The Second Road

When I was eleven, my family moved to the village of Ashcroft, a place where the lanes curled like sleeping snakes and the hedgerows grew thick enough to swallow a car. My best friend was a girl named Elspeth, who had a habit of being late for everything. She could be late to her own birthday party, late to the dentist, late to the first bell at school. We used to joke that she ran on a different clock, one that ticked in a lag behind the world.

One Tuesday, after the final bell, I dawdled by the gates, watching Elspeth scramble out of the science block, her bag half-open, a pencil case tumbling out onto the tarmac. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she called, already sprinting toward the bus stop. I waved and then turned for the lane that cut through the farmer’s field, a shortcut to my house. The air had that bite of late October, and the sky was a bruised purple. I was home by half past four.

Mum was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes at the sink, the radio murmuring something about a cold front. She glanced up as I dropped my bag. ‘Oh, I saw your friend Elspeth walking along the lane after I dropped you off. I thought it was strange you weren’t together.’

‘She’s always late,’ I said, pulling out a chair. ‘Probably missed the bus again.’

Mum started describing her: school uniform, but with a flowery headscarf tied under her chin—a thing Elspeth would never wear—and a skirt so short it was more like a belt. Her legs were bare, and in that cold, they were red, almost raw. ‘I remember thinking she must be freezing,’ Mum said. ‘But she was smiling, like she didn’t feel it at all.’

I was about to say, ‘But she was wearing trousers today, and she doesn’t own a headscarf,’ when Mum continued: ‘Then I drove on, and when I turned onto the bypass, there she was again, walking with a boy. A tall lad, dark hair, carrying a schoolbag. They were laughing together.’

Mum stopped peeling, a frown creasing her forehead. ‘I had to pull over, I was so confused. I watched them in the mirror for a minute, and then I just drove home. I didn’t go back.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I said, my voice coming out thin. ‘She was at school with me. She left after me.’

Mum turned to face me, her eyes wide. ‘I know. But I saw what I saw. Two Elspeths.’

That night, I called Elspeth’s house. Her mother answered, her voice tight. ‘She’s come down with something,’ she said. ‘Gone to bed early. Can you tell her something tomorrow?’ I said no, just wanted to check she got home okay. But my heart was knocking against my ribs. Elspeth was never ill. She was the one who ate snow and never got a cold.

The next day, Elspeth wasn’t at school. Nor the day after. On Friday, our teacher told us Elspeth’s family had moved away, suddenly, without a word. Her house was left with the curtains drawn, a milk bottle still on the step for two weeks.

I didn’t think much of it, not at first. But that winter, I began noticing things. A girl in a headscarf standing at the edge of the playing field, always too far to see clearly. A boy with dark hair walking along the bypass, never turning his head. And once, on a foggy morning, I saw Elspeth herself—or someone who looked exactly like her—standing at the end of our lane, wearing a summer dress, shivering, her lips blue. I called out her name, but she turned and walked into the mist, and I didn’t follow.

Years later, I went back to Ashcroft to clear out my mother’s house after she passed. I found an old map of the village, faded, in a drawer. The map showed a second bypass, a road that didn’t exist on any current map, labeled in pencil: ‘Els’s Walk.’ I ran my finger along it, and the line flickered, as if the ink was alive. That’s when I heard it: the sound of footsteps on gravel, slow and deliberate, coming from the empty kitchen behind me.

I turned, and there was Elspeth—older now, her face the same, but her eyes hollow, and her clothes sodden, as if she’d been standing in rain for years. She opened her mouth, but what came out was not her voice. It was a sound like wind through a broken fence.

‘I found the other me,’ she said, in a tone that wasn’t sorry. ‘She told me what I always knew: that there’s a world in the hedges, where the roads fold. I traced myself, walked my own shadow, and now I’m here, and I’m there, and I’m everywhere.’

She stepped toward me, and the kitchen lights flickered. I backed away, but she kept talking, her mouth moving in a parody of speech, while behind her, through the window, I saw another figure—the dark-haired boy—standing at the edge of the garden, his face blank, his hand raised in a wave.

I fled that house, left everything. I drove away without looking back, and for years I told no one. But sometimes, on a cold evening, when the light slants the wrong way, I’d see her from the corner of my eye—a girl in a headscarf, walking on a road that should not exist, her shadow stretching longer than the sun could ever make it. And I know, wherever I drive, on whatever lane I take, she’s already there, waiting on the second road, the one that runs alongside the one I’m on, just a hair’s breadth away.