Free Blue Bedroom and Other Stories by Rosamunde Pilcher Page A

aisle. Both men had turned to watch as the little procession approached. Andrew’s eyes were on Jane, and there was pride and wonder written all over his face. But William …
    He was watching Laurie, his expression steadfast, concerned, reassuring. She realised that the lump in her throat had come to nothing, and that she wasn’t going to cry. She wished there was some way of telling William about Grandfa, but then she caught his eye, and he smiled and sent her an unmistakable wink, and she knew that there was no need to tell him because he already knew.

Miss Cameron at Christmas
    The little town, which was called Kilmoran, had many faces, and all of them to Miss Cameron, were beautiful. In spring, the waters of the firth were blown blue as indigo; inland the fields were filled with lambs, and cottage gardens danced with daffodils. The summer brought the visitors; family parties camping on the beach, swimming in the shallow waves, the ice cream van parked by the breakwater, the old man with his donkey giving rides to the children. And then, around the middle of September, the visitors disappeared, the holiday houses were closed up, their shuttered windows staring blank-eyed across the water to the hills on the distant shore. The countryside hummed with combine harvesters, and as the leaves began to flutter from the trees and the stormy autumn tides brought the sea right up to the rim of the wall below Miss Cameron’s garden, the first of the wild geese flew in from the north. After the geese, she always felt it was winter.
    And perhaps, thought Miss Cameron privately, that was the most beautiful time of all. Her house faced south across the firth, and although she often woke to darkness and wind and the battering of rain, sometimes the sky was clear and cloudless, and on such mornings she would lie in her bed and watch the red sun edge its way over the horizon and flood her bedroom with rosy light. It winked on the brass rail of her bed and was reflected in the mirror over the dressing table.
    *   *   *
    Now, it was the twenty-fourth of December, and just such a morning. Christmas tomorrow. She was alone, and she would spend tomorrow alone. She did not mind. She and her house would keep each other company. She got up and went to close the window. There was an icing of snow on the distant Lammermuirs and a gull sat on the wall at the end of the garden, screaming over a piece of rotten fish. Suddenly it spread its wings and took off. The sunlight caught the spread of white feathers and transformed the gull into a magic, pink bird, so beautiful that Miss Cameron’s heart lifted in pleasure and excitement. She watched the gull’s flight until it dipped out of sight, then turned to find her slippers and go downstairs to put on a kettle for her cup of tea.
    *   *   *
    Miss Cameron was fifty-eight. Until two years ago she had lived in Edinburgh, in the tall, cold, north-facing house where she had been born and brought up. She had been an only child, the daughter of parents so much older than herself that by the time she was twenty, they were already on the road to old age. This made leaving home and making a life for herself, if not impossible, then difficult. Somehow, she achieved a sort of compromise. She got herself to University, but it was Edinburgh University, and she lived at home. After that, she had taken a teaching job, but that, too, had been in a local school, and by the time she was thirty there could be no question of abandoning the two old people who—unbelievably, Miss Cameron often thought—were responsible for her very existence.
    *   *   *
    When she was forty, her mother, who had never been very robust, had a little heart attack, lay feebly in her bed for a month or so, and then died. After the funeral, Miss Cameron and her father returned to the tall and gloomy house. He went upstairs to sit morosely by the fire, and she went