Railwayman's Wife 1 SHE SITS, her legs folded beneath her. The fingers of one hand trace the upholstery's pattern while the other hand holds the pages of the book. It could be any day, any year: call it 1935, 1938, 1945, or somewhere decades away in her future. Perhaps it's the day after her wedding, the day after her daughter's birth, the last day of the war, the last day of her life. Whenever it is, Anikka Lachlan is reading, swallowed by the shapes and spaces made by rows of dark letters on pale paper. She wets one finger, not slowly, but absently, and moves it to turn the next page. From outside, across the roofs of this small town, comes a sharp line of noise--a train's brakes and the squeal of wheel on rail, metal on metal. Ani looks up from the page but at nothing, and at nowhere, as if the room she's sitting in and the rest of this whole cacophonous world do not, at this moment, quite exist. The sound fades. The silence holds. She looks down, and finds the next word. Excerpted from The Railwayman's Wife by Ashley Hay All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
