She sat on the bench at the train station, ankles crossed, back straight, hat pinned down tight against the wind. The lady had a red scarflette tied around her wrist like a bandage, soft silk against thin, old, liver-spotted skin. It was the only colour on her. Everything else was grey.

I saw her every morning when I came for a cup of tea. It was a good place. Old fashioned. Comfortably uncomfortable. She was a coffee person, she didn’t drink tea. Mostly she just sat there. Watching. Sometimes the wind from a passing train would try to pull at her skirt, and she’d pin it down with one bony hand. The other stayed still in her lap, her wrist wrapped in red.

On the fourth day, I asked her about it. “Why the red?” I said. She looked at me like I’d interrupted a sermon. Then she said, “So I don’t forget.”

“Forget what?”

She turned her eyes back to the tracks. “You’re too young to know,” she said.

I’m not that young. Then, for some reason I wanted to protest my youth. But didn’t.

The clerk at the café window said she’d been doing this for a couple or three years now. “Used to come with a man,” he said. “Thin guy. Always wore a brown coat even in the summer. Then he stopped coming.”

“Dead?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? They’re both older people. Probably, I suppose.”

On the eighth day, I brought her coffee.

She took it, nodded. “You expect a thank-you?”

“No.”

“Good,” she said. “Because I didn’t ask for it.”

“Bloody grumpy bugger,” I muttered under my breath.

She sipped and didn’t say more. The scarflette stayed wrapped, a little tighter now, I thought.

But next day I sat beside her.

“You fought in a war?” she asked without looking up.

“No… No fear! Do I look as though I have?”

“No. But then, if you werr not in the war, you don’t know what waiting is.”

She was quiet again. I was slightly miffed by her. Not quite as miffed as I was curious. The wind picked up, dragged dust across the pavement.

“His name was Joel,” she said finally. “He had a red scarf he wore when he came back from France. Just something he picked up in Paris.”

I waited.

“He said it made him feel young, made him feel lucky. I told him it made him look like a fool. He said better a fool than dead. I told him better a man than a memory.”

She tapped the wrist gently. “Last thing he gave me. Right here. Before he left again. Said he’d come back. He was wrong.”

“What happened to him?”

“Well,” she said, “men don’t always die in war,” she said. “Sometimes they just get tired.”

That was all.

For two days she didn’t show. I asked the clerk. He didn’t know.

Then on the third day she came again. Somehow, she looked smaller. Frailer. But the scarflette was still there. I sat beside her again.

“He wrote me,” she said. “Said he was in Portugal. Married. Apparently he has grandchildren. Sent a photo.”

“You keep it?”

“No,” she said. “I burned it.”

The wind howled. A train came and went.

“He’s dead to me now,” she said angrily.

“But you still wear it?” I asked, pointing at the fabric.

She looked at me then. Eyes sharp, clear as ice. “It’s good to take notice of and remember your mistakes.”

I nodded. There was nothing else to say. Not to her.

Another train pulled in, screeching and clanking. She stood, finally.

“Well,” she said. “Time to go.”

I stood too. “You taking the train?”

“No,” she said. “I’ve missed enough already.”

She walked off, slow but straight, the red flash at her wrist cutting through the grey like a wound. I watched her disappear. She didn’t look back. But then, neither did I.

Next day, I saw that the bench was empty.