Sara's Story - by Jonathan Malory - Chapter IV - Robert

Sara had never seen so many squirrels in one place, groups of twos and threes chased each other around the bottoms and up and down the trunks of shady trees. Some of them made little chirruping noises like playful children.

Sara looked about her and saw trees in every direction, not a forest or a wood but a little clump of trees in the middle of a park. On the outside, straight ahead of her, was a ruined abbey; some children were clambering over the ancient walls and stunted pillars.

A princely swath of green swept across the park in front of the abbey. Between there and the trees where Sara stood hidden, upon the grass sat various clusters of people enjoying each other’s company. A gang of happy teens were daring one of their company to go into some long grass and pretend to be a cow.

Two Chinese men and a woman were filming the static abbey with a digital camcorder, while a gaggle of elderly folk sat along the ranks of raised benches off to the right. The sun stroked the high trees dotted around the green as the wind encouraged them to take part in the warm conversations.

A flock of pigeons dined heartily on the  scraps of absent orators while a group of five boys listened with eager faces to a girl suggesting they all go out into the countryside and pick hundreds of hallucinogenic mushrooms, share them out and get utterly wasted. Sara was still in Britain somewhere.

Robert got out of bed quite late this morning, it was his first day off in two weeks. Two weeks ago he’d just arrived back from a three-week stay in Boston, USA. His girlfriend had moved to America a year ago, she’s originally from Wales, and they were still keeping up an extremely long-distance relationship.

It was difficult at times being apart for so long, plus half the people he knew thought he was making her up because all he had to show was a picture in his wallet. It did give him a great excuse to travel to America three times a year though.

Robert liked America.

As he drew his last thought in this shady cluster of trees, almost alone, Sara smiled openly at his soul as it drifted like the trees’ seeds high into the sun. Sara stepped out of the trees onto the emerald lawn, spotted the entrance to the park and walked away past an array of pink, white and red roses.

She was in York, England. She’d been here before on a school trip, it would be easy to find the station. She was on a train heading north within half an hour of stepping through the Door, when a little voice from a child’s radio said a body had been found in the Museum Gardens in York, the police were treating it as suspicious. Sara thought no more of it, there was something else more urgent pressing her mind, something that had happened inside the Door…