THE JOURNEY

By Tessa Harvey

    Finally Thomas reached the edge of his small town. It was drizzling with rain, the earlier lovely weather quite gone. It was dispiriting. The streets were crumbled with potholes. The smoke died down in the town but it smelt terrible now, stifling. It all looked like parts of France and he suspected, like a good deal of Europe. Why this town?

He remembered cycling here with his mates down the narrow streets. Some houses looked familiar, others partly broken and sad. There were earlier memories of climbing metal lampposts to attach rope swings, swinging along with his parents holding his arms between them, laughing and giggling.

    Where were his family? His mates?
    Exhausted, limping badly now, Thomas sat on a broken wall. Then he saw two small kids racing towards him, shouting his name with great glee! Josha and Jenna!! And behind them, his parents - slower, tired, but so, so happy to see him.
    He felt warmed and loved. They hugged and laughed and cried together.
    "Alice is safe!" said Patrick now, huskily. "She was trying to row the Channel. A boat picked her up coming back from Dunkirk."

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