Off the north-east coast of Kent, England, lies the Isle of Sheppey. A number of dirt roads form a lattice pattern on the harsh lowland to the north of the island where an assortment of one and two storey houses litter the sides of these potholed roads.
In late November the wind howls through the night sucking up the dead leaves from between the shrubbery and the low, ornate brick walls used as dividing boundaries, blasting them into the cold chill of the night.
AnnaLee Bradley let the curtain fall back in place shutting out the bitter sights and rasping scream of the wind outside.
Although only twenty-years-old her young, oval face carried a certain heaviness as though she held rein to her emotions. This was more than compensated by laughter lines and a dimpled chin but highlighted again by sad, dark brown eyes. Eyes that held you encompassed with reflected imagery. A small uptuned nose, a generous mouth with full lips and long, luxuriant, wavy brown hair capped her five foot seven inch curvaceous frame.
A beauty untainted? No. Life had been cruel to this young woman.
Her father had left her mother before she was born and at eighteen she had been raped and sexually abused by the unsaintly young priest who had taken her virginity as payment for administering the last rites to her dying mother.
AnnaLee had managed to survive on her mother's life insurance that provided sufficient money to pay the household bills. She had not left the house since the night of her terrifying ordeal and her days were spent cleaning, cooking and writing. She was a prolific writer, self taught and capable of superb prose. She competently produced over two thousand words in a day.
No one knew this except AnnaLee. The novels she wrote were never published, because they were never sent to a publisher but remained, for now, locked within the large writing bureau in her front room.
Her literary genre encompassed erotica, horror and biblical fact.
Part of her mind had blocked out that horrendous night and so, to those who visited the house, she appeared to be a relatively happy young woman.
There were quite a few 'social do gooders' within the towns of Minster and Sheerness but none could release her inner pain.
******
Corrin LeFay lived opposite AnnaLee. She had watched the priest arrive that night. A little while later she'd heard a scream. She'd listened to hours of silence, then seen him come out of the house and take something from the car quickly returning inside. Over the next two or three hours nothing had happened, then she saw him leaving hurriedly, peering furtively around. He got into his car and drove off in the direction of the church. She had done nothing, said nothing. She too lived alone.
Two women living alone on the same broken, rutted dirt road.
Corrin had been twenty-six-years-old when her husband had been crushed beneath the wheels of a juggernaut travelling too fast and on the wrong side of the road. He'd been walking home from the steel foundary in Sheerness where he'd worked as a crane driver. His head had been bent down into a gale force wind.
At thirty-one she had learned to cope with her loneliness, though her oval face was unlined and unblemished she was a typical country woman growing up in a country town. People would have been shocked to discover a woman could change inwardly so much in such a short time.
The ten-inch chrome dildo, bought 'just for a laugh' at an 'Anne Summers' evening party, lay beneath her pillow and had become her nightly companion. She saw no shame in using its vibrating coolness to satisfy her sexual needs. Life had changed her. After being with her husband, the thought of making love to another man did not promote arousal.
Her ultimate sexual satisfaction was to make love to another woman. Not just any woman but one who was very much like her. Her mirror image. She lived opposite and she occupied Corrin's sexual fantasies as the vibrator hummed each night between her tanned, open legs. Her full figure tensing as waves of sexual release washed through her.
After her 'therapy session' she slept so much easier.
******
During one of these sessions she became conscious of where her fantasy was leading. It gave her an idea as to how she could achieve three things with almost a single action.
Over the next few weeks she prepared for her visit to AnnaLee.
******
The insistent rapping on her front door startled AnnaLee as she sat writing beside her mother's bureau. She stood up and walked through into the hallway. Passing the hall mirror she managed to primp her hair, making sure to look presentable.
She opened the front door but there was no one there. On the porch lay a pie dish. She bent down and picked it up, sniffing closely at the crusty, golden brown, sugary topping.
"Mmmm, apple pie," she said.
Looking around she saw no one.
'Strange,' she thought.
She took the pie indoors and cut a slice. It tasted delicious. She ate the remaining pie over the next few days. She washed the pie dish and left it on the porch. The next day it had gone but in its place was a stone holding down a small brown envelope.
'Don't tell me,' she thought, 'they've left the bill.'
She took the envelope indoors and sat down beside the bureau where she slit open the end with her index finger. Inside was a single sheet of notepaper and on it was neatly handwritten, 'A robin redbreast in a cage, puts all Heaven in a rage.'
AnnaLee read and re-read this passage over and over in her mind and wondered who knew she was her own prisoner. Someone seemed to care... Someone... But who, and more importantly, why?
******
Corrin opened the kitchen cupboard and placed the pie dish back inside. The next phase was slightly more complex and required a high degree of timing.
Sunday morning rose cold but cheer, a slight breeze blew from the east. Corrin washed, then dressed herself in warm, dark clothes and made her way across the rutted track to AnnaLee's house. She carried a freshly baked apple pie that she set down on the porch in roughly the spot that the previous pie had occupied. This time she wanted AnnaLee to see who left the pie but not to be able to ask why.
The porch was old and the weathered wooden boards creaked as she got closer to the furthest window to peek inside. Her heartbeat raced as she caught sight of AnnaLee sitting at the writing bureau. Her long brown, wavy hair gleaming from the low sun slanting through the window on the adjacent wall.
Corrin's heart skipped a beat. For her, time lay suspended. She gazed fixedly at the young girl's poise and concentration that seemed to create a void into which she had stepped. How long she remained in this state she could only imagine.
The rumble from an approaching lorry broke the magical moment she had formed in her mind. She looked into AnnaLee's eyes.
"Oh, my god," she said, turning and running from the porch across the street to the sanctitude of her home. She heard AnnaLee open her front door and cry out, then she was inside with the door closed; her breathing laboured from exhileration, success and lack of fitness.
Somehow she knew that AnnaLee would not follow her. She was right.
AnnaLee went back indoors with the second apple pie rather than crossover to Corrin and ask her to explain her actions.
******
Once again the clean pie dish was placed on the porch to await its owner, however, this time an envelope was taped to the underside. When Corrin returned home she opened it and read from the single sheet of paper, 'Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorned.'
They were communicating. The first step towards her goal had been fairly straightforward. Now came the hard part; the time for reason.
The next morning, dull and drear, saw Corrin standing pensively at AnnaLee's front door. She took a deep breath and rapped three times. She heard movement from the front room, then footsteps on the wooden floor drawing ever closer.
The door unlocked and opened.
Corrin spoke first, "I feel that I owe you an explanation. Apologies may come later but I need you to understand that whatever you feel about my intrusion into your life I will leave now and we can forget the incident the other day."
AnnaLee spoke tersely, "Explain, please."
"Two years ago, when your mother passed away... I saw the preacher that night. I heard things and did nothing. I am ashamed of my inaction and want to make amends in whatever way I can. Call it guilt... whatever, but would you allow me to talk to you ocassionally. I... I know you enjoy writing but do you like to read as well. I have a small library..."
"Mrs...?"
"LeFay. Corrin LeFay... Call me Corrin."
