In the hill country an hour from the city...

            In the hill country an hour from the city, up where the hills start turning into moors, there are valleys where small towns cling to the hillsides, where derelict mills moulder by rushing waterways. This is an empty space where dusty A-roads cut through the long distances between places of habitation, where the sodium light of street lamps illuminates roadside bouquets commemorating long-dead motor-crash victims. Away from the bright lights of Somerfields car-park, away from the neat estates of semi-detacheds, there are spaces where the shadows gather, spaces where the gloom from the inchoate sky intensifies undisturbed by the flash of a car headlight or a door-key being jangled on someone’s homeward return. Along one such road, that runs from the railway station once managed by Branwell, mad brother of the Brontës, towards a junction of works depots and business lots, there walked, one miserable evening, a girl…