Chapter 60
The Landscape of Life
The Midnight Train rolled by some of the best times he had known.
Wilbur and Maggie on a bench outside the theatre, spending a lunch break together … Wilbur working hard late at night in the back room of Bagdale’s after Charlie clocked off …
Maggie designing an advert for the shop. A murmuration of flying paperbacks in the sky …
Wilbur and Maggie in the new house in leafy Broomhill, painting the bathroom walls avocado green …
Double-dating with Claudette and Charlie at a sit-down cabaret bar …
Maggie giving an evening talk at her old art college with Wilbur in the back row for support.
‘I had time for her,’ the Ghost said to himself, looking at his smile. ‘I had time for life.’
The happy couple on a Sunday in Robin Hood’s Bay, looking out to sea and eating fish and chips …
Maggie up a ladder Charlie and Wilbur were holding, painting the shop sign she’d said desperately needed a revamp …
Had he always acknowledged the hard work she had put in during those early days, even though she had a job of her own? The Ghost wondered if he had understood that the way the shop looked was a key part of its success.
He caught sight of himself in a jeweller’s.
Mr Leslie Thomas Top Quality Fine Diamonds.
Wilbur was leaning over a glass cabinet and choosing a ring …
Then he was down on one knee proposing at the bench where they had once sat as teenagers.
And he couldn’t hear it from the ghostly train but he distinctly remembered how it sounded – ‘Yes, oh, Wilbur, yes …’