THE HIDDEN COTTAGE    (close window to return)

He had seen it many times before, tucked away behind the trees and on the side of the hill on the road he took to and from Witney in Oxfordshire; a lonely cottage with no residences around it to form a neighbourhood or forge a community. He had wondered about it often and had in fact, more than once, seen female clothes hanging out in the garden on a washing line. Was it an old lady using traditional drying methods rather than a tumble dryer, or perhaps, a person with little money? Maybe a younger beautiful woman who preferred a setting and abode away from the maddening world of tattooed, misshapen, and ill-educated masses? His imaginings of the unknown occupant moved through levels of order that started with the norma - an old lady nearing the end of life - to the exotic and bizarre: an alien from another world; a time traveller from the middle-ages, stuck in this timeframe; a witch or a vampire; a prostitute receiving clients secretly.

He wondered now what he would find as he climbed the path towards it on a dark, cold, autumn night. Gerald had never once thought he would be doing this - going to knock on the mystery cottage door. If he had paid more attention to watching out for pot holes, and if he'd had charged his phone fully, he would not have needed to be doing this. But waiting for buses, so infrequent at night on rural routes, was not something he wished to do on such a cold evening and he was unequipped for standing outside in the cold.

The path was steeper than he'd first thought. If an old woman lived up there at the top, she'd have to be on steroids to walk up and down here, he thought. There was probably a car hidden away at the top but then again, he'd seen no drive. Gerald paused for breath and looked back towards the road and his broken down Mercedes, but couldn't see it. Too many bushes hid it from view.