LOST summers

Bittersweet memories came flooding back. Could Anne ever recapture that magic again?

Are you OK?' Brian slipped his arm around Anne's shoulders as they stood in the driveway.

She nodded. 'It just... it makes you realise how long it's been,' she said.

Childhood summers at Le Coquelicot had seemed endless. She remembered the first time, sitting on her father's shoulders, that they'd made her way along the tree-lined drive to the tiny stone building. The excitement when she'd been allowed to turn the key.

Inside was like a cave - dark and damp and smelling of mildew. But when Dad had flung open the shutters, light flooded in. Aged seven, she'd felt as if her father had cast a spell on the place, turning it from forbidding to magical.

She remembered exploring the garden with her little sister Isobel, the grass up to her waist. Their mum calling from the kitchen not to go far, to look out for ticks. The man who came with a tractor and razed the grass to the ground, and how upset they'd been, until Dad told them the ground was now flat enough for a paddling pool.

Looking at the drive now, tangled and overgrown, Anne felt a pang. Three years since Dad had left the property, closed the gate. Had he known, she wondered, on some level, how long it would be before it was opened again?