Tuesday evening, now only 4 more shopping days to Christmas
Marina emerged from the light and warmth of the hall to the hostile outside environment. She was intending to walk what she thought was about three or four miles or so down the country lanes to the railway station; in fact the station is nearly five miles away, more than three-quarters of the countryside on unpaved and unlit country lanes with treacherously deep drainage ditches on either side.
It was now snowing heavily with giant wet flakes, a layer of snow two to three inches deep already on the pavement surface. It felt damnably cold, so she took out the compact mac from her bag and put it on in the shelter of the village hall's entrance. It only covered down to just below her knees and soon after she started walking her recently almost dried-out trouser legs became wringing wet once more from the melted snow running off her waterproofs due to the poor insulation allowing her body heat to escape. She got as far as a wooden bus shelter in the darkness. She had her torch in her bag and checked the arrivals and departures on the bus stop post, seeing that the last bus that stopped there was at 18.26 and the next bus wasn't until a few minutes past 6am in the morning. It was still only just gone 11pm, so it meant another seven hours before getting on the bus, followed by up to another three hours before she got home and would be able to soak in a hot bath and get warm again. She hadn't noticed any hotel in the immediate area, the village appeared to be far too small to support one. There was always the pub, she remembered. She went back to the lane where the pub was but it was closed and still in darkness. She didn't have enough money on her to pay for a room in any case.
The few cars which had driven down the road passed her as she walked, mostly from the meeting she presumed, and soon dwindled to a trickle. Then there was just the odd late car going by, and eventually there were none.
She walked back to the bus shelter, and continued past it, slipping and sliding through the thickening carpet of snow for a hundred yards or so, but the lane petered out to open countryside. The last of the cars going through illuminated the road for some way ahead until the road turned to the left and she could see nothing, not even a pavement and it was clearly too risky going any further by foot in the weather conditions which prevailed.
Marina returned to the bus shelter and made herself comfortable on the seat inside, resolved to spend the rest of the night there. She had warmed up a little during the exertions of her walk through the driving snow but it was extremely cold and within a few minutes of sitting in the draughty shelter she felt chilled to the bone once more. She shivered, feeling alone and more than a little foolish sitting there.
Marina just couldn't get Daniel Medcalf out of her thoughts. How could she possibly have been contemplating murdering him? How could she consider murdering anyone at all?
Her pain at being reminded of the loss of her baby Daniel and the circumstances surrounding his conception must have made her temporarily insane, she thought. That could be the only explanation. Clearly, even from the brief conversations she had been forced into having with Daniel tonight, he had been pleasant, gentlemanly and chatty, so much like the Daniel she knew and fell so deeply in love with all those years ago.
Fell in love with! Yes, of course she had at the time, and, she had to admit to herself, she was still just as much in love with him now. Well, why shouldn't she be? He was handsome, charming, very personable, a successful local personality and an eligible widower. The singular aberration between them, the conception of a child without her permission or even knowledge, happened in their youth when she wasn't used to drink and he may well have been equally inebriated as well. Perhaps, being so infatuated, that with her libido loosened by the excess alcohol, she had led him on? Knowing how she felt about him, she would never have admitted back then that she loved him. She was far too shy a girl to have done that.
But what of her actions if she wasn't sober? What if the alcohol had made her lose her inhibitions?
She may well have encouraged him to make love to her all those years ago. She just couldn't remember anything that happened after meeting Daniel in the corridor and briefly kissing him.
For a moment, sitting cold and all alone in that bus shelter, Marina let it all out and openly weeped. She had made a complete mess of her life, that she had blamed Daniel for everything that had happened to her since, and now she came to the conclusion that it was almost certainly her fault all along. She was the guilty party, not Daniel, why had it taken so long for her to accept it? But that didn't feel right either, it was all so conflicting and confusing. She was cold and tired and sorry for herself and she got to a point where she couldn't think of anything other than somehow keeping warm and surviving until the morning.
She had sat in the cold and dark, stamping her feet to try and keep her circulation going, with hard particles of frozen snow crystals blowing around her for twenty minutes or so when a car pulled up to stop in front of the bus shelter. She had seen the lights coming from afar and expected it to whizz by, when it slowed and stopped. She almost laughed, thinking it was probably someone as completely lost as her, and stopped here looking for directions.
It was a long dark expensive car, something like a Jaguar. Marina wasn't all that familiar with motor car designs, but she thought it was certainly an impressive-looking vehicle. The driver's door opened and Daniel Medcalf stepped out, walked around the car towards where Marina sat and stepped just inside the shelter.
"Hello Miss Shaw," he said, "Thought I might find you here after you went off. I'm afraid the buses don't run out here very frequently. I could offer you a lift to the station in Worthing, of course, but that doesn't reopen until the morning either."
"That's all right," Marina replied, remaining seated and trying her hardest to stop her teeth chattering, "I'm really not in any hurry and I can wait for the first bus to come along in the morning. There doesn't seem to be a hotel in the area, does there?"
"There is one," he said, nodding, "but it is a long way down on the bypass. Unfortunately it is one of those that doesn't accept guests at the door, you have to book rooms online. They're probably all locked up by now."
"Not to worry," said Marina, trying her best to smile without chattering teeth, "I am quite comfortable here out of the snow, well almost out of the snow."
"Of course you cannot stay here!" exclaimed Medcalf, "I believe this snow's in for the rest of the night and the temperature's dropping like a stone. If it continues snowing as heavy as it is for any length of time, I very much doubt that any buses will be running up the hills to the downs in the morning. No, you cannot possibly stay here, I wouldn't hear of it, Miss Shaw, you must come home with me."
"I assure you," said Marina with some indignation, "I am not in the habit of accompanying lone male strangers to their homes in the middle of the night!"
Just then Medcalf's mobile phone chirped its merry tune once again, to interrupt their conversation. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at the screen.
"Aahh!" he said, "this should help resolve any problems you may have in accepting my family's hospitality." He handed the outstretched handset to Marina, which continued to chirp.
