Casualties of Peace [antikvár]

It was late at night, all the houses were in darkness and all the people in all the houses fast asleep. Willa came hurrying along a road that was not the one she inhabited but that led there. Three short roads led into her own road that was roughly divided into three sections, upper, middle and lower. She lived in the middle section not far from the railway bridge. A large brick house with a double gate, white woodwork, a dormer window at the very top, the front paved throughout with uneven slabs of concrete and consequently no place to plant flowers, but two tubs filled with clay had been put there to serve as flower beds. They were at either end of a wooden railing that guarded the drop from ground level to basement level. The flowers in these tubs varied with seasons but at that time there were red geraniums in bloom and a white mossy flower that propagated itself most agreeably, even got in the cracks between the paving stones. The geraniums would have lost their colour at night, they would simply be tall soft blurs, but Willa could see them, boldly red, in her mind's eye and see the hedge newly clipped and recall her disappointment, because she liked a hedge to be thick and shrubby. But he cut it ruthlessly, Tom did. Just as she reached the end of the short road that led into her own road she let out a cry. And no wonder. She found herself without a key. She tried both pockets, delved into her handbag but knew, even as she tried, that the key was indoors on the side