Free The Darkening Hour by Penny Hancock

the other side, tall glass
buildings tower towards sky that’s the colour of stones.
    I park the wheelchair and sit on a cold bench. A flight of steps leads straight down into the river, dark green and shiny with water that must have covered them earlier.
    ‘They never used to have those
Danger
signs in the old days,’ Charles says, nodding towards a jetty that stands like a many-legged monster out in the river. ‘They see
danger everywhere now.’
    I shiver, feel another wave of homesickness wash over me.
    Now the sun’s gone in, everything’s turned grey, as if the colour has simply drained away.
    I feel a keen longing for our estuary. The day I saw Ali in the rocks.
    I’m knee-deep in the water, my dress slapping me around the calves.
    I look up. Ali is on the natural jetty, staring at me. He catches me looking at him, and instead of smiling and waving as I’d expected, he turns away, lifts his fishing rod, a long bamboo
pole, and casts it into the tide. Is he ignoring me? I’m surprised by how much it hurts. Worse than a slap in the face.
    I walk up the beach, my heart aching.
    I sit with Hait and Amina in the shade of the town wall, and we chat and watch the waves lick the sand. And I try to pretend I don’t care.
    We’re about to leave, to go home to start the evening chores.
    A shadow falls over me. He stands above me, his face dark, the sun behind him. The blue of his eyes like kingfishers over the river. He’s holding a silver fish in his two hands, cradling
it. Gives me the fish, placing it on the rock beside me. It’s only just dead; its eyes are bright, the flesh still shiny.
    And he walks away. Hait and Amina burst into excited giggles. ‘Mona and Ali,’ they sing. ‘Mona and Ali.’
    My heart has stopped hurting and is soaring instead.
    We were teenagers by then, still young, but too old to be friends. After that look I caught him giving me, before he turned and walked away – after that was when I swore that once
we’d got together, we would never part.
    How could you leave me, Ali?
    How did I end up here, in London, with an old man, lying for a book of stamps so that I can write home, instead of staying with you by the estuary forever? And an enormous remorse washes over
me.
    I turn Charles, who is nodding sleepily now, in his wheelchair, and push him slowly back to his underground home. I install him in his sitting room. Then, as he’s half-asleep, I look
around and find some paper, a pen. I go back up to the house.
    I spend the afternoon cleaning, and don’t stop until it’s beginning to get dark.
    I check on Charles again, make him some tea and go back up.
    The TV is on in the drawing room, Leo has shut himself back in the dark.
    And then, when everyone is settled and the house gleams, I go to my room and write to Leila.
    Dear Leila
    I am in England now.
    We arrived at night and all the lights were on, orange in this street. The city all lit up, lights everywhere, filling the sky with their beams. Beautiful, but you cannot see the stars
     as we can at home.
    Theodora, my new employer, has red hair, the colour of paprika, the colour of amber – you remember the stones I showed you in the medina? Quite beautiful, like a princess from
The Arabian Nights.
    London is the biggest city I’ve ever seen. It took us over an hour to drive from the airport to the house! On our journey here we passed some beautiful buildings, like palaces, all
     lit up too and lots of stone people and horses and lions.
    You wouldn’t believe the shops – some as long as whole streets with windows full of puppets and mannequins dressed in lovely clothes. When you come, you will see them with
     your own eyes.
    There are trees with leaves the shape of hands that fall onto the soft black road surfaces and form a pattern as if you had done golden handprints all over the ground!
    I have a room that is full of books and other piles of things I haven’t had time to look through yet. As soon as I can, I will send