The Crooked House by Christobel Kent

the estuary came into view it was evening, but not dark yet. They topped a slope and there it was, spread out, grey and silver, the low rays of a midsummer sun glinting off the mirrored cube of the power station, far out towards the horizon. Even from miles inland Alison could see that the tide was out, the meandering channels gleamed all the way to where brown water met the bruised-blue sky. If she closed her eyes she would smell the trickle of sea over mud, she would see the bristly lavender-grey plant that grew among the creeks. As they turned down the shallow incline around them the fields and orchards and hedges were luminous green in the low, flat midsummer light and she felt it, the thing she’d been resisting – not fear but the sweet yearning tug of home.
    ‘Look,’ said Paul, ‘that’s quite something, isn’t it?’ His head turned quickly to see her reaction but she only stared straight ahead, as though she was the one driving. It was like a great slow green wave pulling her down, washing and turning, her childhood a tide coming up to reclaim her.
    He turned back. ‘Morgan grew up here,’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Can you imagine that?’
    Five miles or so from their destination they had stopped for a late lunch. Without saying anything Paul had indicated and pulled in at a thatched pub beside a pond. The Plough: she must have passed it a hundred times as a child in the back of her parents’ car. Someone they knew had even worked here, though she couldn’t remember who. As she sat in the garden it crowded in on her, the bulrushes in the pond, the leaning apple tree, the swinging pub sign, all horribly familiar, bringing with it the smell of the seats in the car, the line of her mother’s jaw as she leaned into the back to tell them off, her father’s hands on the wheel.
    When the waitress came out for their order and she was too young to have been more than a baby the last time Alison was here, she realised she’d been holding her breath, halfdreading, half wanting a face she knew. Aware of his eyes on her she ate up every last crumb of her meal though it took an effort to remember what she’d actually eaten. Chicken pie, glutinous and pale, green beans. Watery coffee, some kind of cake with icing. Every time the gawping, near-wordless waitress came out with the laminated menu Paul would start to shake his head but Alison would take it from her and order something else she didn’t want, just to postpone the moment. In the end Paul had jumped up and gone inside for the bill, leaving her at the table.
    In the car now as they crested the last long shallow incline to the estuary, Alison turned to look at him.
    ‘Don’t you like it?’ she said, before she could stop herself. ‘Not good enough for Morgan?’
    ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said, and she could see that he meant it, the great silvered expanse of estuary reflected in his face as he drove. ‘That’s what I meant. Don’t you think so?’
    And now they were coming fast down between high hedges, the sinking sun behind them. At intervals Alison registered a cottage – a long wall, a big shabby barn alone in a field, a row of poplars – and knew them instantly, one after the other, without even turning her head to look. Every feature of the landscape crowded in as the little car descended towards the first village houses, jostling for her attention. The apprehension she’d been holding at bay since they left London bloomed until it was all around her, there was nothing she could look at that would not hurtle her back thirteen years except the sealed interior of the car. She closed her eyes. She surrendered.
    ‘You all right?’ She blinked her eyes open. Paul had turned to look at her just as they came into a bend, too fast, a low building loomed and filled Alison’s line of vision and she saw dusty windows and a lopsided gate. He wrenched at the wheel and they were round.
    But too late: she was back, she was here.
    ‘Sorry,’said