Short Story Competition Winner 2009
'The Shed'
by
Robert Grossmith
The route was always the same: from the Merry Fiddlers at Becontree Heath to the coach depot in Lowestoft. It was the trip we made every summer when my dad's factory closed down for two weeks and we went to stay with my nan at her cottage near Beccles. On those trips Brian would be unreachable, studying each passing signpost with a smile of recognition or a frown of dismay, checking the names on the signs against those on his map, noting down all the pick-up points and drop-off points and the exact time we reached them. He memorized the road down to the last level crossing and humpbacked bridge and replayed it in his mind on these Saturday mornings in the shed. He relived the journey mile for mile, minute by minute. Looking through the dusty window in front of him, he saw not the cracked stone path running like a river through the weeds on either side of it to the heavy wooden gate at the end of the garden, but the broken white line of the A12 and the endless checkerboard of the East Anglian flatlands sliding past at 40 mph.
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