Deep, deep, down, everyone has a story. All it needs is a little courage and perseverance in telling it, and a sympathetic ear to listen. Here's a story, my story, a story of regret. A tale of how, if I had stopped her that night, maybe I would now have the chance of telling a different tale - her tale. That's what I regret most, for I now believe it would have been worth a thousand sleepless nights, driven half-mad by memories of the eyes that told it.

Far away, on the very south-eastern edge of Europe, Christmas was upon the world. The wooden cones dressed up to resemble Christmas trees were out, under the fake cosmos of festive lights that lit up the local towns and red-earth villages. I was on my way to meet somebody in an out-of-town taverna - a place blessed with centuries old food, and lizards which stalked the toilets, dangling their lengthy tails down through the gaps in the corrugated tin roof - when the car first began spluttering, and finally ground to a halt. I coasted to the side of the road, had a quick think and decided it was so dark that I couldn't do anything other than sit tight and wait for another car to come past and offer assistance.

I lounged back in the almost perfect darkness, putting my hands behind my head and turning up the radio a little to fill the time whilst I waited. After several minutes though, I began to find the voices and the dreary music nothing more than a messy interruption to the boundless bouncing rhythms of the night, so I leaned forward and killed them. Whilst in that position, I happened to notice a small rust-eaten hole, in the vicinity of the pedals. However, hard as I tried, I couldn't see anything through it.

Straightening up, I tilted my head back to look up through the sun-roof into the languorous night, just in time to see it graced by the final death throes of a meteorite, fading to extinction. The heavens were sprinkled with just enough stars that they appeared like silvery tears glittering on a dark face, and the night birds, still stretching their weary wings before sleep, did so under the added burden of carrying it all on their backs. I waited for another shooting star. Finally it came, falling towards the zigzag line of watch towers along the border. A cigarette end glowed and flickered persistently as the moths flew by, held by a young conscript, blissfully unaware that from where I was sitting he appeared to be under cosmic attack.

I got out of the car, walking around it examining the tires and the body work, before reaching the driver's door, and laying down on the floor to try and find the newly-discovered rusty hole from the outside. Sure enough it was there but, just as it had been impossible to make anything out from the inside of the car through it, I could see nothing from the outside.

A green light sailed softly skywards, popped and slipped back to earth in the vicinity of a deserted, rundown, wooden abode. A flare from across the border, sent to keep the young guards on their toes and lively, sent to snap me out of my reverie and remind me of a wooden house far to the North that I'd deserted just after the fireworks of the New Year, almost twelve long months before. I would dearly have loved to have gone back just at that moment. The flare caught me off guard and burned its way through all of the defenses it had taken me months to erect. Yet it wasn't the little wooden house with the veranda, where I would sit and listen to the crows barking insanely in the mosquito-infested early summer air, that I suddenly missed. Neither was it the smell of pine trees stealing through the tiny gaps in the window frames on the back of the chill morning air to burgle my dreams. I waited, lying on that hard, stony ground, for enlightenment, but that elusive thing that suddenly filled me with such longing just wouldn't reveal itself. As soon as I thought I might have caught a glimpse of it, it slipped through my fingers and vanished.

All of a sudden, coming closer, out of the night, I detected a different sound to the indigo noise of the crickets, the faint breeze, and the far-off cars sweeping across the highways of the night that had meant nothing to me. It seemed like a soft, metallic chime at first, which continued to echo and swell until it became quite strident.

I was unable to move, shackled to the ground, on my back, eyes wide open, looking up at the stars, eavesdropping on their secret sound.

It circled me for a while, before revealing itself as the sound of crude animal bells moving through the night. Every once in a while, a deep series of human grunts hustled their way into the spaces in the ragged melody. Nearer and nearer they came. Then, a short distance away, a white-clothed figure emerged from the shadows, dutifully followed by a herd of goats. Closer and closer they came until I could clearly see that the figure was a woman. I thought about making my presence known, but found it impossible to get to my feet. She can't have been very old, maybe seventeen or eighteen, but was nigh on six feet tall, and commanded the complete attention of the animals. At her heels, a black and white hound dog dutifully lolled along, seemingly content to do nothing more than blindly follow. She walked the ground barefoot as if it were completely flat, although in truth it was rocky and full of surprise gullies. She crossed my path, seemingly unaware that I was neglecting the whole other world in favour of her, and then slipped into the scrubby vegetation, now pursuing her raggle-taggle flock. I noticed that her otherwise slim figure was interrupted in one place, at her midriff, where her stomach bulged to reveal the soon-come presence of a new life.

I watched her continue on towards the border, less than a mile away. She was heading straight for it, and I wondered if she was going to cross it.

Very close to one of the watch towers, as my eyes adjusted, I could make out another tumbledown eerie old hut, with a battered roof, containing the millions of thwarted wishes, broken dreams and blown around dust, fallen from the dead beat bones of former inhabitants. It seemed to be where she was heading, to add another word or chapter to the hut's never-ending yarn. She walked on and on, before eventually disappearing into the building, leaving the goats outside.

I watched for a while, waiting for her to come out, but she didn't. Suddenly the silence that had settled fell prey to the crack of gunfire, and I saw one of the goats fall. Up on the watch tower a cigarette was lit and, judging by the fact that I could see it, the soldier was facing in the direction of the hut where the woman had gone, watching and waiting. She came out and there was a heated exchange of words, before she went back inside. A radio was switched on. I wasn't sure whether it was in the watch-tower or the hut, but the Hawaiian guitars that came from it rode effortlessly out into the night and restored the calm that had been shattered by the gun shot.

Re-assured, I turned my thoughts to other matters. It seemed strange that I could be in that place, surrounded by land that was uniformly the same for miles around, and that I could travel as far as I wanted in the direction the car was pointed. Yet, if I tried to take one step over the border but a mile away, I'd either be shot or, at best, thrown into a cockroach rough-house for several days. Even the goats aren't free to roam, since they belong to someone, and those ownership rights are fair game for being blasted away. Only the snakes and lizards are free to slither and wander the entire land unhindered.

My attention was drawn back to a bright light above the broken down old hut. I moved my eyes quickly to it, fully expecting it to either tumble to earth or fade into the obscurity of the sky. It didn't move though, remaining completely stationary.

I adjusted my position under the car, and found that I could see through the rusty hole straight up to the stars. Maybe there was one of them, just one special one that hadn't faded, hadn't tumbled down, hadn't died; that shone above a haunted wooden house somewhere up to the north where she lived. And, beneath that light, perhaps she was drawing the curtains on another day, just far enough for the moon's distressing face to come shining through, and its wily old fingers to sneak in through the gaps in the wonky frame. Then, if that one star existed, and by that time I had convinced myself that it did, she would turn down the oil lamps low, slowly down until the light was flawless and she could view the world that she had created. And I thought to myself......."maybe she remembers me".

I was lost, adrift on a meditative spring tide, and didn't hear the car approaching and stopping with the crunching of the gravely verge under its tires. The first I knew was when I was given a little tap by a boot which I recognized, and soon after saw the face of one of my allies appear below the other side of the car. He gave me a huge grin.

" Having a bit of trouble ? What are you doing down there ?"

"Just the engine I think.....can't be anything too serious. Can you give me a hand ?"

" No problem. But what are you doing down there ?"

" Ah........down here.......I found a hole.....you can see right through it if you get into the right position. "

" What are you doing that for ?"

" I was bored.....got to have something to do while you're waiting for someone to come by. Anyway, it's good to see you."

I looked over towards the ramshackle hut, and the light above it had gone, but the Hawaiian guitars could still be heard steeling their way out into the night.

Kevin Hadley, is, at the moment, living on the island of Cyprus, where he’s spending his time working on his second novel - and attempting to find a publisher for his first. When not engaged in these activities, he’s to be found coming to terms with the pleasures that Cypriot life offers, after four bone-chilling winters in Warsaw.