Fast Fiction: Sheds
...Tim's in the shed,' said Helen. 'In fact, he's always in the bloody shed. All day and most of the night. God knows what he's doing there and I can't see in . . . he's covered the window.'...
Richard Mallinson's story reveals an unexpected reason for Tim's behaviour.
I was friendly with Tim and Helen Folson. They moved to a house just outside the village of Aver in Wiltshire.
One day I had a letter from Helen: 'Please come to see us. I am worried about Tim.'
Having driven through Trowbridge I was soon in Aver. I stopped and asked an elderly woman for Pinky Cottage.
'Don't talk to me about Pinky Cottage!' she said, pointing.
Tim's in the shed,' said Helen. 'In fact, he's always in the bloody shed. All day and most of the night. God knows what he's doing there and I can't see in . . . he's covered the window.'
'I'll go and speak to him,' I said. But all I got for my knocking and calling was, 'Bugger off, whoever you are.'
A year later, when Helen had moved in with me, she said, 'I still think about him . . . Do you mind?'
'I would only mind,' I said, 'if you wanted to go back to him. Do you? He may be out of the shed by now and living normally again.'
'Oh, no, I'm staying here,' she said. 'You're the one I want.'
A few days later she said, 'That shed you have in the garden, why don't you use it? You could do all your, er, literary work in it, instead of messing up this room, which we could turn into a -'
