out milking the sheep?’
    ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Webster. ‘You can help me milk the cows tomorrow though, if you like.’
    The next morning Webster squatted on a three-legged stool, squirting milk in thin streams into the galvanized metal pail between his knees. He sensed Rose behind him before he saw her. She squatted down beside him.
    ‘Let’s have a go,’ she said.
    She pushed and pulled the teat and the milk squirted into the pail and then Webster took over again and Rose followed him from cow to cow and when the last one was done she took Webster’s hand in hers and raised it to her face and breathed in the rich scent of warm milk and cows’ udders that he wore like an invisible farmer’s glove. She kissed his hand and squeezed it in hers and then pulled him towards her and kissed him hard on the mouth, a long lingering kiss as the cattle steamed in the cold air around them.
    ‘Let’s go up to the barn, Webster.’
    ‘I can’t, Rose. Norman will be looking for me soon. The work’s never done and he never stops and I can’t leave him to do it on his own.’
    ‘Brailes will help him.’
    ‘Brailes is old. He can’t do much heavy work now.’
    ‘Come on Webster. I won’t keep you all day …’
    ‘Really, I can’t.’
    ‘Tonight then?’
    ‘I’ll come and get you. You can’t walk here in the dark.’
    ‘Meet me at the top of my road at seven.’
    ‘Yes, Rose. Yes,’ he said, and she was gone, out of sight between the steaming cows.
    That night, they walked down to Pool Meadow and the water was still and dark and cold and the coots called to each other in the night, and Rose and Webster talked until the cold drove them back into town and suddenly it was too late to continue on down to Elm Tree Farm and instead they stood and spoke in whispers at her gate until she saw the light in the front room go off and she kissed him goodnight and slipped inside before her grandmother retired for the night.
    The next time they met they went straight to Elm Tree Farm and beneath the heavy quilt in Webster’s room they reacquainted each other with their bodies, this time without a veil of alcohol to deaden their memories, and when Webster lay alone in bed later that night his thoughts returned to Norman’s words and he knew that it was already too late, that he had stepped off the cliff and was falling and the only thing that lay between him and the valley bottom was the very thing that had compelled him to hurl himself off the cliff in the first place, and he no longer knew if she was still up on top or waiting to catch him down below, and he would not find out for sure until he hit the groundor his fall was arrested by gravity turning against itself and holding him in the air forever.
    But gravity can only be what gravity is, and Webster’s fall could not be slowed and the ground suddenly rushed up to meet him, as the ground rushes up in the end at those falling beneath parachutes spun only of hope, falling from planes struck up high in an exploding sky. And when Webster struck the ground all went black.
    ‘I’m sorry, Webster. That’s just the way it is. I told you from the start, that’s the way I am. Wild Rose. I told you, remember, I can’t be tamed. I told you, didn’t I?’
    ‘Yes, you told me.’
    ‘I was honest with you, Webster. You’re not