Loose Connections by Rosemary Hayes

with all the other stuff in his head.
    I need to come here again.
    He didn’t hesitate this time. He walked in, through the gate and up the overgrown path, even though he could hardly see where he was going. The weeds wrapped themselves round his legs and
the brambles scratched him as he moved on by instinct, feeling his way in the gathering darkness round to the back of the house.
    What am I doing here? It’s spooky in the dark.
    He stood still for a while, listening, wondering. He wasn’t scared; the atmosphere was peaceful and friendly. Nothing would harm him here. He started to feel drowsy, his limbs felt more
and more heavy. Slowly his worries began to drain away – worries about school work, Gran, Dad and the footie course. And a deeper, more frightening worry:
    Will Mum be OK? Will the baby be OK? She’s gone so long this time, what will it do to her if the baby doesn’t make it?
    And then, as the atmosphere surrounding the house worked its spell on him, he could hear a calm voice in his head that kept repeating: ‘She’ll be fine. They’ll both be fine.
Relax. It will be all right.’
    Where did that come from? Whose voice is that?
    But it didn’t scare him.
    There was no movement anywhere, no breeze in the trees and no lights in the windows. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see a glow in the distance. It was coming from the direction
of the orchard.
    Jake stumbled towards it, puzzled. What was it? Verity wasn’t here, she was at his house. Was there someone else living here, someone out in the orchard with a torch? If there were other
people living here, they might not be too thrilled to meet him prowling about in their garden.
    Perhaps Verity’s parents have arrived. Surely not. Not with badgers and foxes and crows in the front room! Unless they are as nutty as her.
    I shouldn’t be here.
    But he wasn’t scared. And he knew he had to go on; he couldn’t help himself. There was something this place was trying to tell him; he could sense it. He crept forward, feeling his
way, sometimes tripping on the uneven ground, sometimes bumping into things. At last he reached the fence round the orchard and he stopped. The light was coming from beyond the trees, throwing
their tangled branches into focus and making ghostly shapes of their bare branches.
    BARE branches!
    Suddenly Jake’s brain snapped back into action. How could they be bare? This afternoon the trees had been full of blossom! He’d been lying beneath them, watching the petals floating
down.
    He looked again, frowning. There was no trace of blossom now, nor of leaves. The trees were wintry. And it was cold! How had it suddenly become cold? It was midsummer, for goodness’ sake,
yet he was beginning to shiver. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and the cold was going right through him.
    What was happening? Why was it winter here in this garden, and what was that light?
    He wanted to leave; he was desperate to get out, but the light ahead was forcing him forward like a moth to an electric bulb. He staggered on – he couldn’t stop himself – and
when he reached the gate, he opened it and walked into the orchard, his eyes fixed on the light beyond the trees.
    He soon realised that it couldn’t be someone holding a torch; it was steady – and it was growing! The glow in front of him was getting bigger, slowly growing larger and brighter so
that more and more of the orchard was lit up, until he could clearly see everything around him.
    On he walked, past the pony’s shelter and through the trees towards the park.
    I must be nearly there.
    But he went on walking – on and on – and still there was no park!
    Jake stopped, and scratched his head. It must be here! He’d been walking through the orchard for ages. The orchard wasn’t that big. Why hadn’t he reached the far fence yet?
    Am I going mad?
    The fruit trees had thinned out now. Just a few straggled in a line, then they petered out and Jake was standing alone in