“You married?”

She pulled him back suddenly. Her words framed with that same endearing smile and her eyes tracing the lines of his face making him feel old and doomed to remember the acres of rolling distance he was trying so hard to put behind him.

It had been raining when he left, fat raindrops splattering and settling in fractious pools on the concrete drive as he hurried to the car. Slamming the car door shut behind him, he had stared out of the windscreen watching the ordered rows of geraniums succumbing to the barrage mesmerised, momentarily forgetting the reasoning behind him sitting in the car in the pouring rain. Then, with the ferocity of total recall he had fired up the engine and floored the accelerator leaving black skid marks beneath the sheen of shallow puddles.