A Stranger at Castonbury

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The man turned away silently, and led Jamie over the field to an empty meadow that lay just beyond. There the dirt was piled in a long, heaped-up mound, with a line of roughly hewn crosses.

‘They were all buried here,’ the man said. ‘She is down there at that end. I laid her there myself.’

Jamie moved slowly towards the grave. The world slowed to a blur around him, and he felt so numb again, old, remote from everything. All he could see was that patch of earth.

He knelt down and for a moment grief pressed in all around him and he was utterly alone. Catalina was buried here; he could feel it. His family was far away, and in this, the most profound moment of his life, he was alone.

‘I am so sorry, Catalina,’ he said. Sorry he had not been there for her; sorry he could not have been what she needed him to be. Sorry he had ever hurt her at all.

He tilted back his head and stared up into the sky, feeling so very empty. He had to finish his task here in Spain, no matter how distasteful it was. He had to do it for his family.

But he feared he himself would never feel anything again.

Catalina leaned against the railing of the ship and peered through the thick, wet grey mist at the slowly approaching shoreline.

England. She was in England at last. And she didn’t notice the sharp, cold wind that tore at her hat or the noise and activity on the deck behind her. She could only think about how close her destination was, after weeks of weary travel—and of how different this arrival was from how she had once so briefly pictured it. How she had once dreamed it might be, with Jamie by her side, taking her home with him.