Cold ending.

They were resurfacing the road into Mold today. I had to stop and for a few moments admired the way white birds wheeled around a snow-covered field and as they dropped below the background of the dark sky immediately became grey. For some reason they reminded me of scavengers, as if there was some half-eaten carcass that had attracted their attention, and it seemed to me that this might be how the world ends - with scavengers - the end of the food chain.

What if it ended now, I wondered. It is something that used to occur to me a lot when I was younger. Who I would try to run to or phone in those last few minutes - my parents, my brothers, my husband, my sons, my friends...? Then I thought of how it would be to have no one... And then the sun caught the hills. They were still covered in a patchwork of snow, the dark hedges like seams of crude sewing, and the sun glanced off the crest and made it glow white and I felt that if the world were to end this would be my perfect final vision.