Philip knew it was sensible, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.  Why had it become the done thing for people to give up the house they loved because they were old, and because they couldn’t drive any more, and because the house was too big?  He’d given up his driving license voluntarily, knowing his reactions weren’t as sharp, but no, he HADNT felt as if he were rattling in his old house overlooking the village church, both on that edge of the village where it gently yielded to the countryside.  He liked to have space.  He liked to be in rooms where Millie had been.  How had he let himself be persuaded?  He should have put up more of a fight!  Millie always said he was too eager to please, too keen to avoid a quarrel.  “Sorry, old love,” he muttered.

But there’s no changing it now, he thought, looking around his neat new bungalow and seeing a neat new bungalow opposite, instead of the church and the fields beyond.  It was early spring now, the time after snowdrops and before daffodils, and the crocuses would be blooming in their great, gorgeous, coloured carpet outside the church, each modest in itself, but part of a glorious whole.

There wasn’t a garden to speak of at the bungalow, just a little, begrudging pocket handkerchief plot, and he’d never been that great a gardener anyway, he preferred to look at the fields, and at the crocuses blooming by the church.  Millie had understood, and always said she preferred houseplants.  He looked at the faded, drooping Poinsettia, left over from Christmas, and at the sad little cactus, and sighed.

I’ll have to go out and pick up some milk and my paper, he thought, though he didn’t much feel like it.

The bungalow had no hallway, and he stepped from the little lounge onto the driveway.  He was halfway down it when he turned back, looked again, and smiled.

A crocus was blooming by his door, in the rough, stony soil.

Only one.  But it was purple, Millie’s favourite colour.

Learn more about the author:

Deborah Mercer