[b]Margaret Lessing[/b]

The summer dusk lay thick along Wild Willow Road. Almost as soon as she rounded the corner Margaret could smell the heady scent of wisteria, honeysuckle and crushed nettle spilling out from the overgrown gardens. She felt her eyes begin to water involuntarily, and swiftly brushed the tears away with her woollen sleeve.

She hadn’t gardened for five years, not properly, since moving to her little bungalow in the centre of town. It was, as her daughter and son-in-law had earnestly reassured her, a lovely little house: no stairs to have to totter up, a clean modern electric kitchen, a paved courtyard behind her bedroom that got a square of sunlight at midday and had a bench for reading.

The smell of Wild Willow Road couldn’t help but remind her of the garden she’d left behind: the turned earth of its vegetable patch, the roses she had coaxed into life around the kitchen window. She’d expected these memories to be more painful, but surprisingly the bedraggled street made her smile.

The library at the end of the street was barely discernible from the other shuttered houses; Margaret made her way towards it guided only by the pin-pricks of light. Strange, she had lived in this town since she had been married but had never heard of the library before yesterday. The square of card in her hand felt like a talisman. 

[center][i]WANTED: ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN. Hours: Sunset-Sunrise, flexible. 28 Wild Willow Road.[/i][/center]

She had dug the card out from a binder carried by the kindly, but somewhat condescending, representative of the University of the Third Age who had called at her door. In her late forties, she had looked young to Margaret, and had also looked somewhat put out when Margaret had passed over the fliers for embroidery classes and beginner French to pull out the faded handwritten yellow card.

“I don’t even know how that got there,” the woman insisted, and Margaret was pressured into picking up a leaflet for ‘Crochet Circle’ to induce her to go away. She had held on to the card. Whatever the representative said about there being ‘no library’ on Wild Willow Road, something in the scrap of paper called to her. Now that she was here, the presence of the library felt more like a confirmation than a surprise.

The door was unlocked, and opened into a room that was surprisingly welcoming. The dark wooden furnishings were well oiled, and gleamed in a buttery golden light. The librarian’s desk was empty but a silver hand-bell placed in its centre was accompanied by the slightly ominous note [i]“summon the librarian”[/i] Margaret rang it, and the sweet clear tone echoed through the long room.