And No One Ate Alone

Word comes in off all four roads that this winter will be the worst in an age. Wren lays in stores and watches the sky — and when the storm falls it drifts every road shut, and the crossroads becomes the one gathering point for miles.

They arrive out of the white by the road-full: cold and frightened and unable to go on, more than forty with nowhere to go until the thaw. Wren takes them all in — a place for everyone, the candle burning at the centre through the dark. But holding a large, restless company through days of impassable roads asks more than bread and benches. At the end of her strength, in front of the whole table, a stranded traveller asks her the question she has always stepped aside from: is there someone who does this for you?

The warm, deeply moving close of The Long Table.