Page 7 of Echoes on the Wind (Borrowed Time #2)
The whole world seemed to stop as I stood face to face with Gwyn again, and all the noise of the mine melted away until the only sounds I could hear were our breaths and the thudding of my heartbeat.
I smiled, then I stopped, then I shuffled from one foot to the other, waiting for him to speak. But he just stood there, open-mouthed, like he’d seen a ghost, and he couldn’t quite believe his own eyes.
“My God, Tom. Is it really you?” he asked, barely above a whisper.
He reached out a hand to my face and gently stroked his thumb across my cheek, and I turned my head into his touch, losing myself in it instantly. The feeling of his skin on mine, so longed for, awakened emotions that I was unsure I’d ever feel again, and I closed my eyes in his embrace, clenching back the tears that were forcing their way to the surface.
“You came back.”
“I came back,” I whispered with a smile, and I brought my hand up to his, holding it against my face as my tears began to soak his fingers. “I choose you, remember? ”
His lips parted into a slow, nervous smile, and he shook his head as if still trying to convince himself that this was really happening. His eyes were beginning to well up, and he brought his other hand up to my cheek, holding me for a moment in silence. Then, with just the slightest tilt of his head, he leaned in, and his lips found mine, reconnecting us in a kiss that felt both familiar and entirely new.
I was instantly lost in him, and I threw my arms around his waist, holding him closely against me as all of the worry and stress of trying to find him again washed away.
“I can’t believe you’re really here,” he whispered, kissing me between words, but the sound of footsteps outside brought an abrupt end to our embrace, and we instinctively pulled apart, knowing we could never be found like that. I hated that we couldn’t just be open with the world, but it was a small price to pay to be together again.
When he felt sure that the coast was clear and that we wouldn’t be disturbed, he grabbed my arm and pulled me into the stall, then pushed the door shut. The walls were barely above shoulder height, so there was no way of hiding from anyone who might wander in, but he seemed to feel safer in the confines of the small pen.
“How did you…? When? I mean…” He was struggling to find words, and he began to flail his arms around as if to conjure them, but eventually, he just stopped and exhaled a huge breath.
“A few days ago,” I said, trying to anticipate what he would want to know. “Mair told me where you were. She arranged a wagon, and I came as soon as I could. I’ve missed you so much, Gwyn.”
He smiled at me and opened his mouth as though to say something, but as more voices from outside came into earshot, he began to look around, paranoid. “It’s no use trying to do this here,” he whispered. “There’s too many eyes and ears. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll meet you at the barrow shed.”
“Where’s that?”
“Go outside and go left. Hundred yards. You won’t miss it.” I turned for the door, but as I did, he pulled my hand and spun me around to face him again. “I’m so happy that you’re back,” he whispered as he pushed his forehead against mine.
I leaned in for a final kiss, then made my way out of the stables as he’d instructed, following his direction until I reached a tall structure filled with wooden barrows all lined up like trolleys in a supermarket bay.
I tried to look inconspicuous as I waited, leaning against the side of the building with my hands in my pockets. Unlike everyone else, I was clean and in fresh clothes, so I stood out like a sore thumb, but the men who passed by barely gave me a glance, and before anyone could question my intentions, Gwyn arrived and pulled me around the back of the building.
“Up here,” he said, walking me along a dirt track that circled around the main yard and up what looked like a man-made mountain of useless stuff they’d dug from underground and tossed away. The path was well trodden, compacting the ground below us, but at either side of us, loose bits of waste and debris crumbled away and rolled down the hill to the ground below .
“I’m sorry I had to rush you out of the stables. There’s so many people here, and we’d never be able to talk properly with everyone coming and going.” He took off his cap and carried it as we walked. His hair had grown, getting floppy near his ears, and he had tracks of dirt down his forehead where the sweat had dripped through the soot, leaving little streaky lines away from his hairline. “I still can’t believe you’re actually here.”
“I tried everything I could to get back to you,” I replied. “Every day I tried. I never meant for it to take me so long.”
“Are you staying this time?” he asked.
Though I’m sure he tried to mask it, I could hear the uncertainty in his voice and it took me by surprise. Did it really need answering? Was it even a question?
“I’d planned to,” I replied sharply, not meaning for it to sound so indefinite, but the awkwardness it created felt palpable.
We fell silent as we continued up the hill, neither of us sure of what to say next. Conversation had never been difficult for us, but the silence was making me feel combative, and I struggled to keep a lid on all of the different emotions I was feeling.
At the peak, I took in my surroundings as I tried to keep my nervous energy at bay. We stood at least 70 feet above the ground, and there were four similar waste heaps forming a semicircle around the mine, separating it from an area that had a road leading to it, and tramlines built into the ground. Upon the tracks sat rows of huge coal carts, each tethered to horses ready to pull them down to the main line .
A bridge spanned the tracks, with what looked like offices on top, and a faded, dust-covered sign was painted on the side bearing the words ‘Black Hill Colliery’. Below it, the men were more smartly dressed. There was no sign of the hundreds of dust and sweat-laden miners. These men were clearly administrative types.
“This place is huge,” I said, filling the silence that had long since become awkward. “How many people work here?”
“Is that really what you want to talk about?” he asked.
“I don’t know what to say, Gwyn,” I admitted. “I’ve played this meeting out a thousand times, in a thousand different ways, and now I’m here… I thought it would be different.”
“What do you mean, ‘different’?”
“I don’t know,” I whined, annoyed with myself for letting the lid off, and I buried my head in my hands, feeling stupid.
He rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead and looked out over the town, then turned to me and smiled. The sunlight was lighting up his features, highlighting just how handsome he was, and I wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch him, to hold him and apologise for being so bratty. But while he’d brought us somewhere that nobody could hear us, he’d also managed to walk us to a spot where we could be seen from every point in the whole town, leaving affection out of the question.
He moved a few steps toward me, still smiling, and though I tried to avoid his gaze, he ducked and swerved into my roaming eyeline until I was eventually grinning back at him.
“That’s better,” he said, and he continued to creep closer, leaving only a small gap between us. “I’ve missed that smile.”
“I’m sorry I’m messing everything up,” I said, embarrassed.
“I’m used to it,” he joked, and I reached out to playfully thump his arm. “Don’t you think I know how you get? How you work yourself up?”
I laughed and looked away again as his comment made me blush. “I did try to hold it in. I just thought…”
He unbuttoned his breast pocket and pulled out a folded-up piece of paper, then handed it to me. “I’ve kept that with me every day since you left, and I look at it every single night before I sleep.” I unfolded it and stared down at the picture of me and my family that had been in my wallet when I first arrived in Cwm Newydd. I couldn’t believe he’d kept it. “Every day since you left, I’ve wanted nothing more than for you to come back to me. If I wasn’t at this damn job right now, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off you.”
“You don’t know how happy it makes me to hear that,” I replied, and his smile widened, showing off his dimples even through his beard. I looked around again and dropped my voice low, as though someone might hear me. “You look really good.”
“You look thin,” he replied, and I burst out laughing. “Are you eating properly?”
“I’m eating plenty,” I assured him. “I just stopped doing hard labour once I got back to my own time. ”
“How did that go?” he asked, and as my smile faded, he took another step closer, holding out a hand to comfort me before pulling it away again, unable to show such public affection.
“Not great,” I admitted. “Lee thought I’d gone mad at first, but he came around. My mother, she…”
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he said, and this time he didn’t stop himself from reaching out and putting a comforting hand on my shoulder.
I brought my arms across my chest, shielding myself from the memories as I stared out over the mine again, and Gwyn let my pause hang there so I could gather my thoughts.
“She passed away,” I said finally, skipping to the end. “She got sick, and she blamed me, and then she died.”
“Tom, I’m really sorry,” he said, and he rubbed his hand up and down my arm, offering as much comfort as he could. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
I pulled away and ran my fingers across my eyes until I was pinching the bridge of my nose, fighting away the stinging that would soon turn to tears.
“No,” I said, shaking it off and turning back to him. “It’s ok.”
I paused again and paced around, raking over the memories that I’d spent so long trying to put aside. Conversations about my mother had been strictly off limits for months, so I’d never really learned how to talk about her without running through a cycle of anger, hurt and regret, but I didn’t want to go through that this time, so I tried to keep my thoughts even as I spoke .
“When I got back home, she was happy at first. She was just glad that I was alive and well. Things changed once I told her where I’d been. Lee warned me to just make something up, that she wouldn’t believe me, but I wanted to be honest with her.”
“And did she?” he asked. “Believe you, I mean.”
I rubbed my hand across the back of my neck and rolled my eyes as I let out a sarcastic laugh, still dumbfounded by how it had all played out. “You know, I don’t actually know. She never told me either way. As soon as I told her what had happened, she went nuts. She completely lost it. She didn’t question a word that I said, just screamed and ranted at me, then kicked me out of the house.
“She wouldn’t speak to me for weeks after that. Wouldn’t even answer the door. And then out of the blue, we got a call summoning us to the house, and she told us she was sick. I tried to hug her, but she took one look at the ring on my finger and wouldn’t let me anywhere near her. She started screaming again, telling me it was all my fault that she was dying and that I’d brought bad luck on the house.”
“Jesus, Tom. That’s awful.”
“I snuck back to the house one day when I knew that she was out. I wanted to get some of my dad’s things so that I could do more research about getting back here to you, but she came home early and caught me. I still had a key, so it wasn’t like I broke in or anything, but she called the police and had me escorted from the premises. Lee said that it was the tumour affecting her mind, but she knew what she was doing. The following day, he called around to check on her, and she’d set fire to everything in the back garden. All of my dad’s stuff was gone, and most of mine, too.”
I could feel my voice begin to crack, and I took several deep breaths before I could continue. “I only ever saw her one more time after that, while she was in the hospital. I took her flowers, but she couldn’t even look at me. The last thing she said to me was that I should have never come back and that she didn’t want to see me again. She cut me out of the will and barred me from the funeral, and that was that. If it hadn’t been for Lee, I don’t know what I would have done.”
By the time he threw his arms around my shoulders and pulled my head into his chest, the tears I was trying so hard to hold back were streaming down my face. “She wouldn’t even tell me why.”
“Oh, Tom,” he said, and he squeezed his arms around me, unbothered by who might see. “That must have been awful.”
“It’s done,” I said, pulling away and wiping my face. “I’ll never know now why she did what she did, so I can’t spend my life sulking over it.” I plastered a smile across my face, trying to convince myself as much as Gwyn that I was ok, and stared down over the offices near the main entrance to the mine. “Couldn’t you have gotten a job over there?” I asked, changing the subject. “It would be a lot safer.”
He stepped up beside me and followed my gaze down from the top of the slag heap. “I’ve never even been over there,” he replied. “They like to keep us workers in the back out of the way. We don’t have much dealings with the office types. ”
“I’ll need to find myself some work,” I said. “I’ve only brought enough money to last a few months. I’d rather be on that side of the heap, though.”
As I pointed towards the offices, the door opened, and a man walked down the steps beside the tracks, puffing on a cigarette.
“Hang on, is that…?”
I brought my hand up to shield my eyes and inched myself forward for a better look. Despite the considerable distance between us, I would recognise him anywhere.
“Lee!” I shouted.
I spun around, ready to race down and find him, but as I turned, the loose earth of the tip shifted under my weight. Gwyn dived forward to grab me, but it was already too late. I hit the ground with a loud crack, and before I could grab his outstretched hand, my body, along with a mass of rocks and debris, went careening down the side of the spoil tip to the ground below.