Her hair was long and flowed like the sentences she wrote. He, on the other hand looked hardly punctuated. Even his hair was like a hard mat.

            Their train was late but they were in no rush, well she wasn't.

            "Those hills over there..." She stopped in mid-sentence as if pausing in the middle of a whispy daydream, or perhaps as she realised how wet the large bench which the two of them shared was.

            "Tell me what they look like to you," he said.

            "Well," she replied becoming alert, "You'd probably describe them as angular, but..."

            "But, you wouldn't" he finished. "No, you don't rely on fact where as my readers...well, they prefer fact."  

            "You write fact. No, they remind me..."

            "My god!" he interrupted, standing up suddenly. "Look at the time, how long is this train going to be?"

            "Sit down, calm yourself. Oh, it is lovely here!" The lovely to which, she referred really was lovely. Baskets of flowers hung from the roof. It was kept beautifully, but of course, by far the best thing about this wonderfully historical station was that it wasn't fully working anymore and so it wasn't busy. The areas on the outside of the tracks were very clean and polished. The roofs were red and the wood, what there was of it, was red also. The station was like something out of a film set, a façade made by a designer who wanted to create an Oscar winning backdrop. But, it wasn't. It was real. 

            "Oh those hills!"

            "You were going to describe them."

            "Ah yes," she said warmly settling back on the bench, "they remind me of a coal miner's face."

            "A coal miner's face!" He turned his head sharply to the left, towards her voice, and then continued, "How can they look like a coal miner's face? What colour are they?"

            "Black but I suppose you wouldn't agree." He did not answer but then he didn't need to, he never agreed with anything that she said, they were both very different people. She was a famous novelist but he was a biographer, the figures he wrote about in his straight way were much more famous than he was.      

            "Many years ago," she said, "In North Wales, under a thick cover of darkness, a huge cloak of never ending blackness. Where danger lies in wait for any man who dares to enter-"

            "Danger Zone Nine, your book, your Father."

"Yes," she put in simply. "He died there, in that Zone and no-one even bothered to tell him."

"That it was a Danger Zone?"

"No they never said. He was a kind man, his life shouldn't have ended like that..." She shut her eyes.

"And yet," he went on, "you wrote a book about it."

"It was by way of remembering him," she opened her eyes.

"You don't know exactly how he died, do you?" She not answer. 

"He was brave, braver than I am and what did he get for that bravery, nothing! Just danger and poor health. I've seen the men who survived - wheezing night and morning!"

"They made life long friends."

"Some friends they were," she was in full flow now. "Some friends my father had, not warning him of the Danger Zone! My father died because of a lack of friendship."

"A lack of communication," he insisted.

"Between so called friends, I've read the diaries. In his own hand." At this she stopped and look up again, becoming stiller and silent for a time until a little time later, almost in confirmation, she said, "That's who they remind me off, yes. Worn and yet smooth, rounded in shape, as old as...well the hills, but yet still full of life."

            "That's partly autobiographical," he said after a pause.

            "The feelings are my feelings."

"Your description of the hills," he took a breath in and then, after what seemed to her to be a long time, he breathed out.

It came juddering along the track and they; one arm guiding another, stepped, as one, onto the ancient steamer leaving the hills behind.