Two #2
She knelt to gather the debris, her knees cracking as she did so.
Jez followed her around as she tidied up, his nails clicking on the flagstone floor.
The sound was a reminder that she wasn’t alone, that she had a companion, a purpose – at a time when she felt so adrift, Jez anchored her.
Every so often he trotted up with a random offering – an apple core, a tea towel, a cushion – as if trying to tempt her into a game.
As she reached for a banana peel, the puppy nuzzled closer, nibbling gently at her earlobes with his tiny teeth.
‘You’re lucky you’re cute,’ she told him, extracting her now-soggy prayer journal from under the sofa. Despite the chewed pages, she could still just about decipher yesterday’s job-hunting entry.
Jez bounded over to the puppy-training book that Fred had given her, which lay unopened on the window seat.
She really should read it. But every time Jez misbehaved, she treated him like the children she’d never had, with gentle scolding and too many treats.
Fred kept telling her she needed to be firmer, establish boundaries, but it didn’t seem fair to spoil his puppyhood.
A flash of movement caught her eye. Jez had a slipper in his mouth and was prancing away with his tail held high. ‘No, darling, bring that here,’ she called, knowing it was futile. Instead, he stood on his hind legs and dropped it into Fred’s hideous pot with a dull thunk .
Ivy laughed. ‘Well, at least you’ve found a use for that pot.’
When the cottage was tidy again, she collected the torch from its peg by the back door and went outside.
Dusk had fallen quickly, darkness spreading through the garden like sin through Eden.
The light from the shed glowed brightly.
As she walked, the torch bobbed, casting erratic light over the stone path.
She had only gone a few paces from the house, yet in the silent press of the evening it felt further.
When she reached the shed, – a building about the size of two shipping containers – she turned off the torch, then pushed open the door.
A musty smell hit her; Ivy’s eyes roved around the haphazard collection of tools, broken flowerpots and bags of compost sagging under their own weight.
She really should clean up in here. She muttered a small sigh of disapproval, reached for the string and turned off the single bare bulb overhead.
Job done, Ivy turned to leave, and suddenly, she heard a sound.
It was just the faintest scrape, like a boot against wood.
Her heart hammered against her ribcage. Listening more closely, she heard the rustle of breathing.
Was an animal trapped in here? A fox or a badger?
But that wouldn’t explain the light being on.
A light she was certain she had not left on the last time she was in here – and wished she hadn’t just switched off now.
Her skin prickled, every nerve taut, her senses scrambling to tune into the dark.
Her eyes darted round the space. The darkness swallowed her vision whole at first, shapes emerging slowly like ghosts as her pupils fought to dilate.
She should have brought Jezreel. Dogs were excellent at sniffing out people.
She stabbed at the torch’s button, the beam wobbly in her unsteady grasp. Ivy swallowed, summoning courage from some hidden well. ‘Who’s there?’ In the stillness, her voice, though thin, sounded like a shout.
Silence.
She shone the wavering beam around the crowded shed.
All the while her ears pricked up. A spade with a broken handle leaned against the workbench like an old man on a crutch.
The light picked out bags of compost, a tangled hose, broken pots.
But no signs of life. Then, from behind a ladder, something moved.
Startled, she dropped the torch, her heart pounding.
Her hand flailed wildly for the cord to switch the light back on, then she fell to her knees, fingers scrabbling on the dusty floorboards, her eyes following the path of the torch beam.
Boots. Sturdy hiking boots, their dark brown leather creased and burnished.
Scuffs marred the toecaps. Someone had carefully reknotted a broken lace about three inches from the top.
Those boots were built to last. She saw thick trousers, worn at the knees, but above that, where the light was dim, she could only make out the looming form of someone tall.
Ivy picked up the torch and rose, shining the beam directly on the intruder.
A man emerged, slowly, deliberately. He wore rumpled, dirty clothes.
The light caught his face – he looked about thirty, with sharp cheekbones, unkempt hair, a mouth set in a sullen line and a straggly beard.
But it was his eyes which struck her, burning dark, unreadable, watching her with something approaching menace in his gaze.
He was handsome, in a scruffy way, but there was nothing safe about him.
Ivy’s breath came in a quick puff. ‘What – what are you doing in here?’ she gasped.
He didn’t answer immediately. His fingers, long like a pianist’s, curled around the edge of the workbench as if testing its solidity. Then, at last, he spoke, his accent thick and unfamiliar, yet the response showed he understood English. ‘Nothing.’
Nothing? But he was here. In her shed!
Ivy clutched the torch, her fingers tightening round the base, wondering if it would be any use as a weapon.
She suspected that if she hurled the torch, it would bounce off him just like her commands seemed to bounce off Jez.
‘Are you—?’ She hesitated. The word ‘refugee’ danced on her tongue.
He had that look – an outsider, displaced, drifting between worlds.
He could just be homeless. But she didn’t think so.
There was something unnerving, something dark, coiled in his silence. And that accent. Was he alone?
He took a step closer. Only one. It was enough. Ivy’s throat tightened. She could see the muscles flexing beneath the fabric of his coat, the way his jaw clenched. There was a restlessness in him, something caged, straining for release. He had been on that abandoned dinghy. She was sure of it.
‘You should go.’ she said, her voice firmer now, though fear laced its edges.
He frowned. ‘Should I?’
Ivy’s mouth went dry. She thought of the phone still in her pocket.
The authorities. A single call and he would be gone.
But she detected something beneath his nastiness – something tender and raw he’d encased in spite, like a frightened animal that bites because it expects to be hurt. She could handle this herself.
Ivy squared her shoulders, lifting her chin. ‘You have five minutes to leave my property.’
His smile widened, all teeth and arrogance, but something glimmered behind his eyes – recognition, perhaps even respect.
Ivy stood gripping the torch until her knuckles whitened, her breath shallow.
He gave a slight nod, almost mocking, and without another word, he picked up a bag and slung it over his shoulder.
As he sidled past, she caught the scent of unfamiliar spices, and she asked herself what it must be like to arrive in a strange country thousands of miles from home, seeking sanctuary, to discover the natives as inhospitable as she was being.
The disturbing parallel between her own dismissive attitude and the unwelcoming stance of her fellow Christians at the vicarage settled like a weight on her conscience.
She imagined the last few minutes of his inbound journey.
Ivy had made that trip into Brambleton Harbour many times herself.
She could almost feel the boat gently bobbing on the approaching tide, the familiar sight of her village unfolding before her, the sandy beach she’d known for decades curving in a gentle crescent, its wet surface reflecting the late-afternoon light like burnished copper.
Seagulls would have been overhead, their calls carrying sharply in the crisp air.
Would the crowded dinghy’s passengers have felt frightened, nervous or even excited?
As he sidled past her, she told herself that she was doing the right thing, the sensible thing, but couldn’t dislodge the feeling that she should do more than simply protect herself.
For decades, she had helped countless souls, comforted the lost, given sanctuary to the weary.
But could she trust her own judgement anymore? What if this man meant her harm?
‘Wait. What’s your name?’
He stopped just outside the door. His response was reluctant, as if squeezed out of him against his will. ‘Omar.’
Ivy tried to make her voice sound more welcoming. ‘And where are you from, Omar?’
‘Does it matter?’ he spat.
‘You were on that dinghy, weren’t you? How many of you are there?’
For a few moments, he didn’t reply, and she assumed he was weighing up his loyalties, calculating if betraying others might secure him a respite. He shrugged. ‘What dinghy?’
She chuckled. ‘I see.’ He was going to play it that way, was he?
Seeing her soften, he seized his chance.
‘Let me stay,’ he whispered. His eyes, recently so menacing, had a vulnerability in them, which pierced Ivy’s defences as effectively as the puppy’s.
She was sure he had been on that dinghy; was some hot food and a night inside wrapped in a blanket so much to ask? ‘I am not planning to stay long.’
That was a complicated sentence. ‘How comes your English is so good?’
The seconds ticked past, and Ivy sensed he was not going to answer her question. She tried a different tack. ‘Are you alone?’
As if detecting he was gaining traction, he moved towards her, looking her directly in the eyes, just like Jez did when he wanted to play. ‘Yes. There’s no one else. Not anymore.’
Ivy swallowed. Not anymore? What did that mean?
‘Please. I won’t stay long.’
As she opened her mouth to tell him to go, she heard the faint strains of music, thin but certain, coming from Fred’s kitchen.
It was ‘The Power of Love’. She hadn’t heard it in decades, but her bones knew it before her mind did.
The air in the shed grew soft and golden.
The melody curled around her like smoke.
The shed faded, and she was twenty again, standing on a Bristol street listening to the voice she loved. ‘Promise me that whatever happens, we’ll never turn our backs on someone who needs us. That we’ll never be the kind of people who cross to the other side of the street.’
‘I promise,’ said Ivy.
She had broken that vow once – just once – and had carried the burden of failure ever since.
She’d promised herself she would never do that again.
The floorboards creaked; she blinked, looking straight into Omar’s tired eyes. The music had stopped.
Ivy puffed out a sigh. ‘All right. Stay here. I’ll fetch you a blanket and some hot soup.’
He gave a toss of his head and spoke gruffly: ‘Thank you.’ Then he muttered some words she didn’t understand.
She arched her eyes at him. ‘I didn’t catch that.’
He spoke almost reverently. ‘I was quoting Rumi . ’
‘I’ve heard of him, but I don’t know much about Rumi.’
‘He was a thirteenth-century Persian poet.’
She thought of her bookshelves crowded with volumes of Victorian poetry, and her voice softened. ‘I like poetry,’ she said. ‘Can you translate what you just said?’
He straightened slightly, shoulders squaring.
‘Of course. But I will borrow someone else’s words – an Englishman called Reynold Nicholson.
It means ‘ O soul, seek the Beloved, O friend, seek the Friend. ’ The words hit her like a gentle blow.
She had spent decades officially “seeking the Beloved” and guiding others in that search.
After retiring, she’d assumed that work was done, that chapter closed.
But Rumi’s ancient call suggested something different – that the seeking itself never ends, only changes its form.
She didn’t reply immediately. Recently she’d doubted herself too often to trust her own instincts. But this time it wasn’t her analytical mind that had brought her to this moment of unexpected recognition. It was something deeper, something in her that recognized truth when it heard it.
She swallowed. ‘That’s a beautiful line,’ she said.
‘Especially in Persian.’
She met his eyes, dark, shadowed, yet pleading for kindness. ‘I’ll fetch you that blanket.’
She would give him some bedding and some warm food. It felt right, that here, in a cold shed with a stranger whose voice carried poetry like prayer, her usual uncertainty had faded. Yet who was this man she’d decided to help?