THE SENTINEL
AWAY WITH WORDS

By Tessa Harvey

    From an upstairs room, the matron of the boarding part of the school glanced out of the nearby window. She loved to watch the autumn leaves dance to the ground to be swept, skittering down the drive, or caught, light-shining in the sunlit grass.

    It was then she caught sight of the new students being welcomed by Esmay, the principal. She noticed the identical small twin boys, their russet-coloured hair burnished copper by the light flooding through the barer branches of golden ash trees.
    There would be some fun from those boys, she surmised. Then her glance snagged on the third boy, standing tall and still, somehow a little remote self-contained.
    Her heart beat erratically in her chest, the pacemaker struggling to cope.
    Hazel plonked down on nearest chair, a ricketty old thing. It was her son, exactly forty years ago, who had later stormed from the house as a young man. 
    A long time later a photo of her grandchildren had been sent to her. But there had been no contact since.

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