Tom loved stories.

   Most evenings he would take the great oak chair by the inglenook fireplace, gaze deeply into the red dancing wood flames, draw on his stubby pipe and announce to the assembled diners and drinkers that Tom's Tales of Truth or Terror were in session.

   People would come to see Tom from all over. How they heard about him nobody knew but the hostelry had been there for as long as anyone alive could remember.

   To find him, visitors had to negotiate miles of twisting leafy lanes. But when they come over the brow of the hill to descend into our little hamlet, they got their reward. The low slung thatched roof nestled into the valley. There was an old rusting well pump and a mill wheel covered in red and white roses. The low ceilinged beams were genuine and there was always good food on the hob. On a warm evening, the scent of fuscia mingled pungently with the musk of damp undergrowth from the surrounding high earth hedges.

   "Tonight", Tom would say "We are going to hear a tale."

   With eyes gleaming and glittering with determination, he stared around seeking and searching like a fox on the scent.

   He would catch the eye of a young lady, hardly old enough to visit this ancient place. She would blush and turn away. Moving on, he would gaze deeply as if into the soul of a neatly dressed executive type whose organiser and mobile phone were carried like badges of belonging.

   They would all wriggle and squirm uncomfortably under his gaze; and he would just wait.

   "Perhaps the tale will be true", he'd continue. "Perhaps it will be just a tale - it is for you to decide - and for the teller to know."

   Doctors, dentists, housewives, husbands, children, plumbers, lovers, mountaineers .... we all have tales woven into us. Sometimes they are tales of what we'd be. Sometimes they are tales of what we are glad we are not."

   His voice lifted on the warm evening air, and drifted lazily past the walls, windows and doors defending the occupants from the growing shadows outside.

   His Somerset brogue searched and explored the crevices of the beams, the cracks in the greying plaster, the corners of the bar where the dust on the flagstones were host to congregations of invisible creeping organisms.

   Like an invisible hand, Tom's voice caressed the minds of his listeners and they would begin to relax. A thread of reassurance and confidence drew them to him. He radiated a certainty that they would all join his charmed circle. In truth, many had been there already. They had told their story. Some had even been so brave as to tell several.

   Quietness now, save for the crackling of the logs in the open fire. An empty womb of anticipation, waiting to be filled with passion and strange experience. Something soon to born would become part of their shared memory.

   Suddenly, a smart woman in a blue executive skirt and white blouse who had been sitting besides a gentleman with a bushy moustache and military demeanour looked up. Like the others, her eyes had been avoiding Tom's. Now with decision shining brightly in them, she stared directly back at him returning his challenge.

   "I have a story", she said. Her tone was clipped and curt. "If you have the time and the patience and the courage, I will tell it. But if you are timid then leave now for it's a tale that'll haunt you late at night when the world is asleep. It will rustle the curtains when you are alone and caress your spine with ice on even the warmest of summers day." She turned in her chair to survey her prospective audience and allowed them one last chance to relinquish the circle; her body arched proudly like a swan ready for flight. A school girl fringe softened her classically sculptured features but the look on her face would have chilled the wind in winter.

   "Come then", said Tom, quietly, raising himself up to move to a stool on the other side of the inglenook. "The tellers chair is yours ... and so are we."

   She settled herself precisely between the high arms of the chair. Centuries of use had worn smooth the detailed patterns of the distant artisan. It was an ordinary chair but over the years it had absorbed the substance of history.

   By taking this seat an imperceptible change seemed to occur. No longer a housewife and working mother, she was now a Holy Grail of experiences and feelings that was preparing to feed her congregation.

   In the clipped and precise terms of one who was used to conveying her exact meaning, her story began.

   "Far away from here, there was a cafe where I would quite often meet with a school friend to exchange news, views, hopes and fears. Not exactly heart to heart - just a bit of a gossip - a lunchtime break to give a bit of meaning to an otherwise uneventful working day."

   She gazed into the distance. There was a sadness in her eyes.

   "My friend had just bought a little Victorian gismo. It was a sort of wooden box with lots of interlocking drawers and compartments. Each drawer you opened posed a question. The answer to that question led you to another drawer or door. We experimented out of curiosity. The destiny it told for my friend contained the usual generality you'd expect, but when I opened my final drawer, the message couldn't have been more specific.

   "Although your partner tells he's true

   Guard well for he's not faithful to you."

   "Well that quite took my breath away. Of course, I didn't really believe in this sort of thing but undeniably it set me thinking. And the more I thought, the more I wondered whether there was anything in it. I remembered the late nights back from the office, the early trips out to town on a Saturday morning. Telephone calls about work in the evenings and weekends."

   "My own business as a freelance clothes designer was not going well. I'd thrown myself into it with a vengeance but it still generated a small income.

   It was my husband's job as an accountant that paid the bills - just. The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed. But what was I to do? If there really was someone else, he was hiding it very well.

   The thought of being deceived, that awful feeling of betrayed trust grew like a worm inside me and left me feeling confused and plagued with indecision.

   What would be gained by confronting him? All he had to do was deny it. A man already living a lie would surely be willing to add another.

   Little did I know but the bait to trap me was already out and soon after, during another lunch break, it was sprung.

   Sitting at the other side of my table was a youngish looking man with the appearance of a studious college professor with hippie leanings. He was quite short, had an open necked shirt, a receding hair line and a pony tail at the back of his head.

   His face was quite baby like, round and urbane. But it was his eyes that fascinated me. They glittered and gleamed as he ate. When he stared around at the other diners, they flashed. One minute they were dark and deep, the next they were grey and green.

   Suddenly, to my surprise, I realised they were filled with tears and that he was quite soundlessly crying. Even as I watched him, a tear rolled down his right cheek. Absent mindedly, he dragged out a monogrammed handkerchief with an 'N' on it and mopping up the tear. It was then that he caught me staring at him.

   "Sorry about that", he said. "It seems I'm in a bit of a state."

   He appeared harmless and it seemed churlish not to talk. I discovered he had recently lost his job as a teacher and soon after that, perhaps even as a result, that he had lost his wife to a divorce.

   We therefore had something in common since I had fears of ending up the same way. But there was absolutely no attraction at least on my part. No hint of budding romance - he definitely wasn't my type - but, as the lunchtime wore on, we got to know each other quite well.

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