She’d put it down to getting older, or perhaps it was the slow process of adjusting to being on her own? Whatever it was, it was deeply unsettling. 

The garden gate swung shut with a familiar click as Julie stepped out into the lane.  There had been a time when she might have driven into the village. She’d done a lot of driving in the last few years. In some ways it had been a lot like being a young mother again, with a helpless, dependent human to bundle into the car, his eyes somehow pleading, even as his face was blank. Since Ronnie’s death there had been relief, even a guilty feeling of transgression, in leaving the car on the drive, and walking.

He’d been the oldest Young Conservative in the local association when she’d first joined. Joining the YCs had been her mother’s suggestion. ‘You’ll meet…