Evening. Driving back to London

Evening. Driving back to London, I pass her old house. I must have done this once a month for fourteen years (whenever I return from seeing my parents) and I have scarcely given it a glance. Her family left it years ago, and in any case the yellow brick façade, with its Victorian windows , is like a theatre set. Its memories lie unseen behind: in he passages, the sitting room, the enclosed garden.
I stop and ring the doorbell. Whoever opens the door will seem an impostor, of course, a caretaker. I ring the bell again. It makes the same noise as fourteen years ago: a dry shrillness in the bowels of the house. I know now that nobody will come, and that seems right.
I walk round to try the garden gate. It opens. In the fragrant enclosure nothing has changed. Two flagstoned steps descend from French windows into a tangle of spring flowering shrubs. The neighbours’ wall at the end shows the same patina of grey blue lichen. The whole garden is barely thirty foot deep, and narrow. Behind my back the house windows hang dark. I close the garden door softly behind and stare down the shrub-avenue. For some reason I’m frightened. Close to where I entered, everything is all right. She is watering plants in a summer dress (it’s always summer), swinging the can back and forth in her long, impatient fingers. But a few paces beyond, just out of sight of the house windows, a grass clearing laps against the patinated wall. I remember it perfectely, although I can’t see it yet. I pause among the sheltering shrubs. I feel cold and slightly sick
From ‘ Nothing has changed’ By Colin Thrubron.