Blue Sea Writers

In Safe HandsWed, 07 Jul 2021 12:00:00 Z
When the creaking began, and the floors began to tremble, our first thought was “earthquake”, but when the whispers began, we knew we were dealing with something more than a seismic shift.
We always thought of the house as a haven. Four strong walls to keep out all the monsters of the world; a roof to shelter us from the rain and the eagles that prey on the livers of small boys; tall windows so you could see the evil coming; shuttered and bolted to keep out the cold and the terrors that haunt us all in the middle of the night.
I could not make out the words. “Take time” or, maybe “Take Tim”. Then I heard it clear: “Take them, take them, take them.” And I knew that we were the “them” that were to be taken.
The “them” in question being mother: on the outside strong as unconditional love, on the inside soft as wet kisses; my brother Ken: seven years, the baby of the family; my sister Sam: short for Samantha, only five years of age, but older than Methuselah’s elder brother; and me, Tony: 15, and because my father was “away on business”, the assumed head of the family.
Of course, this was only assumed by me.
I was the only one of the children who knew that father was never coming home.
I heard the ringing of the phone in the middle of the night. I saw the look on mother’s face over breakfast. I overheard the phone call to Aunt Miriam. I felt the tears on the pillow. Some of them were mine.
“Take them! Take them!” The voices now sounding more menacing, grew louder and louder, until we were forced to cover our ears, fearing that our eardrums would burst.
Without hesitation, mother led us up the stairs to the bathroom: the only room in the house with a lock, apart from the cellar, and that dark and spider-infested cavern was never the friendliest of places, even when monsters were sleeping.
How mother thought a simple sliding lock with two small screws would keep out all the evil in the world, God only knew, and God was saying nothing on the subject. He was as far away from this world as I had ever imagined him to be. I began to have doubts that He even existed at all or if He did exist, the full extent of His power. This was the moment He lost his capital “H”. Suddenly it seemed all bluff. God was just a poker player. All would be well until he was forced to show his hand. Then you were on your own. Having to face demons. Without a god. Without a father.
It took just five seconds for the force to tear away the bolt and send the door crashing into the bathroom. We were all huddled in the shower with the curtain drawn across. Investing our protection from the forces of evil in a flimsy sheet of plastic decorated with brightly coloured cartoon fish.
Something was in the bathroom with us, I could feel its presence but not see it, as my eyes were shut tight. It moved closer. Its breath, sulphuric and hot. Its breathing: gasping, like the final desperate breaths of a dying man, and then mother turned on the shower, drenching us all in cold water.
Was it the water that confused our enemy? The terror changed, transforming itself into a fire filling the bathroom with licking flames and smoke, within minutes, the water cooled its hot tongues, extinguishing them with a hiss.
Huddled in the shower tray, wet and bespeckled with ash, we clutched each other.
The breathing of the house began again: “Take them, take them.”
Mother led us quickly out of the smoke and up the next flight of stairs. Like the chased one in a B movie who climbs higher and higher to escape, hoping for a golden rope ladder hanging from the sky, which was never there.
But there was the loft ladder and pulling it down mother led us up through the trapdoor into the dust and the cobwebs. She switched on the light, revealing those familiar things of yesterday: the old rocking horse with the hideous smile that I had always been too scared to ride; the tortured violin lying on its back, its strings grown thick with dust, that father had failed to teach me, would now never teach me; the winter clothes cosying up to the snow boots, dreaming of winter, and the old brown suitcase father always took with him when he was away on business.
Mother bolted the trapdoor and I helped her to lift the old Singer sewing machine to place upon it. But the evil did not need this point of access, it seeped through the floorboards, filling the room with a cloud of yellow smoke, slowly transforming itself into a floating horned beast.
What was it that made mother take her next action? Was it that she felt at home in the attic with these familiar objects? Holding out her open palm she began to gently stroke the smoke, as if stroking an invisible pet: our lost cat Freckles perhaps, or our long-gone red setter Lenin, now running six feet down in the back garden. As she stroked, I fancied I could see the mist of perspiration lifting from the beast’s skin, as there in front of us, a monster with fluorescent amber eyes rolled over onto its back, stretched out its spidery long limbs, sharp talons and began to … purr? Maybe not quite, but as close as any hellhound could get to sounding like a tabby having its tummy rubbed.
I began to doubt the simple order of cause and effect.
“Take them!” The voices screamed, this time more insistent.
Before our wide eyes, the purring beast began to dissolve. Taking its colour from the yellow pus of its eyes it filled the room, a mustard gas, choking all that breathed it.
Before the gas overcame us, mother opened the dormer window and led us, wet and gasping, onto the roof. The black sky was overfull of stars all shouldering each other for space. Growing in number they moved closer, ever closer, until following mother’s lead, we stumbled our way across from the roof onto one star and then on to another and another, crossing them like stepping stones in a river, up and up and there … Could it be? Oh, you of such doubt, such cynicism, now eat your words, for there, before us, swaying in the warm breeze of the night sky: a golden rope ladder leading up to the heavens above us.
“And now,” said mother, putting aside the book and climbing into the bed beside us, “it is time for us all to get some sleep.”
There we huddled, the four of us, mother, and children, holding on to each other tightly, for fear that we would slip through each other´s fingers, breathing sighs of relief, for the nightmare that had threatened to extinguish us all was over.
 
In mother´s story the storm has passed and the beasts have been evaded, but in the morning-story, in my story, woven into her own like a double helix, father will still not be here.
I can feel the sobs of mother vibrating through the bed, crying herself to sleep.
Later, at three in the morning, in melancholy honour of that fatal phone call, she will awake with a cry that will be forever trapped in her heart. She will begin pacing around the house as if searching for something lost.
With the covers over my head, I try to sleep but the acid dampness of tears keeps me awake.
Then I hear a sound. A gentle tap, tap, tap upon the window.
It is the sound of the golden rope ladder reminding me that everything is possible.
I hold my father’s hand all through the night.
The effect will change the cause.
When I awake in the morning my father will not be here, he will never be here again, but from this day forth he will never let go of my hand.

Beware the Unweather

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 12:00:00 Z

The final day of the year of our Lord 726 AD was much like any other day. Across the Kingdom scrawny chickens pecked at grubs on muddy village greens, dogs barked and the border wars raged. A chilled north wind threatened the coming of the January unweather.

* * *

Something was wrong; the village gates were open and unguarded. He held the reins tight as the old horse with its head low, followed the water-filled wheel-ruts into the stockade. No candlelight burned in the windows, no torches lit the muddy village green. He should have heard singing from the small wooden church and a pastor telling the congregation how they were the Chosen Ones.

A Chosen One was not a blessing but a curse. Those who believed they were chosen were arselings. He kept those beliefs hidden, as he did the collection of forbidden objects in his cart. King Aethelred’s men didn’t bother an old man with a guitar, a limp and a clapped-out cart. He was safe enough.

Where were the excited children who always ran out to greet him? Why were there no Elders waiting with their pompous authority? Wherever he travelled, his songs and stories were rewarded with food, drink and a bed for the night. They had precious little other entertainment. Sometimes there would be a few shillings if the King’s tax collectors hadn’t got there first.

He pulled hard on the reins, the horse’s neck jerked up and the cart creaked to a halt by the first row of deserted huts. A waning gibbous moon doused the village in a sickly yellow light. His horse snorted, its harness jangled; the sound echoed between the empty huts.

Now he was closer, he spotted a faint glow from a flickering burned-down candle through the window of a hut. He got down from the cart, his back ached and his right leg was stiff and seized up. Twenty years ago on the borders, a Scottish lance had gone through his thigh without touching an artery. God’s will, the army pastor had said. It was a pity God hadn’t the will to save the hundreds of dead and mutilated on the battlefield. That reply went unsaid. It doesn’t do to question authority.

He tied his horse to a post and limped to the door. The walls of the hut were sealed with dried London clay. London. So much was named after the mythical city, even the mud.

He rapped once on the door and it swung open. “Hello?” he called, peering inside. The crack of a dying ember in the fireplace his only reply.

He shuffled in. A line of thin smoke rose towards the hole in the roof from the fireplace ashes. A dark wooden chest lay on its side, the drawers out and their contents tipped onto the hard-packed earth floor. He walked to the table in the centre of the room, split leather boots crunching on the spilt items unseen in the gloom.

The candle he’d seen through the window was almost extinguished. Thick wax had hardened over a small slim glass bottle that served as a candlestick. There were two plates with partially eaten cold pork and boiled potatoes. His ears pricked, his eyes circled the room, checking the shadows. A tingling rose along the base of his neck.

Several fresh candles were scattered across the tabletop and on the floor. He lit four one by one from the dying flame. He melted the ends and stuck them upright on the table. The room was a mess of broken furniture and smashed objects.

His eyes fell on the glass candlestick with the now dead candle. The bottle was smaller than a wine bottle and curved like the lower half of a buxom woman. He’d never seen anything with this exotic design before, perhaps it was from Frankia? Maybe it was a forbidden object? Hardened wax followed the lines of something shaped beneath it. He dug his thumbnail in and scraped it away.

He fished under his cloak and in the pocket of the heavy woollen tunic. His fingers wrapped around round metal-framed reading glasses. He pushed them on his nose and peered at the bottle, now cleared of wax. There were two embossed words in a strange cursive style joined by a dash symbol. It was difficult to read in the low light. He brought the bottle closer to one of the candles and traced the script with a calloused fingertip: Coca-Cola. These strange words confirmed it: this was a forbidden object.

He put the bottle in his pocket for the collection. He lifted a candle from the table and knelt to the floor, knees and right leg fighting back against him. His ears and mind were still sharp and alert. He held the candle to the floor; it was covered in a carpet of smashed objects. He recognised some, never understanding what they were. He picked up a hand-sized slim rectangular object with a shattered glass face, SAMSUNG S9 inscribed in silver on the back.

He had found several of these objects before and stored them with his other forbidden objects. Some carried the picture of an apple with a bite. The soldiers would make him disappear if they ever found them on him.

He picked up a ripped tunic made from no fabric he’d ever touched before. Smooth and light like silk but without the rich texture. It weighed less than a bag of peacock feathers and was in the colour of the evening sun. A large silver tick symbol on the front glistened in the flickering candlelight.

A broken golden chain caught his eye, glinting from the floor. He picked it up. A heart-shaped locket the size of an arrowhead hung from the chain. It had a hinge on one side and a lip on the other. He pushed the candle into the floor and picked at the locket catch. It popped open and he held it to the light.

He threw it across the room and it hit the wall with a clink. This was witchcraft — the miniature face of a smiling young man had stared back at him from inside. What sorcery was this? He waited for his breathing to calm and his heart to stop racing. There were so many things the priests could not explain; saying God moves in mysterious ways offered no enlightenment.

It was time to leave, he could not be found in such a place, too many forbidden objects.

A faint shout broke the silence; his body went rigid. He pulled himself up using the tabletop. He returned to the front door. Another shout. A man’s voice. It had come from the other side of the deserted village stockade. He touched the handle of his sword.

He limped out of the hut. More shouts, the sound of a horse braying. It must be the villagers but why were they outside the stockade after dark? Wild animals prowled at night: the big cats, hyenas and wolves. He hobbled to the open gates and staggered around the perimeter wall, slowing as he approached the source of the noises. He heard muffled voices and a horse breathing, it’s lips vibrating together.

He peered around the corner of the twelve-foot-high stockade wall. Moonlight glinted on iron helmets of two of the King’s soldiers. They waited on impatient mounts next to a huge overgrown patch of undergrowth. He pulled back behind the corner, heart pounding. Soldiers. Not good. His legs were weak with fear.

“Let's go,” said one, an accent from the northern counties. “I have no wish to be in this godforsaken treacherous village a moment longer.”

The other grunted in agreement and looked to the northern sky.

"The storms of the January unweather will be here tomorrow, Selwyn.”

They turned their horses and kicked their heels. He waited for the darkness of the forest to swallow them before peering back. The old man moved towards the bushes. Why had two of the King’s soldiers been hanging around on the edge of the forest on New Year’s Eve?

The north wind whipped up against his cloak, the promise of the storm stronger by the minute. Fork lightning lit up the horizon, the rumble of thunder followed several seconds later.

He should leave but inquisitiveness interfered. He trudged to the undergrowth to see why the soldiers had been waiting. Someone had cut a narrow path through the thick brambles. He limped along the cleared channel as dark clouds raced over the moon. An animal moved a few feet away, it sounded small, a fox or a badger. An owl called. No voices, no horses. That was good.

The end of the cleared path was in blackness. He blinked, trying to get accustomed to the darkness, it was as if the path ended in a back hole. He reached out, shaking, palm forward. His hand rested on a smooth surface. Glass. He stared for a few moments more, the clouds passed, the moon glistened once again. He faced a door of glass, over seven feet high. Behind it there was blackness. The door to hell, this village was bewitched.

Above the door, behind some uncleared brambles, a blue sign hung down from a rusted screw. He stretched up and pushed the brambles away with the tip of his sword. He twisted his head to one side and read aloud. "Welcome to London Heathrow Terminal 5." London?

That’s why the soldiers had come, the villagers had uncovered a forbidden building. They were now with the disappeared.

“Hey, you.”

He spun around. Six soldiers on foot stood at the entrance to the path, swords drawn. He backed against the glass.

“We missed one.” An officer pointed at him with the tip of his sword. “Go and get him sergeant and put him with the others.”

The burly soldier approached him, an enormous club in one hand. The old man cowered and blackness came.

* * *

The first day of the year of our Lord 727 After the Death was much like any other day. Chicken pecked, dogs barked and the border war raged. The unweather arrived that morning.

Shepherd’s Fete

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 16:00:00 Z

My sheep bleat, a rambling reminder, a yodel of life.

I’m chasing a phone signal, trying to catch it with the net, like bugs.

Strong green lines are more pressing than the warm breath of my woolly flock, of herding them to the next field. They’ve chewed the grass almost down to its roots. The adjacent field is green and overgrown. It glistens with dew, alive in its being. Lazing on the wall of the round brick well, in the middle of the open land, I use the heel of my boot to scrape the sheep droppings from the side the other boot. I give up and frown, staring, holding up my phone.

My sheep are stoic. They stare at me, blank, mimicking me. They’re waiting. They are further away from me than usual, distant.

I was a happy farmer. Before. I can’t place the defining moment. The moment I was abducted. It was slow. I was stalked, crept up on. It was persistent, skilled, like my sheep herding Collie. Where is he? I’ve been infiltrated, kidnapped by a web of lies, a knitted network of social euphoria, lavish opinions and narcissism.

“Border!” I look for his shaggy black coat, his white chest. He’s absent. I’m absent. He’s unfollowed me.

The weak signal has disappeared. I look back at the sheep and have the urge to do something strange. A comical jig on the well? They seem to want to be entertained. I could learn some moves on YouTube.

I need Border to do his thing. To run the width of the field, side to side, behind the flock, gathering momentum, inching them forward. Every so often he centres himself mid field, lowers his white chest and skulks behind them, creeping, focused, nipping their hooves if needs be, influencing them to follow the sheep at the front of the group. I used to love watching him.

I sigh. I wonder if I have received approval for the ‘Are you wasting your Life’ group. I answered the questions as best I could. Feisty, go getting. Strange one needs approval. I can’t remember the reasons I gave for wanting to be part of it. I check my phone again. It’s hard to see the screen, the glare of the day is blocking it. There aren’t any green lines.

And where’s Mammoth? The friendliest sheep. The one who’s old and greets me with more of a growly moo than a baa. If I can get him moving the rest will follow.

The post by a banker is on my mind. I could be a banker, I was good at maths at school and quite ballsy. I could trade Cryptocurrency. I need to watch that saved video. I could write a book, not just read one. I must fix my old Yamaha dirt bike. I should compete in the Motocross. I want to learn about the star constellations and how they affect me. I know Gemini’s get distracted, that’s what Ken said. He waffled on about it when he served me a pint the other night. Who’d have known he was into that? I want to do more photography. Funny pictures of my sheep on Instagram? Everyone’s a photographer. Everyone’s ordinary is epic.

I need followers though. Shots of the sheep by the turnstile, the conker tree. I could show them grazing and running free, could call it Little Bo Peep. Big Bo Peek. That’s good. But she hasn’t lost them. It would need to be changed to He, too. They’ll need a wash. Dirty sheep aren’t pleasing to look at. At least they can’t smell them.

The sheep look a bit underweight, Their coats, flat like a carpet on their sides, like a cardboard box, instead of plump like a teddy bear. The ground is bare. I should have moved them a week ago.

I yawn, my eyes heavy. I’ve quite a headache too. I’m full of stolen ideas and dreams. Filched by the ones I follow. I ache for their accomplishments. Why, I don’t know. Keeping up with the Jones’s never seemed so endearing. Now it’s keeping up with the whole world.

Where’s Border? Mammoth?

I turn around on the spot. I give it a shake and get one weak line.

I look at someone’s inane timeline. I look at the celebrations of others that I don’t care about. I don’t mean to be unkind but it’s true. They don’t care for mine either. I wish them well, but it’s not important to me. And it would be weird if it was. But it flashes at me. Joyful events. Generic. So common, so usual, they’re no longer celebratory. Standard comments. Universal remarks, flippantly posted, hollow, but it steals attention. Love you. Congratulations. You’re the best.

“Baa!” I bleat. They still stare. Expectant. I’m doing nothing, “shoo” I say, my arms flicking them away.

Everyone is special. Everyone is the same. Each of us funny. All of us projecting, performing, creating. We mould into one. Regurgitated. One life. One way. One web. I’m following. I’m nipping at their posts. They’re nipping at mine. But it’s not a full bite is it, like a piece of chocolate cake?

“Mammoth!” We used to be friends, there was an understanding, a relationship between us and where on earth is Border?

Where are the days when I lived my life and others lived theirs? Ignorance keeps our fortune in check. If I was meant to be something else, fate would intervene. Social media isn’t divinity. It’s the waning moon, a dark foreboding authority, opening vaults with treasures that aren’t mine. I’m in the wrong space. Free will has censured my purpose. Renounced it. Its say so is soliciting social supremacy. I’m in command. Self-determined force has destroyed my karma. It’s not a choice, it’s interference. It’s latent propaganda. Pollution.

“I was born to farm.” I affirm weakly.

Mammoth head-butts my shin and I stumble, knocking my wrist on the well. I loosen my grip. The phone bounces once and somersaults down into the well.

“For fuck’s sake.” I didn’t notice him sneak up.

I kick him away and lean over the well. It’s dark. I can’t see anything. Seconds lapse before I hear the faint clunk as it hits the bottom. I knew there wouldn’t be a splash. It’s as dry as providence not pursued.

“Fuck.”

The sheep are bleating loudly. I turn around. They’re prancing. Mammoth is only feet from me and looks stern. He can’t be frowning. Sheep don’t frown. Is he lowering his head? He’s going to ram me.

Skirting the wall of the well, I slink round, until I’m behind it.

Sheep aren’t aggressive.

They’re gathered together. I’m blocked by the well.

Get a grip. They’re my sheep.

A bark in the distance is extremely welcome. The sheep disperse, frantic, unsure which way to go. I can see Border’s white chest through the gap.

He’s legging it. On a mission. There are others behind him.

“Hello boy” I say, down on my knees. He looks a little sad. His eyes. I’m not sure.

“I’m sorry,” I say and hug his dirty fur, a smell of sweat and mud. He wags his tail. I’m not sure what I’m apologising for.

“Oi!” shouts Ken, waving, “I thought you would’ve moved them by now!”

Behind him is Gary, our local hairdresser, Sarah the baker and Marge who owns the garden nursery and dabbles in fortune telling at the weekend. They’re struggling with the long, flapping rectangle sign, ‘Summer Fete.’

Marge gives me a whack on the head.

“Nice to see you too,” I scowl.

“What’s up with you these days?” she says

I don’t know.

“All and sundry will be turning up in a few hours. There’s tons to do.” She strokes Border and looks back at me.

“I got distracted, Sorry.” I glance back at the well.

“Nothing down there for you love,” she says

“You’re right about that,” I give her a hug. She smells of lavender, “My field’s all yours.”

“You’re a star,” she says squeezing my shoulder.

“I’m a Shepherd. That’s what I am.”

The whistle is on my lips. I don’t need to blow. Border knows what to do. I stretch my arm out, strong and straight, stiff as a wooden signpost towards the adjacent field. Border follows its direction and woofs. He’s got it.

We herd. We’re working. I’m leading. Mammoth is right behind me and the rest of the flock follow. Border is at the back, keeping us straight. We move in unison. We’re in time. We’re in the same space.

It didn’t take long. We saunter back into the field, and I marvel at how much they’ve done. Each to their own. It looks fantastic. The smell of locally brewed beer and sausages soften my taught brow.

Gary asks if I want a free haircut and possibly a shave. It’s for charity. I nearly thump him one but I just laugh. Sarah is doing dog washes, Border included although we need to allot more time for him. We enjoy some pampering and settle down to fill our stomachs. Sausage and potato salad for me, a steak for Border.

Ken is taking photos with his old Pentax Camera. I look over his shoulder and watch him carefully set up the shots.

“Got some good ones here, I think” he says, “Half the fun is not knowing how they’ll turn out.”

Marge is using a polaroid, taking pics of flowers or bushes, anything with foliage. Each potted plant for sale gets one. It’s balanced between its leaves like a gift card. One off photos, no duplicates.

I circulate, chat to friends I haven’t spoken to for a while. It’s nice. I don’t need to catalogue it. I’m too busy enjoying it. No need to record it. It’s a day for the community. We’re all here. We won’t forget it. You never forget how something makes you feel.

The sun is sliding towards the moon, the change-over will be soon. I whistle at Border all fluffy and clean and we head over to the adjacent field to check on the sheep. I rest my elbows on the metal gate and Border sticks his head through the rungs.

“They’re alright, aren’t they boy?” I say, and watch Mammoth close to the fence.

He sees us and stares. I shouldn’t have kicked him. It wasn’t hard but.

I’m waiting. He treads carefully towards us and he brushes my knee with his cheek.

“I’m a Shepherd.” I whisper.

Sergei Is Not Russian

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 12:00:00 Z

“They call me Sergei,” he said in rolling English like a baritone auditioning for the Mariinsky. “But I am not Russian.”

He grunted as she sank her elbow into the thin, flat muscle beneath his shoulder blade, sliding in deep with the greasy stink of Tiger Balm.

How did she know how to drill down on that one spot? The left that always gave him trouble. His shooting arm. Also his stabbing arm and punching arm. Though, he was pretty good with both limbs. Ambidexterity being an advantage for basketball players and killers alike. Not that he had a chance of being a basketball player. Too short. But he could have been an Olympic wrestler before the knee thing. That little problem of the money and the cracked knee cap. Still, who was left alive after that encounter? And it put him on his career path earlier than expected. Nothing like a little military dedovshchina to brutalise you into becoming a man.

“No?” She said and released her elbow, sending ripples of relief down his back. “But the newspapers say Russia.”

He grimaced. The muscle on his neck flared with plumes of pain.

Get a massage, Ximo said, make the muscles malleable again before getting in that tin-can of a boat to Algeria. The old Filipina cleaner down at the factory can do magic with her fingers, he said. She doesn’t care about Italian police warrants and Interpol Red Notices. Just money. Ximo had been right about the farmyard vet, discreetly rooting out the gunshot and stitching him up after Italy. So why not the massage?

But the old Filipina did read the morning papers, apparently.

“Newspapers lie,” he growled. “They sell stories to make money.”

“Berry true, sir,” she said in an accent thick as arnibal syrup.

Until this morning, nobody even knew he was here. Then the carabinieri got desperate. They put out a cash reward and sold the local papers a preposterous story about him being a murderous Russian agent. Front page news! An escapee from a Croatian prison. His old cellmates paid by the lie. 1000 push-ups and sit-ups every morning? Spetsnatz training, the papers said, as if they knew what that was. Russian special forces had given him an ‘almost inhuman discipline’ wrote one reporter, salivating over the details. He never ate red meat, another paper said, only vegetables like some kind of zealot. Still, he managed to put 5 guards into hospital when they tried to muscle him into solitary.

Okay, it wasn’t all lies. He did filch some old magazines from the library and pack them under his clothes. Worked pretty good as body armor against their batons. Until an electric current was jammed into his throat.

“Try to relax, sir,” she said. A ridiculous request. As if he could manually unwind the coiled spring deep inside him. She returned to kneading his neck.

Ximo was right. She was a good masseuse: Tender on the old injuries. Brutal on the gnarled knots of muscle.

Who was this monster the papers described in such lurid detail? That wasn’t him. He was no unkillable villain from a Hollywood movie. No psychotic murderer. He didn’t eat them like some ogre. He was no crazy serial killer in America preying on young boys. Certainly, he was not spying for Russia. If he had a patriotic bone in his body, he’d broken them all and left them behind in a stinking heap in Chechnya.

He was just doing his job. Albeit one with a highly specialised skill set in demand with certain oligarchs who supplied him with the necessary tools of the trade: weapons and passports.

“No, I am from Bulgaria,” he said. Did she know he was lying? Did it even matter? It was getting harder to keep track of which identity he was supposed to be using. Serbian, Hungarian, Moldovan and, of course, Russian. He shuffled through passports the way a croupier riffles through cards, always the same pallid and vacant face staring out.

“And I am not a killer like Russian spy idiots in England,” he added vehemently. “The poison. Novichok. ¿Sabes? So messy.”

He’d fallen into the habit of dropping Spanish into his sentences. A sure sign he’d been hiding out here too long. He turned his head to look back at her.

“Si,” she echoed in agreement, “So messy.”

She was focused on his lower back so all he could see was the top of her head. Just as well. She was not one of the pretty ones. Short and squat of some indeterminable age — but certainly not young — with fleshy hands that pummelled his muscles like meat mallets. She had a typically Asiatic face with a flat nose and wide nostrils as if she’d slipped out of the womb and landed on her face. Utterly unfuckable. But this was good. You can never trust the ones you want to fuck. Like Natalia.

Still, when the old Filipina had arrived, he frisked her down and emptied out her bag. Made a show of placing his gun on the bedside table. A Zastava CZ999. She watched him politely then laid out a Barca beach towel and connected a little speaker to her mobile phone. Tinkling piano music wafted out.

While she got the place ready, he sifted through the contents of her bag. A frayed wallet containing 20 Euros, a bus pass, and a photo of two brown smiling children. A zippered purse with tampons tucked inside. A jar of Tiger Balm and a glass dropper bottle decorated with lacy pink flowers. He checked the seals. Still intact.

She rinsed a yellow wash cloth in the kitchen sink before rolling it neatly and placing it in the fridge. Then she cracked open the jar of Tiger Balm and scooped the jelly out with her fingers. She wiped the stinking balm in one palm and rubbed her hands together.

“Okay, pace down please,” she had gestured to the towel laid out on the bed. He hesitated, just for a moment, before easing his bulk down onto his belly.

“You know Bulgaria?” He said now, drowsy, her hands extruding the words out of his mouth.

“It is …” She was moving with care along his legs. “… near Italia?”

He laughed at her.

“No, it is near Russia! On the Black Sea.”

“Sorry,” She giggled, “I was not so good at school.”

“Bulgaria is a small country,” he said, “and poor. Not like Philippines. But still poor.”

“Yes, not much money,” she said, “but we work hard.”

He’d been defaulting to his Bulgarian identity recently. It was easier to keep straight. His father had lived in Bulgaria toward the end and he really did know the country. At least the beach in Burgas where his mother took him once to meet him and eat Eskimo ice cream bars, chocolate and cream dribbling over his pudgy fingers.

He’d told Natalia about this: the simple heaven of cracking a bite into the chocolate shell, the cold delicious shock of the ice cream, walking hand in hand with the silent, grizzled man he was apparently related to, this old Soviet soldier with ghosts in his eyes. Tora Bora, his mother said in explanation, as if he would somehow know Soviet military history. He hadn’t truly understood until he was older and the Americans chased Osama Bin Laden into those limestone tunnels and he saw pictures of the rusting hulk of Soviet tanks. Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires.

He told all this to Natalia because it was the closest he could come to telling her the full truth of who he was. But she didn’t really understand. She was too young even to remember the American invasion, much less why his father came back hollowed out and broken. And still, she betrayed him.

“You are not afraid of me, yes?” He said to the old Filipina with his eyes closed.

Why had he asked her that? Maybe because he remembered Natalia’s pleas before he lowered the gun to her head. Beautiful Natalia. Her black mascara running down her pale face. Where had she wanted to go? Fiji or Tahiti? The Maldives or Bora Bora? He didn’t even know where those places were but it meant flying and that was too dangerous. Too many questions at airports. Too many people wanted them dead or behind bars.

“No,” the old Filipina said, thumbing the soles of his feet. “I am not afraid, sir.”

“Good.”

Sardinia was supposed to be their retirement. A short hop from Split to Ancona, then the Civitavechia ferry like ordinary honeymooners with two crisp new passports in hand. Natalia in her gold bikini. He in a straw hat. But she wanted more. She wanted a yacht with a walk-in wardrobe of Prada and Chanel and he couldn’t afford that. Especially if he wasn’t working anymore. He’d stashed a hefty amount of cash, but not that much.

He tried to explain this to her. They needed to live quietly. They couldn’t just sail off into the sunset with an iceberg-sized yacht, leaving a trail of Louis Vuitton bobbing in their wake. They needed to disappear. Especially as a hitman running off with one of the boss’s girls.

But she didn’t listen. They argued. He lost his temper. Put a gun to her head, yes, but only to make her listen. He didn’t pull the trigger. He would never do that. But it was only a matter of time until they found them.

Now Natalia was at the bottom of the sea with her bikini and passport packed into her suitcase, helped along by a jagged block of concrete. Fish and crabs nibbling at her milky white body while he waited it out in dusty Teruel, eating greasy jamon and peppers with Ximo. His aging body pocked with gunshot wounds that were taking longer and longer to heal. He might be difficult to kill but it was not impossible, whatever the newspapers said.

“You are berry tense here.” The old Filipina knuckled a fist into his right buttock. “Your sciatic nerve.”

“Yes, stress from my work,” he said because it was true.

“Bad for your health,” she said. “You must take care.”

He smiled at her concern. He was starting to like her accent. No, Italy was not possible anymore. Nor Spain. But he wasn’t staying in godforsaken Algeria either.

“What is like, the Philippines?”

“Hot,” she said, “but cheap. Many many islands with beautiful beaches. Palawan. Boracay. Many coconut trees.”

“Boracay,” he repeated after her dreamily. “Sounds like a nice place.”

She tapped him on his shoulder. “Sir? Please turn, face-up.” Then she disappeared into the kitchen.

He rolled over to one side, feeling thick and sluggish. Despite all the spetsnaz discipline, he’d gotten fat. She came back holding the yellow washcloth.

“I put this on, yes?” Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her waggle the glass vial in her hand, “Lavender oil, okay?”

“Hmmm.”

“Relaxing, yes?.”

But also invigorating. The cold nubs of the terrycloth alive on his skin as a sweetish scent tickled his nose. The old Filipina had managed to unpick the knotted mess inside him. He inhaled and then let out a deep velvety sigh.

She was stretching his neck out like yeasty bread dough, working his body elastic and yielding. His memories of Natalia fading like the ice in her sweet umbrella drinks, drifting away like blooms of blood in seawater.

“Boracay … is like … Bora Bora …,” he murmured through the intoxicating scent of the washcloth. “… is like …Tora Bora … ¿Sabes?”

He frowned at the wrongness of the words. Bora Bora was palm trees and bikinis. Tora Bora was the emptiness in the eyes of an old Soviet soldier.

His eyes fluttered with belated realisation. He tried to tug the cloth away but his fingers had grown fat and fumbling. He only managed to pull the damp cloth off of one eye before his hand fell away.

“You are … not … from Philippines,” he said with great effort.

“No.” Her pleasant accent was gone now, fading like the contours of the room, his face sliding in disbelief.

He made a feeble reach for the gun but his hand just flapped by his side, like a fish flopping its life away. She had slid it away somewhere. He felt his leg kick but it seemed unconnected to him now. A thick tree trunk with a foot jerking uncontrollably beneath him. His body still fighting. Then the leg went limp and he felt a sharp sting on his neck.

“Do not make this messy, Sergei” she said, “I hate cleaning.”

A razor blade at his carotid. An old trick but a good one. Clever lady. Maybe she’d snuck it in the purse lining with the tampons. Idiot. He should have checked that more closely. And the sweet little bottle too.

But what wars did the Philippines have to make assassins like this? Women with pummelling fists and cold hearts. After all the things he’d seen, he marvelled at how little he knew.

“They … Ximo … he, they …Natalia…” His tongue was filling his mouth now as he stumbled over questions. Whatever he wanted to say, it was vitally important, critical, for him to know.

“I don’t know anything,” she said to him, “Just doing a job.”

Then she shushed him, like his mother on the long drive home, lying to him that there would be Eskimo ice creams with his father every summer. Lying like Natalia that it would all be okay, that no one would find them even though she’d left a trail of shiny breadcrumbs that lead straight to their bullet-ridden boat. Lying like that greedy puto Ximo.

“For … money,” he said finally.

She nodded.

Maybe this was retirement for people like him. The pension plan of paid assassins. This retreat into memory where he could, at least, respect this ugly woman with the flat nose. She did good work. Like him.

“Okay,” he said finally. He sounded heavy, slurred, and distant as if he was hearing himself underwater, sinking down to Natalia’s depths, at last. “this … this is… Bora Bora.”

“Bora Bora,” she said and shushed him one last time.

Missing Inaction

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 12:00:00 Z

William Morris was always home at 6 pm on Mondays. The train pulled in at 5.55 pm and it was a five-minute walk home. When his train was delayed, which was often, he always called to let her know so she could have everything ready for him at his new arrival time. It was now 6.15. There had been no call. That was not like William. He always called.

Karen stared out through the backdoor window. A low sun glowed across the neatly trimmed garden lawn to the shed at the bottom. She stared a few moments more before picking up her phone and calling her husband’s number.

There were more modern models, the battery didn’t last and the screen was cracked. William said it was a waste of money to buy a new one as she didn’t go anywhere important. The tech companies only wanted to sell
more units by giving them shinier covers, fancier names and apps no one needed. His model was the latest but that was different, he went to important places.

A muffled ringtone came from upstairs.

She hung up, waited a few moments, and rang again. The muffled ring sounded. She strode out to the hall and up the stairs grasping her old phone. Her free hand slid up the white bannister, a fine layer of dust stuck to her fingers. William hated dust and she didn’t miss the constant smell of lavender polish. Her swollen lips throbbed in pain from the faint smile at seeing her blackened fingertips. Small victories but no less satisfying.

The ringing got louder as she approached the landing; it came from their bedroom. It was like a hotel room on arrival. The vacuum cleaner lines from a couple of days ago were still faintly visible like random train tracks across the cream carpet. The ironed bed-cover was sharp, starched and as white as the plain walls. White was William’s favourite colour, as was grey.

Matching pillows lay on either side of the double bed, his smooth and wrinkle free as he expected every night, hers lined and with a head-sized dent in the middle. Built-in oak-effect wardrobes went over the bed head with floor to ceiling units on either side: an effective use of wall space. According to William.

The ringing was loud and from William’s bedside shelf. He preferred the side closest to the door as he needed to get up to pee at least twice during the night. Problems for men of a certain age. He’d been annoyed when she’d used the word prostrate. It was unclean, crude. He told her through gritted teeth and a red face to say, men’s problems. She breathed out hard and slow, shaking her head, her legs weak. She’d paid for that transgression.

His latest model Smartphone stopped ringing and went to voicemail.

“William, where are you?” she said into her phone and hit the red screen button. She picked up his phone, missed call Karen 18.17. Her knuckles knocked over the bedside lamp and she moved to pick it up. William expected everything straight and ordered. She stopped and left it on its side. That felt good, small victories.

It was odd to hold his phone, as if she was breaking a law. She guessed she was in some ways. She pressed her fingertips around the case then put his phone down, trotted downstairs and opened the front door.

She paced along the black and white Victorian-effect tiled path bordered by short clipped hebe shrubs. The plants were practical: waxy evergreen leaves
and flowers all year round. He liked practical. The garden was her job, the decisions his.

William said there were man jobs and woman jobs; men went out to work, women did everything else. It didn’t pay to debate. Sometimes it didn’t pay anyway. She touched her swollen eye with a delicate touch and winced.
She leant over the barred gate and looked past their box-square front hedge.

At the end of the street commuters were streaming away from the station to their homes like a swarm of escaping rats from a docked ship. She spotted a face she’d seen in the neighbourhood before.

She raised a hand, waved and forced a smile. “Hello, how are you?”

He looked back without recognition.

“Any problems with the trains this evening.”

The commuter shook his head, looked down, and walked on.

She called after him. “My husband hasn’t come home, he’s missing.”

From the corner of her eye she saw her next-door neighbour walking out of the front door, a large white bag for life hooked over a shoulder. Karen didn’t know her name, they’d never spoken. William hadn’t liked them from the moment they’d moved in last year. He thought they were ‘stuck up’. He named her Queenie and her husband, Prince.

Karen cleared her throat to attract ‘Queenie’s’ attention; she couldn’t exactly call out, Hello Queenie.

The neighbour stopped a moment, looked up, glared and walked on. Queenie had accused William of being responsible for the disappearence of her two cats a couple of months ago. He didn’t like cats. Or any animals. Cats serve no purpose. Like rats, he used to say, we need a cat cull around here.

“William’s late home from work this evening, I think he’s missing,” Karen said as ‘Queenie’ passed by.

‘Queenie’ stopped, hitched the bag higher on her shoulder and held a glare. “Maybe the evening’s looking up for all of us then.” She walked on.

Karen suppressed a grin.

She went back indoors, sat on the sofa and scrolled through her phone for her
husband’s boss’s number. William said his boss was one of them. William never elaborated about what that meant apart from his tone suggesting one of them was not a compliment. Karen knew not to ask.

She pressed call, inclined her head and tucked the phone under her brown
supermarket brand dyed hair.

“Armstrong.” William’s boss picked up before it rang.

“Hello Mrs Armstrong, it’s Mrs Morris here.”

“Ms.”

Karen frowned. “No, I’m a Mrs.”

“I meant me.”

A long moment passed.

“What can I do for you Mrs Morris?” Ms Armstrong hit the word Mrs with a heavy emphasis.

Karen heard nails clicking on a keyboard and then a hand scraping over the microphone. Ms Armstrong gave sharp muffled orders to someone Karen assumed was a cringing underling.

“I called to find out what time my husband left the office today.”

“I’m sorry?” The typing stopped.

“I called to find…”

“Yes, Mrs Morris, I understood what you said but I don’t know why you said it. William sent me a text this morning to say he was unwell and staying at home. I hope he’s better because he’s got a lot of work to catch up on tomorrow.”

Karen didn’t reply.

“Mrs Morris?”

“Are you sure, Mrs Armstrong? William wasn’t ill, he went to work this morning as normal. He hasn’t come home and he’s missing.”

“It’s Ms.” The typing restarted. “I suggest you have a word with him when he turns up from wherever he is and inform him I don’t allow shirkers in my team.” The call cut.

Karen’s hands shook and she placed the phone beside her. She breathed in a giant gulp of warm air and let it out slowly. She wrapped her hands around herself, feeling the pain in her arms. It would go away.

She googled the local police station and called. It rang for several minutes.

The line clicked and she heard shouting before a strained female voice answered. “Police, how may I help you.” It sounded like the last thing the officer wanted to do.

Karen cleared her throat. “Hello officer, my name is Mrs Karen Morris and I want to report my husband, William Morris, as missing.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that, Mrs Morris.” She heard a finger tapping on a keyboard.

“How long has William been missing?”

“About thirty minutes.”

“Thirty minutes?”

“Yes, it’s most irregular, he always calls when he’s late.” There was an uncomfortable moment of silence. Karen added. “Aren’t you going to put out an APB or something?”

Karen heard a long sigh. “Mrs Morris, maybe you should check the pub.”

“He doesn’t approve of alcohol, officer. He’s missing and didn’t go to work today. I’m Mrs Karen Morris, 69 Acton Drive. It’s near the train station.”

She heard a keyboard clacking. “OK, call back in twenty-four hours if you haven’t heard from him. Good day. Madam.”

The line clicked dead.

Karen went to the kitchen, got a bowl and filled it with milk. She took it to the back garden and put it down on their paved patio. The neighbour’s two new cats watched her from the top of the fence as she backed away from the bowl. They leapt down and ran to the milk, tails erect, mewing. A faint smile crossed her lips.

She went back in, poured a long glass of the rosé she’d left to chill in the fridge and carried it through to the living room. She settled on the sofa. She picked up the remote and flicked on the TV. It had been a long time since she’d been able to choose evening programmes.

She rubbed her sore arms, William’s favourite target when he had time to think about it; the bruises could be hidden under sleeves. Sometimes he didn’t think about it.

She looked back along the living room and out through the patio doors. The small shed stood square and solid at the back of the long garden. William had got builders to put it up over the old submerged oil tank they’d used before piped gas arrived in town. The tank was no longer entirely empty.

Tomorrow, at 6.30 pm sharp, Karen will call the police back. William will still be missing.

Swimming Lessons

Wed, 05 May 2021 12:05:00 Z

In the old Jakarta house, everyone had their place. My mother had the dining room for entertaining. The tv room was staked out by my father for football and the evening news. The kitchen belonged to Nur, the cook, and Yanto, the driver, presided over the garage. Elis, when she arrived, was relegated to the laundry and cleaning area. Budi had the yard to care for, including the pool, which was mine.

I used to swim in it every day, tearing off my sweaty school clothes and jumping in with just my underwear on. It was deceptively deep. Even full grown, my toes wouldn’t touch the bottom.

One of my cousins nearly drowned in that pool. He toppled backwards into the water during a vicious game of neighbourhood tag. Tagged, of course, by me. He could not swim and sank to the bottom like a stone.

I was the only child to afford actual swimming lessons. So, I dove in and hooked his waist with my arm. I struggled to bring him to the surface. He flailed his arms and legs, working against me.

When my hand broke through the water, I felt someone yank and hoist my body out.

I blinked away the chlorine. Budi was grinning at me. A white toothy smile.

“You saved him!” He said.

“You saved me,” I told him, annoyed to be rescued.

Budi pulled my cousin to a grassy spot under the guava tree. The boy was crying and hiccuping, vomiting water like a frog. How was so much possible in a single plunge?

A circle of children crowded around us, gawping with fish mouths.

“Move back!” I shouted at them. This was my house, my back yard, my pool.

Elis came running out in a panic. She was just a few months fresh from the village but already savvy to the politics of the household. Her hair was flying, black strands broken loose from her pins.

“What happened?” She draped a towel over my cousin’s shoulders.

“It’s nothing,” Budi said soothingly. He sat the boy up and patted his back. “Now, you are learning how to swim!”

Elis knew immediately who to blame. She swatted me with a soapy bra she had not yet finished washing.

“Aduh! Bandelnya!”

This was her favourite word for me: Bandel. Naughty, disobedient, but also hard-headed, which was true. I was the only child of her wealthy employers, spoiled and stubborn, always finding ways to make her life more difficult.

“You can’t tell Mama!” I said. It was an order.

“Why not?” She said, “If you were my child, I would hit you!”

We squared off. Me, thrusting out my skinny chest and she, glowering down at me, hands on her hips.

“Biarin,” Budi said in his usual calm. Leave it be. If bandel was Elis’ favorite word, biarin was Budi’s.

Elis threw him a warning look. Budi stood up and peered into the leaves of the guava tree. He reached up and plucked a single fruit. For days, he’d been watching it, waiting for the bright green skin to yellow, telling me it was not quite ripe enough. Now, he snapped the stem off and, with a wincing effort, cracked the fruit open. The flesh glistened a lurid pink studded with tiny yellow seeds. He handed it to my cousin.

“What is that going to do?” Elis demanded and I wanted to know too because, by rights, the fruit was mine.

Budi shrugged his sloping shoulders.

“Just giving him something sweet to eat,” he said.

“Nobody can tell Mama or Papi,” I said it again as if stating the words would make it true. Budi said nothing and I turned to Elis, nodding my head to make her say yes. She shook her head slowly. Realizing she was still holding my mother’s wet brassiere in her hand, she marched back to the laundry room.

I swore my cousin to secrecy. With a sewing needle, I punctured our index fingers and forced a drop of blood to well up. Then I mashed them together. A binding blood oath.

It didn’t work. The other kids told their cousins and friends who told their parents about this near-death experience. The tale grew in danger and drama until it wound its way around the neighbourhood back to my livid mother and father.

My parents rounded up the household. Budi and Elis but also Nur, who’d been at the market when it happened and Yanto who had been chauffeuring my parents. I peeked around the jamb of my bedroom door to watch.

Nur and Yanto looked bored. Older and more experienced, they assumed their roles as disinterested bystanders. Budi gazed at the tiled floor, shiny from mopping. Elis had her chin up but she looked like she might cry.

“What were you thinking?!” My mother’s voice jangled like the gold bracelets on her wrists. “You can’t be daydreaming,” she continued to berate Elis. “You have to pay attention. This isn’t the village where kids can play just anywhere!”

I was the one who invited all the kids over, shoving them past Eli’s protestations at the door, knowing full well that she couldn’t say no. Elis could have told my mother all this and she would be right. She said nothing.

My father tried to arbitrate. He pointed out that Budi had, in fact, saved us from drowning. And Elis had been focused on not destroying the delicate hand laundry, as per my mother’s complicated instructions for fine lingerie.

“Besides,” he said, “I think we know who invited all the kids over.”

I knew what was coming next.

Two weeks without TV. No friends or cousins allowed over to the house for a month. The punishment wasn’t so bad. I had expected worse. But I slammed the door to my room anyway.

After that, Budi constructed a small bamboo fence around the pool. He sang along to the radio while he worked. He never seemed unhappy to do a job, no matter how boring.

Elis cut her hair after the pool incident, though I wasn’t sure if the two were related. One day, she took a rubber band from the kitchen and lassoed it back. Then she sawed at the strands with a scissors until it detached easily, like the tail of a baby gecko.

“Here,” she said, handing it to me. Her hair was soft. I had never touched her hair before. It surprised me how smooth it was.

“What do we do with it?” I asked.

“Sell it,” she said and swiped it back from me. “Also, one more thing.”

“What?” I was suspicious but also excited at the possibility of intrigue and mischief.

“Teach me how to swim.” I agreed. Immediately.

Elis’ lopsided haircut made her even prettier. It showed off her elegant neck and long back. My mother worried about this.

“It’s bad luck,” she said to my grandmother.

We were in the new supermarket near our house. There was no intention to buy. Only to cluck at all the expensive imported food. We ran our fingers over tins of buttery sweets from England and green wine bottles from France. All displayed in spotless aisles, frosty with high velocity air-conditioning to protect these exotic treasures from the tropical heat.

“Do you think-“ My grandmother let the sentence hang for my sake. She knew I was listening. “Sometimes, these village girls-”

My ears swivelled for more details. But I kept my eyes zeroed in on a rainbow box of American breakfast cereal. I shook it vigorously to see how much was inside.

“No, it’s not that.” My mother fluttered her hand in exasperation.

“So, what’s the problem?” My grandmother asked.

“She’s not happy,” my mother said. “She wants things. She’ll run off and I’ll have to find someone else.”

“Ah,” my grandmother said, giving my mother a sidelong glance, “Basically, she’s not like Budi. Happy to do nothing.”

“Exactly,” My mother concluded, “That’s the problem.”

Elis chose a day when everyone was gone. My mother was at some women’s meeting. Nur had gone home to see her children. Yanto was taking the weekend off to spend time with his second wife. Budi was practicing his skill behind the wheel, driving my father to golf. We were alone in the house.

“Get your swimming suit on,” I told her. She laughed at me.

“I don’t have a swimming suit!”

“What are you going to swim in then?”

She looked behind her at the empty yard then pulled her t-shirt up over her head. She wriggled the black work pants off her hips and laid them at the side of the pool. Her bra was pointy and padded, lacy but cheap, puckering in all the wrong places. A poor imitation of my mother’s fine silk that Elis was at such pains to clean. She took one ginger step into the water.

“It’s cold!” With each step, she giggled, as though the water had icy, effervescent fingers tickling her toes.

This was a different Elis from the one that did the laundry, scowling and throttling the clothes in the grey soapy lather. This Elis smiled with pleasure as she submerged her body into the blue chill of the pool.

“Now what?” She said and looked up at me.

Her fingers gripped white at the pool’s edge but her face was flushed with exhilaration.

“Your legs should be like a frog’s,” I explained in my best imitation of the swimming coach at the sports club. I even had a whistle looped around my neck. “Move your arms up and out in a circle.”

At first, she bobbed up and down in a convoluted dog paddle. But as she gained confidence, she developed her own stroke — half frog, half dog —that propelled her from one cut corner to the other. She learned to float, the water lapping at her smooth belly. Then, slowly, she started doing short laps the width of the pool, always when the rest of the household was gone.

I don’t know for how long Budi watched our swimming lessons. I only realized he was there when she had begun to swim the length of the pool. He was squatting at the far corner of the garden, half hidden by the ginger flowers. All I saw, at first, was the orange ember of his lit cigarette, a twist of smoke trailing up into the air. He was not smiling, only gazing at Elis as she swam smoothly through the water, perfecting her stroke.

“Budi is watching,” I whispered to her when she had returned to my end of the pool.

“I know,” she said, “Biarin aja.” Leave him be.

She swam one more lap. A prolonged and leisurely round, as if the pull of Budi’s gaze slowed her down. Then, she drew herself out and towelled off. She didn’t bother putting her clothes back on. I watched as she walked back to her room, back straight, clothes in one hand and the towel wrapped around her hips.

“I knew she was bad luck,” my mother told my father after dinner. Nur had cooked roast chicken with Brussels sprouts, a rare delicacy that my father ate with gusto but that I did not appreciate. I had boycotted the meal entirely and now my stomach grumbled in complaint, despite cradling a mug of consolation Ovaltine.

We were huddled around the tv set, our private time as a family inside the house. On the street corner outside, I could hear Budi laughing. Out with his friends drinking coffee or squatting down to share a bowl of noodles with Elis. I wanted to be out there slurping down salty broth and chewy noodles, hunkered down between them as they gossiped. But I also wanted to be inside, snuggled into the sofa with my parents.

“Some people think it’s good luck,” my father said mildly.

“What money do they have?” She snapped at him. “How will they raise a child? Can you imagine Budi as a father? Sleepy Budi? And Elis is practically a kid herself!”

“Budi always plays with me,” I offered up and then added, “Also, Elis is not a kid at all. She never plays with me.”

My mother emitted a brittle laugh.

“There’s more to parenthood than hosting tea parties by the pool.”

She seemed about to say something else but caught it before it escaped her lips.

“I’m just worried,” she said finally.

“Well, if Budi gets his license,” my father said gazing at the tv, “He can find work as a driver.”

“And Elis?”

“I think she’ll be fine,” he said.

The answer did not seem to satisfy my mother. She huffed at him and returned to leafing through her glossy magazine.

The motorcycle was second hand but barely used, a shiny red.

“Where did you get the money?” I asked Elis.

“My hair,” she said, “and some money I saved up.”

I struggled to conceive of how much hair was worth, how much money had exchanged hands for her soft strands.

Their plans were set. After a driving test and some under the table cash to speed things up, Budi had gotten his driver’s license. They did not have enough for a car yet. But Elis had a plan. She knew someone back home who could rent them a car. Budi could drive to earn money until they could afford their own.

I wanted to give Elis something for the baby, but my mother told me money was the best. A few nights before they left, when her belly was starting to swell, I gave her a box wrapped in pink paper.

“What is it?” She pulled it out of the box: a swimming suit, as blue as the ceramic pool tiles. She thanked me and kissed me on the forehead.

“There is a river where the children swim back home at the village,” she said. “You could swim there.”

“You mean, you could swim?” I said, “When you were small like me?”

“Not like you,” she said and touched my face.

I wanted to cry and tell her not to go. She didn’t need to have children. She had me! But that wasn’t right, I knew, and saying that would only prove how stubborn and spoiled I really was. Bandel. It’s not my fault, I wanted to tell her, I can’t help it.

They left on the motorcycle. My father shook Budi’s hand and gave him a hefty manila envelope of money. My mother snuck an extra bundle of notes in when she thought no-one was looking.

Budi gathered me up into one last hug and I cried in his arms. Elis had to pry me away. Then she made me promise to visit.

“Swear on it,” she said. But I never did visit.

When I go back home now, the swimming pool looks so much smaller and forlorn. Dark stripes of dirt drift on the bottom. My mother wants to sell the house and swap it for a high-rise apartment.

“Easier to maintain,” she says, “without all the help.”

Yanto went to work for the Japanese embassy and has fathered three more kids with the second wife. Nur is back home in the village to take care of her many grandkids.

“She was getting old anyway,” she says.

“What about Budi?” I ask, “And Elis?”

“I hear that Budi’s still driving,” she says. “Apparently, Elis runs a small fleet of trucks. It’s good money.”

I want to ask if they had a girl or a boy, maybe two or three kids now, like Yanto. I am too afraid, too ashamed, that I have not grown beyond the spoiled child I was.

I prefer to dream of them living in a house by the river. Their children swimming freely, bubbling with laughter at the muddy water tickling their toes.

The 13th Step

Wed, 05 May 2021 12:00:00 Z

The taxi drops me at the bottom of the garden. I slowly climb the steps, their curves and ridges familiar beneath my feet. When I reach the tenth step – the big, flat one – I stop and gaze up at the house, at the paint peeling from the fascias, the estate agent’s sign nailed above the window. Angry clouds hang over the tiled roof.

I hear the wind rustling the leaves of the cherry tree, the rumble of traffic on the busy road. A child skips along the pavement behind me. For just one moment I let myself believe it is her.

A clap of thunder breaks my reverie. I climb the steps: eleven, twelve, stepping over number thirteen, just as Alice used to do. Her steps were lighter than mine.

“Race you,” she would shout, giggling as she ran up the steps, pigtails flying. She was so full of life, so free of cares, but never did I see her take the thirteenth step.

“Why do you do that?” I asked her once.

She looked at me, her mouth set in a firm line, before shrugging and pulling a face, her freckled nose screwed up, eyebrows furrowed.

“You know there’s no such thing as bad luck, don’t you?” I asked her.

Again, the shrug, that cheeky, mischievous look on her face. I batted her away, laughing as I sent her off to wash up for tea.

But I was wrong after all.

Inside, I throw my keys onto the side-table, ignoring the flashing of the answer-machine. I flick the switch on the kettle and wait for it to boil. The rain patters on the windows. She was born on a Thursday and it’s a Thursday again this year. Somehow, it makes it all the harder to bear.

Thursday’s child has far to go. I used to say the rhyme to her when she was a tot.

“What does that mean, Mummy?” She looked up at me, her eyes wide. “Will I go to the moon?”

“Who knows?” I said, pulling up the bedcovers, tucking her in tight. “Why not, if that’s where you want to go.”

She looked serious then. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe the moon. Or maybe Africa.”

I like to imagine she’s in Africa now, working with the elephants and giraffes. The posters, faded with age, still hang on her bedroom wall.

The kettle boils and I lift the teapot from the shelf and wipe it out before pouring in a splash of hot water. I put the lid on and swish it around, feeling the warmth of the liquid seep into the porcelain.

Alice made us a cup of tea once. She poured a thin, brown liquid from the pot, a look of triumph on her face. I took a sip and declared it the best tea I’d ever tasted, willing her father to do the same. He wrinkled his nose behind her back but smiled as he accepted her offer of a cup.

The house was different the next morning. I felt it before I opened my eyes, a stillness that made my heart flutter even before I raced to her bedroom door and saw the curtain blowing in the breeze.

I toss a teabag into the pot and pour the water on, breathing in the earthy scent of the leaves. My hand brushes against a glass as I reach for a mug. I am hit by a surge of longing for the tang of gin, the bitterness of vodka, the escape into oblivion. I steady myself against the worktop, clasping the mug to my chest, a fragile lifeline.

I can still hear the bang of the door as he walked out for the last time. It was only when I awoke, head in a pool of vomit, that I realised why he, too, was gone.

I walk into the living room and pull the sale documents from the pile of papers on the coffee table, read them through one last time.

Head in hands, I rock myself.

I reach for the photograph standing in its frame on the table, see her smile, ever-constant, never-changing. I place a kiss on her cheek and reach for the phone.

I listen to the voice on the other end of the line, calm, polite, professional as she tells me the buyer is ready to exchange. Am I?

I glance at Alice’s picture again. Around me the house shifts and settles.

“Yes,” I say, slipping the contract into its envelope.

It’s time to move on.

I hang up the phone and sit alone in the house I once loved, imagining it filled with life again. I gaze out the window, watching as a rainbow forms, arcing over the rooftops.

Just as quickly, it is gone again.

What Happens to Reluctant Writers

Wed, 05 May 2021 11:00:00 Z

She didn’t want to be a writer and yet whole works of fiction were squashed tight in her brain, like a packed carton of ripe tomatoes. If not used, stuffed in, suffocated, they would pulverise.

She pushed the wheelbarrow, laden with boxes of ripe produce out of her fruit and vegetable plot, her whitewashed cottage behind her. It was early. Today was the farmers market.

Words pounded and persistent sentences tapped on, a veracious keyboard that hopped between the left and right hemispheres of her brain. Logic versus imagination, language and plot versus creativity.

She wasn’t enamoured by artists. Unpractical, slovenly, dramatic. A precocious vocation to make sense of things. Nonsense. As a horticulturist, the hands on, physical labour suited her. But its therapeutic nature allowed for her brain’s over activity.

"Morning Prudence," waved Mrs Bracken, her neighbour, "Looks like quite a picking," she said, watching Prudence load up the battered green Land Rover.

"Here," said Prudence, cupping three plump tomatoes, "On me." she said as she handed them to Mrs Bracken in a brown paper bag.

"You squashed one," groaned Mrs Bracken. "Lost in thought dear?"

"Sorry," Prudence said and salvaged the over ripe tomato.

The latest story of a cucumber turned courgette which fell in love with a radish was planted, embedded in her cerebrum, yet to harvest. Vying for attention was a historical fiction set in the 1600’s about a farm girl hung in the town square for stealing beetroot. Its modern twist created havoc in her mind as she imagined jeering onlookers stamping the gallows with flat yellow claps, blue thumbs or cold red hearts.

"Dear?" repeated Mrs Bracken.

Prudence squeezed the tomato, its vibrant red pulp trickled down her palm and onto her wrists, stark red against her white skin. Its juice traced the vertical line of her vein towards her elbow.

"Off with the fairies today." Prudence muttered, and dropped the mushed tomato on the gravel, and squished it with her welly. She carefully plucked a less juicy one for Mrs Bracken.

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed," Hemingway warned her.

How utterly awful. No. She didn’t want to be a writer.

The tales unfolded constantly, fighting for space, wriggling along, worming their way through, digging an out from her skull. Reluctant, she resisted their advances but as the worms burrowed deeper she had moments where she prayed for a solution.

If only she could drill a memory stick into her head, puncture the stories and download them. Be done with it. She had no interest in being part of it.

"Ignoring God given potential is a sacrilege," her mother used to say, her hefty hips bumped comically from side to side, blown up like a cartoon character, as she waddled over to the cooker.

God given. She scoffed. But artists talked of a muse. Ideas from the divine. If God had all these ideas, why didn’t he write them? She had better things to do. He’d only written one book. The Bible. He was reluctant.

"You’ll pay one day," her mother wriggled her fat finger, "if you don’t use it."

Her mother’s need for at least one of her five children to shine was not her problem. And yet, here she was. One sweet story she wrote, back in her teens, and her mother had labelled her a writer. It was a curse.

She put the gear stick in second, the Land Rover was going nowhere in first. It choked, coughing like a forty a day smoker, and they spluttered off. She grinded through the gears, hit fourth and sped up on the bumpy roads.

She tanked through a red traffic light, stuck in the cucumber courgette affair, horns and screeching tires broke around her. She missed the turning for the market and after a long while, sixty odd miles later, she was back at her cottage having almost plotted the entire novel.

"Jesus!" She opened the boot of the Land Rover crammed with boxes and stared at them.

"It’s getting worse." She checked her watch. They’d be packing up the market by now.

"Enough!" She stomped in through the back door, and threw her muddy wellies on the cold stone floor and riffled through the drawers for her Dad’s old electrical shaver.

It didn’t occur to her to write down the stories but she did try to stop them, clear space for them to magically disappear. To ease them out. She turned to superstition. She relished squeezing out the contents of condiments; ketchup, mayonnaise and mustard. She cut her nails religiously, down to the quick. She threw out clothes, clutter, anything she didn’t use. Down to absolute basics. Cleaning, binning, throwing away, even photos or unnecessary furniture.

"Right," she faced the bathroom mirror, “Here we go.” She had cut her hair, intermittently over the last few months. It had gone from waist length to shoulder length to short.

She plugged in the razor and shaved it all off, every strand.

If the skin on her head could breathe a little, if the pores could get some ventilation maybe the stories would just fly away, air out, like a dusty rug.

Red sores bloomed on her head. She was back to the farm girl stealing the beetroot. She didn’t want to be a writer. She didn't stop planting seeds.

Two days on, she hadn’t slept. New ideas, plots, twists formulated. She couldn’t hold them off. Obstinate narratives typed. The pillow over her bald head didn’t stop the noise. Words jumped over one another, sentences were unfinished, stories collided.

Insomnia plagued her. Delirious, she nurtured her garden and her produce grew more magnificent than before. Beetroot and tomatoes as big as blown up balloons, vulnerable to burst.

Her thoughts fought for space. She threw out the rest of her furniture, left only with a mattress on the floor which did nothing to help her sleep. Her temples pounded and her head swelled. Potential unfulfilled.

Horrified by the red lumps growing, bulging from her head, she became frightened, deranged. She dared to prod them and wish she hadn’t. They burbled and moaned. Voices, reciting her words, her tap tapping tapped sentences.

In a lucid moment, she covered her head with a black scarf she hadn’t thrown away and vowed in the morning to get help.

She never got there.

The lumps swelled through the night. Ripe and ready. The pain was excruciating. She tried to lift her head but it was impossible. She wormed her way off the mattress, confused, her chin scraping the floor. She opened her mouth to scream but nothing more than a croak was voiced.

Her brain exploded. A repulsive massacre of curled, coiled meaty tissue, a bleeding wig, splattered, detonating like dull fireworks.

Currents of bloody lines charged across the floor. They were rapid, fearing clotting and drying up. They searched for porous material, something to spread, scrawl their words upon. The red streams branched off in all directions, novels desperate to be recorded, inked. Style and tone categorised the stories as they diverted, wriggling over one another like roads on a map.

The first blood line settled on the bedroom walls, scribbling, forming words and sentences in tiny font. The landing presented the second, and, one by one, each room displayed a story on its four walls until all the rooms in the house were covered. Titles at the top, The End at the bottom. Lines breaking chapters, even page numbers were marked.

A week later her decapitated body was discovered.

A homicide was ruled out. Nothing human could have caused such gore. Clumps of gooey clotted blood punctuated the skirting boards.

The writing was on the wall. God’s attempt at another book other than the Bible. A Palaeographer was summoned. It wasn't an ancient text. This was new. They say no story is original. They were wrong.

It took months for the novels to be computerised and published, to great acclaim.

The author’s name was Anonymous, a channel is merely a channel.

No credit for reluctant writers.

Ambush in Arizona

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 19:00:00 Z

The wagon was on its side, one wheel snapped from its axis. Open cases, bags and clothing were strewn over the hard flat sand for several yards. Two bodies lay prone on the bare ground, small pools of dark-red blood soaked into the soil.

Remy August pulled his horse to a stop, grasping at the reins tighter than necessary. The roan stallion reared its head, brayed, and scraped its front hooves and snorted.

Remy patted its neck, “Easy, boy.” His words as much for him as the horse. The morning air was still and silent.

He unholstered the rifle and cocked it with a twist of the wrist; the sharp metallic ratchet sound echoed through the silence.

Remy slid off the saddle, spurs clinking, legs stiff. His eyes darted around the scene ahead, goosebumps over his entire body. He straightened his wide-brimmed hat against the sun and rubbed one hand over a greying stubbly beard.

A light gust rustled through a crop of long dry grasses beyond the wagon. A red-tailed hawk squealed from a line of low dense bushes behind the upturned wagon.

The horse brayed again, teeth bared. “Steady, boy, steady,” Remy whispered, stroking its nose. It calmed. He let the reins drop and moved towards the closest body.

Long dirty-white petticoats flowed out from under a calf-length black dress. The woman’s blond hair was matted with dust, mud and blood. The back of her skull was smashed open. He put a hand against her forehead and over the single bullet hole. Warm. He guessed she had been shot within the past couple of hours.

He knew too much about death; he’d been with the dead at the battle of Pacacho Pass. He touched the raised six-inch thigh scar through his rough black denims, twisted his head, hawked and spat.

He stood and his knees cracked; he rubbed a hand against the small of his back. He stepped around the wagon’s empty horse harness, the ground crunching under his dusty black boots. There was no sign of the animal that had once pulled the wagon; the harness straps had been undone. Someone had taken it.

The second body lay on the other side of the wagon. A blond man with a sunburnt face and five red-rimmed bullet entry wounds grouped around his chest. Empty blue eyes stared at an empty blue sky. Probably settlers from northern Europe.

Several bullet cases were spread over the ground around the body; there had been a short fierce firefight. A straightforward case of ambush and robbery. There were plenty of criminal gangs in Arizona and natives fighting back against the settlers’ encroachment. The promise of free land meant it was worth the risk for some. These two had lost that gamble.

Remy crouched on his haunches and touched the ground around the dead settler. His eyes weren’t what they were and up close he noticed a series of small footprints around the body.

He shuffled back to his horse and took his binoculars from the saddlebag. He put them to his eyes with one hand, his other on the rifle. He peered into the distance. Nothing but the thick bushes, patches of dead grass and flat desert plains. The landscape shimmered through the lenses. The natives were welcome to this land: hot, dry and never-ending. In a couple of days, he’d be out of this godforsaken place forever.

A metallic click sounded behind him. His skin prickled cold.

“Hands up, mister.” A small voice. One of the dead couple’s children?

He raised his hands keeping the rifle in one hand. Footsteps crunched around him. A small teenage girl and a younger boy. Two pairs of grey-blue eyes looked up at him from light-skinned chapped faces. Their unkempt blond hair was almost white. Brother and sister. Each held a revolver in both hands that shook and waved. They pointed at his face.

“You’re safe now, kids,” he said, lowering his aching arms.

The girl raised the barrel of her revolver. “I said hands up, mister.”

“It’s OK, kids. I’m real sorry about your folks.” He nodded his head towards the two dead adults.

The children stared at him, guns pointed.

He pulled what he hoped was a kind face and forced a smile. “Lower your guns, kids, I’m not one of them bad guys and you need to be careful with loaded weapons.” He wiped the back of a hand over his sweaty forehead. “I’ll take you to town, we’ll look up the Sheriff.”

“Drop the rifle and keep your hands up, mister,” the girl said.

“It wasn’t me what did this, li’l girl, but I can help you. The Sheriff’ll get a posse together. Hunt down them bad guys what did this to your parents. I know it won’t bring ’em back, but…you know.”

The girl glanced for a short moment at her brother, nodded towards Remy’s horse and looked over to the two bodies.

“Those two weren’t our parents, mister. And neither are you.”

The End of Summer

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 18:00:00 Z

It was night-time when we set off. I awoke as Dad carried me, blanket and all down the stairs. I heard the familiar creak of the floorboard as we reached the hallway, saw my suitcase still waiting by the door, snuggled into him as he stepped out into the cool night air.

I fought the idea of sleep the night before, staying awake for hours after Mum tucked me in and kissed me goodnight.

"The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner we’ll be there," Mum said when she came to check on me. It didn’t help sleep come any faster.

"Hurry, Daniel," she whispered now as Dad bundled me into the car. I blinked my eyes open at the worry in her voice but Dad stroked my hair as he fastened the seat belt and my eyelids slowly closed again.

I heard the slam of the doors, the rattle of seat belts, the patter of rain on the windscreen and the cough of the engine as it finally burst into life. Then we were rolling, the tyres hissing against wet tarmac, the car gently rocking, sending me back to sleep.

I dreamt of nights spent in Aunt Maria and Uncle Peter’s old VW camper, looking up through the rooflight at the stars shining above.

I dreamt of the beach, of building sandcastles with my cousin, Lizzie, while her brother David flew his kite overhead, its long tail flapping in the breeze.

I dreamt of Ludo running after him, crashing through the castle wall I was building, sending the sand crumbling into the moat. I didn’t care. I was just glad to be with them again, to run my fingers through Ludo’s dark fur and feel the warmth of his breath against my face.

I awoke with a warm, tingling feeling. The sun was rising. We’d soon be there, Lizzie and David too.

Then I heard her crying. "Mum?" I said, my voice thick with sleep and fear.

She turned around in her seat, red-rimmed eyes gazing at me mournfully. "Oh," she sobbed before turning away. "We shouldn’t have brought her," she said.

My stomach dropped and tears bit at my eyes. Shouldn’t have brought me?

"Shhh, Monica," Dad said, glancing at me in the rear-view mirror. "Morning, munchkin." He tried to smile; I could see the top of his cheeks rise, but his eyes didn’t follow.

I stared out the window, watching the fast-moving traffic on the long, straight road ahead. Where were the narrow country lanes, the high hedges and dramatic views over the bay? "This isn’t the way to the beach," I said.

"No," Dad said quietly.

Mum said nothing but I could see by the way her shoulders shook that she was crying again. I felt the urge to do the same.

"But-"

"Just hang in there, munchkin," Dad said, wearing his sad-eyed smile again. "We’re nearly there."

"Nearly where?" I asked, bunching my fists. "Why aren’t we going-"

"At the hospital," Mum wailed.

"Hospital?" An icy shiver went through me. Grandpa went to hospital when he was ill and I never saw him again.

"Monica!" Dad’s voice was stern. He flicked the indicator and pulled off the motorway, braking hard. The seat belt cut into my chest, then sent me thudding back into my seat.

Mum gasped but said nothing.

We drove the last few miles in silence, me swallowing back the fear that was eating away at my stomach, Dad’s hands gripping tightly at the wheel.

We arrived and Dad pulled into a parking space outside a tall, white building with lots of large, streaky windows. Before the car had come to a halt, Mum was out and running, her arms and legs flapping like a giant bird.

Dad sighed and scrabbled around for some coins.

"What-?" My voice came out as little more than a squeak.

"One more minute, munchkin," Dad said, pushing the door closed behind him.

I watched as the coins disappeared into the slot of the machine, waited as it printed the ticket, watched Dad come back to the car and lean over to place it on the dashboard. Then he opened the back door and climbed in beside me.

"Now?" I asked, and he nodded but it was a few moments longer before he spoke.

"There’s been an accident. A tyre on the camper van blew and your Aunt Maria..." He puffed out his cheeks.

"They’re operating on her now."

I swallowed, hard. "Will she be ok?"

"I hope so, munchkin."

"Lizzie and David?" I asked.

"They’re fine," he said, pulling me into a great big hug. "Just a few bruises. And Uncle Peter’s okay, too."

I nodded, relieved.

"Do you want to go in?" he asked.

I shook my head and picked at an old scab on my knee. "So, what about our holiday?" I asked.

Ahh. I He looked serious. "About that, munchkin. Well, Lizzie and David are going to want to be near their mum. Your mother, too."

My heart sank, but I knew he was right. I had to be brave. "Just you and me, then," I said.

"We’ll see, munchkin." He smiled and ruffled my hair. "Maybe we can do something. Once we know-"

"We could take Ludo," I said, hope blossoming in my chest.

"Ahh," Dad said, clearing his throat. "I’m sorry, munchkin." For the briefest of moments, I wondered what he was sorry for. But then I looked into his big, sad eyes and before he said it, I knew. "He didn’t make it."

Then the tears came. Aunt Maria would be fine. Dad had said so and he was never wrong. But Ludo… Ludo was gone.

Dad opened his arms to me and I snuggled into them, letting him rock me as the tears rolled down my cheeks and the memories of Ludo ran through my mind.

Bonfire Night

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 12:00:00 Z

Kayla held her breath and flicked the match into the old drum. The flames played at the contents, just as Jason had played with her when they'd first met. Soon they flared. She nodded watching a thin twist of smoke float away on the night air.

The idea for the bonfire occurred to her after Jason's disappearance, no more than a glimmer of an idea at first but like the flames, it had taken hold.

She pulled the newspaper clipping from her pocket and looked again at the headline. Life with Jason had not been pretty, but she had never dared to dream of making a life without him. She'd never expected to get the chance.

She stood with a pile of his clothes at her feet, the last reminder of their life together. She would not rest until every last remnant was extinguished.

"What's that smell?" Janice sniffed the air, her nose like a pointer. She glanced over at her husband, Gerald, but he showed no sign of a response.

Janice pulled back the heavy curtain. She usually didn't like to peer through the nets, but the smell was growing stronger and there was a strange light playing against them. Surely that spit of a girl from next door wasn't having a fire?

She peeled back the nets and glared into the darkness.

"Well, I never!" she exclaimed.

"Hmm?" Gerald grunted, his eyes not leaving the television screen.

"Come and look!" Her voice trembled. "She's… She's…"

"Who's she, the cat's mother?" Gerald's moustache twitched, his amusement clear at turning one of her favourite phrases against her. It only served to increase her annoyance.

"That girl!"

"Kayla?" Gerald asked, though she could tell he wasn't much interested.

"Who else?"

Gerald sighed. "What's she done?"

Janice didn't stop to explain.

Kayla looked up when Janice marched into the garden. There had been many disapproving glances over the fence, but this was the first time Janice had crossed the boundary.

"What's up?"

"What's up?" Janice said, her eyebrows quivering. "Is it not obvious?"

Kayla said nothing, just stood, watching the flames.

"Well? Are you going to put that fire out?"

"No," Kayla said. "Don't think so."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said no."

Janice first blinked, then frowned. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Finally, she stalked back into her house, muttering under her breath.

Kayla turned back to the fire, her face glowing, much as it had that night. She saw the sneer on Jason's face as he plucked the wrap from her fingers even as she held it over the sink, could still feel his hand tight around her wrist, the jolt of pain as her head hit the wall.

Why had she hesitated? Was she really so weak, a nothing, as he said she was?

She had known in that instant she would never be free.

But that was over. And the fire would cleanse all her sins.

"Honestly, that girl's getting more and more out of hand. I thought maybe now that awful boyfriend of hers has gone, things might improve, but…"

"You think he was awful?" Gerald's eyes left the screen just long enough to launch the question at her.

"Well, of course I do, Gerald." Janice stared at her husband in disbelief. "Honestly, I've said it enough times."

"Indeed." Gerald's moustache twitched. "Well, then shouldn't we be pleased that he's gone? And support her efforts to rid herself of what he left behind?"

"With a bonfire, Gerald? It's just not… it's not… civilised!"

"I don't know," Gerald replied, turning back to his programme. "Wasn't fire a major step on the road to civilisation?"

The newspaper clipping blackened and curled.

She read it the first time right there in the shop, unable to leave until she knew for sure. Man, 25, shot dead in gang war. It was no surprise he stormed out that night. That he hadn't come back had been a mystery and, if she allowed herself to be honest, a huge relief.

She'd known a life in drugs would catch up with him sooner or later, but she thought he was indestructible. Until the article.

Kayla took a deep breath, feeling the smoke coiling its way through her airways. The flames were dying now, and with them, the images of that night. Jason's face was no more than a few curls of smoke carried on the wind. She breathed out slowly, releasing the tension from her body, letting go all her pain. It could serve her no more.

She leaned back as the rain started to fall, fat drops of water hitting her face and plastering her hair against her neck. The heavens had heard her prayers and were sending her a sign. The past was over. Everything looks different after the rain.

She ran back to the house. She turned to wave at Janice, hands on hips in the window, and closed the door behind her, leaving the ashes of Jason's memory to smoulder and die.

Tạm Biệt Mực - Goodbye Mick

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 10:00:00 Z

I take his lead. It’s dirty and smelly and still covered in fur. I don’t put it around his neck or lengthen it. It's folded in four, nestled in my hand. There isn’t any urgency to get out, no clattering of excited feet, no grumbles or whines, no flurrying fur, nor licks and wiggles.

I’m walking light, nothing pulling me along.

This is where he always did his morning business, on the trunk of this orange tree, the weeds enticing. Fair game for neighbourhood dogs.

I splutter, choke, tighten my lips and hold it in. It’s pushed in deep, suffocating. I curve over, hands on my knees, dizzy. I’ve no energy, have hardly eaten and I’m shrinking. It’s consumed me. Heavy short breaths, bubble up like a shaken can of fizzy drink. The seal snaps, releasing loss in spurts, I try to contain it, swallow it.

An old man waiting for something, next to the coffee shop stares at me and fiddles in his pocket and takes out some coins. I look down. I’m burrowed in layers of dirty comfy clothes which I’ve worn for days. Greasy hair is stuck to my head, splayed lifeless beneath the lopsided, half off, woolly hat and my face looks punched in.

A tramp, an abused woman, a druggie? I pull the hat on properly, right down, over my ears, my forehead. You can hardly see me.

A dog barks in the distance. The caught tears come. Streaming. Swollen eyes balloon again. I can’t open them properly. My face warps into ugly distortion and crumples, tears glistening in the creases and folds. I’m rolling further inward, hunching. I fall against the trunk of the orange tree.

It’s been a week. My gorgeous old dog, my rescue from Vietnam. I fondle his lead in both hands. It’s black, like his name, Mực, aka Mick. Ink in Vietnamese.

I managed to save him a few times.

Before he was mine, I fixed his broken leg. Our neighbours, ignorant hard hearted owners, were negligent. Back and forth I went to the vets, in the days when they were unqualified. Fighting against their inept procedures, their malpractice, their inhuman methods until finally we healed it in the safety of my home.

Ever persistent, and with skilful manipulation I managed to save him a second time, permanently, from those neighbours and call him mine. They obliged. They were more interested in their finances than caring for him, believers of a superstition that a dog in their house would make them rich. Luckily, Mick had served his purpose.

We relaxed into life and then came the third save. The stolen save. The dog meat trade. This was harrowing. The panicked dash around the dodgy alleys and hems of Saigon, of sinister phone calls with kidnappers, terrifying insights into unspoken cruelty and secret rackets revealed. Nasty ladies in cone hats and big smiles masquerading as lottery ticket sellers. The steep ransom settled and cash exchanged, he arrived on the front of a motorbike, writhing, whimpering, with an old jute bag over his head. I promised God I wouldn’t ask for anything else ever again.

The fourth save. Incomprehensible for animal lovers, but even so. Vowing never to abandon him. It’s more like a half save. I flew him, despite his old age, halfway across the world saving him from living his twilight years without me.

Four saves, but I couldn’t save him from old age.

I push away from the tree trunk and walk our way. I repeat, “He was just a dog.” How unkind I am. Just a dog. It’s not true. 'Just' is not for him. 'No more than.' That isn’t him.

Halfway there I see a friend. I fling myself into a doorway, hiding like a criminal and turn my back from the street and sink into the wall. My skin tingles as she gets closer but she passes without ado.

We came to this park every day. I see dogs and their owners. People I know by a commonality. I’m trespassing. I’m not in the club anymore.

Unfolding with his lead, I do the collar up and let it drop. The metal fastener clinks on the ground, metallic, cold. It hangs next to me, on my right, as I drag it along the pavement, scraping. We step onto the grass.

"There’s a good boy."

The lead and I pause often. Mick took his time, sniffed obsessively, excited, finding hidden traces of dogs before him. He would find the best bit and circle round and round ready to do something more pressing.

The lady with a Golden waves and I wave back. I don’t think she can see me clearly. I’m behind a low wall so she can only see the top of the lead. The wave, the familiar interaction, the social pleasantry breaks my solitude. I suddenly feel embarrassed, silly. I fold the lead.

I turn around. But now I’m stuck. A sudden pain pierces my abdomen. I keel. Daggers. I wait. It subsides. There’s a bench to my right cocooned by wild bushes full of tiny purple flowers. Mick loved it. He would reappear after a good rummage, adorned with the delicate flowers on his back, behind his ears, hanging daintily off his bushy tail.

I’ve never sat here before, we were always walking.

Lead on my lap, I close my sore eyes. It’s good to be out, the apartment is lifeless. I’m shutting down and start to nod off when I hear a shuffle. The Golden wiggles up to me and puts his soft wet nose between my knees and sniffs Mick’s lead. I lean down and give him a gentle pat. He’s a sweetie. His owner isn’t far behind. We’ve never really talked. I’m not ready but I can’t get off the bench.

I can’t speak of it. Of grief. I’m not wise to it. I’m flailing. Questioning what? My mind fills with nonsense. I’m naive, no answers, nothing to comprehend.

The Golden has settled down by my feet keeping them warm. His owner holds my hand. She says nothing. She doesn’t ask. She doesn’t give answers. She understands.

After a while, I wipe my wet face and start to talk. I talk of my saves. She listens, nods, smiles. She’s had three dogs, the Golden is her third, all of them rescues.

"Only way to have a dog," she says.

I’m exploring all things existential but she’s more philosophical. What does ‘to save’ even mean? Saved from what? Our sins, ourselves? That calls on the religious and sod that. Saved from poverty, difficulty? There are many things to be saved from, but saved from heartache, grief, pain? Unlikely.

She ventures I made a fifth save, saved him from suffering at the end.

The memory of him dozing off in my arms, on my lap, falling to sleep forever imbues me.

We are in complete agreement. How silly to question the inevitable. Why are we always so distraught when it happens? And after death? I leave that one to vanish into the unknown, to rustle in the purple bushes.

Suddenly I’m hungry. I ask her if she’d like to go for dinner. She has errands to do and suggests we meet up later. We leave the park together and then she asks if I’d take Bruce for an hour, and holds out his lead. She’d be quicker without him. I readjust my hat and squeeze Mick’s lead in my hand.

"Ok, but I need to go home first," I say

"Take him with you, he’s easy." We arrange to meet in an hour.

Bruce’s paws clip clop on the wooden floor. I’m thumped in the chest. Hard. A resurrection. His steps are heavier than Mick’s, a different tone, different rhythm. He wags his tail and whizzes in and out of rooms, skids back and gulps the water from the bowl which I haven’t moved. I take a shower and leave Bruce with a treat.

Cleaned up, I open the doors onto the terrace, a light breeze blows up dust. Bruce and I sit and watch the sunset. Mick’s fur is disturbed. It whispers up from the corners of the living room and under furniture. Light as smoke, grey and black, it sighs and swirls as it rolls across the floor out into the sky. Bruce licks my cheek. The cheek so often licked by Mick.

I fasten Bruce’s lead, tuck a doggy bag in my pocket and crouch beside him before we leave,

"Good boy Bruce. You just made a save."

There was something about it being made by a dog that shone with the essence of a freed spirit, a loving ghost.

"Thank you Mick," I said.

The Body in the Living Room

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 12:00:00 Z

How to dispose of it?

I’m not squeamish.

Obviously.

I killed him.

I've thought about chopping him up but the logistics are something awful. Blood splatters everywhere. There’s not enough bleach in the world to get that kind of stain out.

Dissolving him in acid would be most convenient. But even if I did get a tub full of hydrochloric acid (hydrofluoric? Should have paid more attention in chemistry), how to get rid of the body sludge? No way he could be flushed out without causing the mother of all drain clogs!

Look at him. The way his belly builds upon itself, a quivering mound of unused energy and everlasting dissatisfaction. His body moulded to the shape of his overstuffed lounger. His left hand tucked into his waistband like he’s holstering some casual weapon. The tv remote still tight in the grip of his other hand.

The only witnesses to his death are his emptied beer cans, punched in the gut and doubled over on the table, neatly ordered in a single file.

Yes, I killed him. But when the police come, they will find no murder weapon. Just me and my big mouth. My voice weaponized. An auditory bone saw to his skull.

I didn’t want him to die, at first. I loved him, after all. I tried to make myself small, tiptoeing around the house in soundless, fluffy slippers, speaking in that respectfully hushed voice. I refrained from asking sensitive questions that might set off the tripwires in that minefield that is time and money. Never enough of both.

The problem, apparently, was my ‘tone’. I could never get the teeth out of my nasty tone, he said.

After a while, I gave up trying. I got loud. If I kept complaining, I’d be the death of him, he said. So, I got louder still.

And by God, he was right!

This morning, he shouldered past me to get to the coffee machine. He can’t think —much less listen to his wife — without caffeine.

“It’s like you’re shredding my brain with the cheese grater.” Those were his words.

All I’d said was: Good morning! How’d you sleep and all that. Let him know I have to run some errands today after work, so I won’t be cooking dinner.

“You’re killing me,” He said and wiped at a stain that stretched down his chest. “I’m literally leaking brain fluid now.”

“That’s the beer that dribbled out of your mouth last night.”

It was a smart remark, I admit. But grounded in fact and said a little louder than my usual under-the-breath muttering. It sailed out of my mouth before I had time to stop it.

He wheeled around and glared at me. So angry, his eyes were vibrating in their sockets. When I saw that — those quivering orbs, red-veined and bulging, — I knew I could kill him.

“You wanna go there?” He clenched his jaw and curled his hand into a fist.

It’s funny how time slows down at certain critical junctions in your life. He’d asked me a question. So, I gave serious thought on how to answer, scrupulously weighing my words.

“Yeah,” I said, finger to chin like I’d just decided between a vanilla malt milkshake or a hot-fudge sundae. “Yeah, I think I do.”

It was not a fair fight.

He’d told me exactly how to kill him, after all.

I had no shame in using every weapon at my disposal: Volume. Annunciation. Alliteration. Hyperbole. Metaphor and Simile. Onomatopoeia and Rhyme!

And, of course, my infamous ‘Tone’.

The sentences snapped around him like whips, closing around his wrists. His pummelling fists were useless against this assault of verbiage, battering up against him, relentless. When his head began to droop and his shoulders sagged, I knew I had him up against the ropes. To finish him off, I let my sharpest words fly, cleaving into him with all the weight and power of a seasoned butcher.

It was a churning, bloody mess. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had nothing on me and my 'tone’.

Oh, it cost me.

But it was worth it.

When it was done, he staggered into the living room, apparently unaware that his brain had been put through the meat grinder of my mouth.

Now, his corpse is slumped in the recliner, eternally tuned to the sports channel.

But this puts me in a quandary.

How to get rid of the body?

The Man With The Killer Rabbit

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 12:10:00 Z

Her left knee was creaky and sore, the new running shoes still stiff, but she liked the feel of the rubber cleats biting into the earth and the color: red. Warming up, she left the jogging path and headed into the forest, less-crowded and softer underfoot.

She saw the rabbit first, white and fluffy, large with floppy ears. It sniffed at the air then looked up with startled pink-rimmed eyes. Around its neck, a black collar tethered up to the man’s hand.

“Do you have a dog?” The man said in a petulant tone, “You have to leash him. I’ve got a rabbit.”

He wore a buckskin jacket and jeans, so neatly ironed that a white seam ran down the front of each leg. His hair was set in a thick, plasticine gel. Horn-rimmed glasses framed his face.

“Don’t have a dog,” she said.

She recognized him now. This man liked to take the bunny out on the lawn by the playground. Kids would abandon their play — mid-swing! — to squat down and pet the rabbit. Oh, how she envied their young and lubricated knees! They fed the animal morsels from their snack-boxes: gnawed carrot sticks and mangled leaves of lettuce, uneaten sandwich rinds.

The rabbit, she conceded, was a good gimmick.

She’d often sat there with her own strawberry licorice sticks wondering why the man seemed so familiar. Now she knew.

She bent down to pet the animal and winced at the sharp twinge in her knee. The man jerked at the leash and the rabbit hopped nervously back toward him. She picked up a thick and gnarled branch from the forest floor and used it to brace herself, lighten the load on her bad knee. She leaned upon the stick, as though settling in for a long conversation.

“Is that a killer rabbit?” she asked.

“It’s a Holland Lop-Ear,” he said primly. “Do I know you?”

She chewed at the inside of her cheek. A bad habit she’d developed when she’d first met him. When he was shaggier and toothier, she was pink-cheeked and smooth-skinned and utterly naive.

“Once upon a time,” she said, “but I got old.”

He stiffened. A neck tendon spasmed under his skin.

“I hadn’t realized,” he said. “Nice shoes. Red suits you.”

“Didn’t it always?” She smiled at him. “You cleaned up nicely! The glasses, the hair. The shave! Almost didn’t recognize you.”

His eyes darted around the crowding trees of the forest. It was getting dark. He scooped up the rabbit and retreated a step.

“And the bunny!” She continued, “Gingerbread houses just don’t cut it anymore.” She sighed. “Kids. So jaded by the YouTube. But cutesy animals, always a winner.”

“We settled this a long time ago, Red.” He said.

“Did we?” The question hung in the twilight alongside the curling vapors of her warm breath in the cold air.

“You lived to tell the tale, clearly,” he said, then jutted his chin out. “I was the one left for dead! Dragged through the mud. My future destroyed. After you, I couldn’t even get my hands on three little pigs!”

As the moon peeked through the trees, she could just make out the white tips of his canine teeth, a shadow of thick black hair poking through his long, shaved chin.

He took a deep breath and composed himself, drawing up to his full height.

“But. As you can see, I’ve changed,” he said. “Completely.”

“And yet, the appetite remains.” She shrugged. “I suppose it depends on which version of events you read. Disney took some liberties.”

He seemed to relax at this, as though they had come to some understanding. He allowed himself a sharp-toothed smile.

“What are you doing in this neck of the woods anyway, Red?” He said with more confidence now, stroking the fur on his flop-eared rabbit. “Why’d you stray from the path this time?”

Something about that sneering look on his face. His pressed clothes and tidy jacket. The coiffed hair and stylish spectacles. None of this could disguise his predator’s grin. He would never change.

She stared at her red running shoes and tried to keep her voice level, controlled.

“What do you think happens to little girls who get eaten by wolves?” she said, “What do you think they become?”

His face contorted into a confused frown but he didn’t have time to answer. She was fast for an old lady and she used both her arms to swing. The tree branch connected to his head, knocking off his glasses and cracking through his skull. His gelled hair, however, remained unruffled. The rabbit leapt from his arms and she caught it with one hand.

“A little fatter and younger is better for my health,” she said to the rabbit as she dragged the body home. “More collagen for the knees.”

As they got closer, the eaves of sugar icing twinkled in the moonlight and she smiled at the warm glow of her gingerbread home.

“But it’s wolf meat I prefer. Of the big and bad variety, of course,” she said. “Such a treat for an old witch like me!”

Covid-19 Celebrations

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 12:00:00 Z

“Cake for breakfast?” Izzy frowned, still in her nightie, looking at the kitchen table. It was laid with a cake; a rich triple layered cream covered affair, three plates, fake champagne and coffee.

“Good morning sweetie pie.” Mum said.

Izzy cocked her head to one side, and puffed out a bored sigh.

Dad lifted his arms “Sixteenth birthday!” followed by “Sweet sixteen today!” from mum who lit the candles on the cake and clapped in rapid bursts.

“I’m not eating that now! Are you crazy?” Izzy grabbed a glass by the sink and filled it with water.

Dad chuckled, “Lockdown rules! The world’s gone mad, and so have we!”

She flopped over to the table, and gulped down the water, “Any post?”

“Don’t think so. Sit down love and let’s have cake.” Mum said, tapping the chair.

Izzy snuffed out the candles with her fingers, yanked them out one by one, threw them in the bin and then shoved her hands under the tap, “Lurgy precautions, no spitting on the candles.”

“We have to sing,” Dad said, “Happy Birthday to you-”

“For god’s sake.” Izzy turned her back and stomped off down the hallway.

A small white envelope was stuck half way through the letterbox. She glanced over her shoulder, pulled it out and then hid it under her nightie.

“Anything?” Mum called,

“No.”

Izzy shot across the hall into the main bathroom and locked the door. Falling to her knees she vomited in the loo. Her head, resting on her arm on the toilet seat, was thumping, heavy with the weight of the terrifying, almost certain conclusion.

She crawled to the bathroom door and leaned against it and opened the envelope. It contained a small box with Clearblue written on it. As if an invisible force had punched her in the chest, she opened her mouth and drew in air, her lungs forcing her to take a breath. She’d been forgetting to breathe lately. She took a couple of deep breaths, was it possible to fool the body and override its default position?

“Izzy?”

She flinched and smacked her head on the door knob, and shoved the box in her pants.

“What?” She looked up at the ceiling, opened her mouth and screamed silently. Her head was thumping again. She turned the shower on to drown out interruptions.

“You having a shower? Izzy?” Mum knocked on the door. “Well, don’t be too long.”

She opened the box, pulled out the contents, and read the instructions a few times. She took a deep breath, sat on the loo and peed on the plastic rod. She had three minutes.

She placed it on the side of the basin, got into the bath and turned the shower on forgetting to take off her nightie. She sat, knees to her chest, curled up under the warm water. Her eyes were fixated on the rod which was half on, half off the edge of the basin, swaying a little, finding its balance. She rocked back and forth, mimicking its sway. It stilled at a tilt. Would that give her an inaccurate result? She tucked her head between her knees, praying the warm shower would wash everything away. Four months without a period, shit. They had only just gone into lock-down. What was she going to do? She couldn’t. Was she too late? Were clinics even open?

“Izzy, put a wiggle in it! Party time!” It was Dad.

She lifted her face towards the water which tasted salty as it streamed down her face. She edged forward to the side of the bath and picked up the rod. She closed her eyes, this would be a good time to fool her body. She held her breath hoping to break its survival instinct. It didn’t work. Opening her eyes, one at a time, she looked.

Two blue lines.

Neil Sedaka’s ‘Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen’ blasted out from the kitchen.

Fran jumped out of bed at eleven in the morning, having only just got in, reluctantly, at seven. Her thoughts had been whirling with possibilities and uncertainty was charming her.

She stood in front of the living room mirror, a pencil case, adorned with butterflies, for a microphone and sang along to a funked-up version of ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ by some YouTuber. With utter delight she noticed a twinkle in her eyes she had never, not ever, seen.

She twirled into the kitchen, retrieved her notebook, and looked at the page with her goals on it. Resting her elbows on the counter, she admired her handiwork.

Her hidden ambitions and dreams were bared in felt-tip pen. Some were highlighted and some had doodled stars next to them or exclamation marks. Hearts blended in crayon spotted the page, like a stamp sealing her desires.

She closed it carefully and placed it on the top of the self-empowering books she’d used as a guide. It was a masterpiece. It was all there.

Locked in; out of the ordinary, the expected, had been a blessing for her. She put her hands together in prayer and closed her eyes; an enforced pause, the solo retreat crowned by a glory of new insights had been dramatic, yet there hadn’t been visitations from angels or wise words from the Divine but there had been a moment’s clarity, an ethereal illumination of truth.

She couldn’t rationalise it, but she could sense it with such potency her intuition had crawled to her outsides and stuck on the walls of her confinement cell. Lock-down had unstitched the seams of her straitjacket and freed her worn conditioning.

She spied the bottle of Rosé on the counter top which she’d been saving especially. She was no longer an unwitting, floundering excuse of a person; she was empowered.

It was a little early but she uncorked the wine, took a glass, picked up a box of cherries and walked into her sunny garden.

‘Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen’ was booming out from a house nearby, fighting for air space with ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow.’ She paused at ‘skies are blue’ and sang along to Sweet Sixteen, delighted she didn’t have to re-live those years. The music stopped abruptly and she could hear raised voices and something kicking off.

She stretched out in the lounger and sighed, her mood sagging. She had one last thing to do.

She picked up her phone, filled her glass and typed, “Call you in an hour,” and pressed send.

She didn’t mention anything about it being their wedding day, now cancelled, consequences of the Covid curse. She couldn’t call it a curse though, could she? Not for her.

She took the cherries out of the cardboard box and put them in a bowl but suddenly realised, even though she’d washed them earlier, that she’d put them back in the original box from the shop. She whizzed back inside and washed her hands. Damn virus, it was never-ending. The box was probably fine; she’d bought them yesterday.

She slid further into the lounger and took a gulp of wine. Resting her head back, she inclined her face to the sun, peace playing with her thoughts and quietening her soul. She raised her glass and took another sip, to thine own self be true.

A light breeze nudged her. She wasn’t afraid to call him but she didn’t want to hurt him. Loose leaves whirled in chaos and descended like lost confetti as a more powerful wind swirled in from the east and unsettled the status quo. Empty plant pots tipped over and before she could catch hold of it, the cardboard cherry box was up and over the fence at the bottom of the garden. Damn.

She downed her glass, re-filled it and called him.

“Move aside Molly!” Henry said.

“Dad, you said you were going to bury your face in the fruit and veg at the supermarket, touch anyone you could get your hands on and lick a wall if you had to. I’m coming with you.”

“For goodness sake,” Henry pulled his jacket off the hanger which hung on the doorknob of the cloakroom cupboard.

“I just want some quiet time, on my own.”

“Dad, this virus is serious, fatal even-”

“Exactly and I’m done.”

“There you go again, a bloody death wish. I’m coming with you.”

Henry struggled to get his arms into the jacket and stood there, stuck, sweating, looking at Molly, one arm in and one arm out, “God strewth, you were always so headstrong.”

Molly stepped forward to help him, but Henry flashed her a look that she knew well.

“I want to visit her too, Dad. It is her anniversary.”

“Bleeding Nora, d’you think I’m too senile to know that?”

“Dad…”

Henry grappled with the other sleeve and inched his arm down towards the cuff until he could see his hand pop out.

“You look nice Dad.”

“This was her favourite jacket.”

“I remember.”

“She loved corduroy,” he said, brushing the sleeves down, ‘But I’m not wearing a mask. I can’t breathe with that darn thing on.’

“I’ll sit on the bench by the church and you can pay your respects first. How about that?”

“I say bollocks to that.”

It wasn’t far and Henry took his time, slow and gentle, arm in arm with Molly. He paused at the roundabout, just before the church and leaned heavily upon an iron railing.

There was a couple of teenagers on a grass verge, right next to them, with their masks at their chins, talking urgently. He wished he could be urgent again with his wife. He missed the theatrics and it looked like it was heating up.

The girl stood up, her face swollen with the drama; restless, unsure, intense. Henry was riveted, watching, as the boy grabbed her arm as she tried to leave,

“Izzy, we’ll sort it, I’ll come with you,” he cried after her as she took off all arms and legs. Henry looked away, the passion between them was undeniable.

Molly tugged on his arm and he let her lead him to the church grounds and through the gate. Struggling on the uneven cobble stones, he shuffled away from her, taking the cushion she gave him for his knees and stepped onto the grass.

“Afternoon my love, it’s been a while,” he said and knelt at his wife’s grave, and slouched forward, wiping the back of his hand over his wet eyes. He bit his knuckles, shook his head and sniffed. “Be there in a jiffy.”

Hobbling to his feet he kissed the tip off his fingers and then touched his wife’s headstone.

A cardboard punnet at the side of her headstone blew back and forth, as if unsure which way to go. Henry watched it, thinking of the to and fro of the teenagers. The wind circled it and slung it this way and that and then, with an extra puff, snatched it up and swept it up towards Henry whose frail arms caught it. He turned his back to the church, and to Molly on the bench, and sniffed the box. Strawberries? No, more like cherries. Fairly fresh too. He placed it over his face, like a mask and inhaled. He moved his head from side to side until he had smothered himself with its cardboard waste, and just for luck, he licked it.

My Family and other Circuses

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 12:00:00 Z

Monday

“Daddy, can we go to the circus?”

“Eat your cereal Lucy. Mrs Brown will be here shortly.”

“Can we though?”

“Yes, when you’ve finished your breakfast.”

If we were still at the breakfast table when Mrs Brown arrived there was a good chance that we would both be late for school.

Mrs Brown would begin the conversation, probably about Mr Brown and his lumbago or about her daughter Janet and her disastrous marriage to “the beast” Eric. When Mrs Brown started a conversation you were there for the duration. It was like tearing your skin away from superglue.

“Will they have people in sparkles flying in the air?”

I glanced up at the time on the TV. 7:58.

“What? Where?”

“At the circus.”

“What circus?”

“Next door.”

From outside I could hear Mrs Brown chaining her bike to the fence.

“Okay, time to go.”

My hand reached out to pick up Lucy’s breakfast bowl. She was too fast. Her little hands gripped the bowl and the spoon so hard that her knuckles turned white.

“No!”

“Well come on, hurry up. Mrs Brown is here.”

“And people on wheels throwing balls?”

“I’ll throw you young lady if you don’t hurry up and eat that last spoonful.”

“Okay, fibished,” she said, through a mouthful of oats and dried fruit.

In a trice I grabbed her bowl and put it on the draining board by the sink. The back door flew open.

Mrs Brown entered like a whirlwind, moving around the kitchen, collecting plates and cutlery with one hand, running the water into the sink with the other and squeezing out the Fairy liquid with …? How does she do that?

“Oh, that main road gets worse. Frightens me to death. Nearly came a cropper. Twice. Twice nearly shook hands with me maker, “How do you do” but no not yet, thankfully.

“Morning Mrs Brown, we are just …”

“Needs a bicycle lane. I’ve been on to the council any number of times but all they do is talk. I’ll be in me box and six feet beneath before they do something.”

“Morning Mrs Brown,” said Lucy.

“Going so fast on a road like that, there ought to be a law.”

“I think you’ll find that there probably …”

“Do you need them washed today?”

“Sorry?” I grabbed our coats from the rack and folded Lucy’s arms into the sleeves.

“Or can you waits another day perhaps? I only ask ’cause I have to take Mr B to the docs this after. Up all night with his trouble he was, took so many pills I swear you could hear him rattle as he comes downstairs. Poor thing, nothing touches these days, takes them like Smarties, enough to kill a racehorse but don’t even touch the sides. So, if you are okay for smalls and things then …”

“No that’s fine, we can manage.”

Lucy put her gloves on the wrong hands and then swapped them over. “Guess what Mrs Brown, the circus has moved in next door.”

“Circus, eh?” Mrs Brown was at the sink cloaked in a cloud of bubbles. “Don’t see so many these days I reckon. Back in the day we had elephants and tigers and mangy lions and skinny seals balancing spinning balls on their noses. Stopped all that malarkey now and rightly so I think. God didn’t take all that trouble to put them on this earth just for us to watch and laugh at whilst we eat ice cream. I don’t think. Mind don’t know what they do in circuses these days without the animals.”

“They have clowns,” said Lucy.

“Oh, clowns, not a lover I must say, used to make me tremble, back in the day, afraid I was, long before Stephen King added his tuppence worth.”

“Okay, Lucy, chop, chop, time to go.”

“I like clowns,” said Lucy, “They give you nice sweets.”

“Fairy,” said Mrs Brown.

“Lucy, where’s your bag?”

“Can you add it to the list?”

“Yes, of course, what? Lucy, bag!”

“Fairy,” said Mrs Brown again.

“Fairy?”

“For the dishes.” Mrs Brown held up the bottle.

“Right, yes, got it.”

“Lucy, I won’t tell you again.”

As we climbed into the car I thought I saw the front window curtains move in the house next door. Maybe it was Sam back to take one last look or collect a few things, but I couldn’t see it somehow. He was so distressed when Alice passed. “Got to quit,” he said, “too many ghosts.”

I hadn’t seen any other evidence but I hoped somebody had bought the place. The gardens, front and back, were starting to look like wildernesses, overrun with dandelions and rhododendron. And the lawn, you could hide a lion.

Tuesday

“Do German shepherd dogs speak German?”

“Lucy where’s your sports joggers?”

“Or just dog?”

“And your skorts?”

“Or German dog?”

“Lucy!”

“Eh?”

“Your joggers and your skorts, where are they?”

“In the basket.”

I had forgotten about the washing.

“Okay, well go upstairs and get your second pair of both. I think they’re in your room, bottom drawer.”

“The red ones?”

“Yes, the red ones.”

“But I’m in the blue team. I can’t wear red ones.”

“Well today you’ll have to be in the red team. The blue are in the wash.”

“Won’t.”

“Lucy!”

Lucy stood up, letting her chair scrape noisily on the wooden kitchen floor.

“There ought to be a law.”

I watched the silent TV screen. A news report of a riot somewhere in the world reminded me that I had class 11c for Geography that morning.

I put the sports bag in the boot of the car. Blue material poked out from the zip. The sports joggers, retrieved from the basket, probably covered in mud and smelling of sweat. I couldn’t let her go to school like that …

As we pulled out of the drive I thought I saw a puff of white smoke from behind next door’s shed.

Wednesday

“Sorry Mr C but I couldn’t find Lucy’s sports thingamajigs in the basket yesterday.”

“Ah, no, it’s okay, she wore them again. They weren’t so dirty.”

“Really? There’s normally mud and all …”

“No, they were fine.”

“Well, just as long as you know they isn’t washed.”

“No, of course.”

I made a mental note and immediately forgot it.

“Mrs Brown, did you know that the Queen drinks beer from the bottle?”

“Really? No surely not Lucy, she would use a nice cut glass tankard or perhaps a silver goblet.”

“No from the bottle, I see it. And she smokes cigarettes that you make yourself and she spits.”

“Well, she has got a lot to put up with these days. Enough to make anybody spit I reckon.”

“Lucy, time to go:”

As we turned into the road I thought I heard next door’s toilet flush, but it may have been Mrs Brown emptying the sink.

Thursday

“Do gorillas have to take a driving test?”

“Well, no. Gorillas don’t normally drive.”

“But if they do, do they have to take a test?”

On the TV screen they were showing highlights of a boxing match, reminding me that at 12 o’clock I had a meeting with the Deputy Head.

Friday

The TV was showing a news item. A robbery at the local bank. A gang of masked thieves.

“Look daddy, the circus family.”

“Come on Lucy eat your breakfast, we’re late.”

“They’re famous.”

“Everybody’s famous for five seconds these days.”

“Even me?”

“Yes, even you my lady, one day, I am sure. Now grab your hockey stick and get in the car. Maybe you can be famous for being on time for school for once.”

As I turned to switch off the TV I saw the CC photograph of the gang: the Queen, a clown, a gorilla and a German shepherd dog. They seemed vaguely familiar. Oh yes, it reminded me that I had 11c for drama that morning.

As we drove out I saw an empty beer bottle on next door’s porch. Maybe we had squatters. Oh well, that wasn’t so bad. Perhaps they would cut the lawn.

Once Upon a Seven O'Clock

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 11:00:00 Z

Father leaned in close. Mike smelled the signs.

“Find my shoes.” Blunt and hoarse.

Mike hunted and found them in the bathroom, splattered with vomit. He wiped off the first. Shadow fell on him.

“What you are doin’?”

The bow knocked Mike against the toilet bowl. His right ear whistled.

“I’m late.” Father perched on the edge of the bath. “Tonight.” First shoe. “You’re for it.” Second shoe. “You and me are going to have a little talk. Be here at seven.” He spat the last word and left.

Mike breathed.

They said he’d had a mother but he knew better than to ask.

At school, he ground his teeth and pinched his leg but the period bells rang and rang like an old cup against heavy steel. At three he walked home through the barren park.

From the couch he counted the red flowers on the wallpaper.

Across the street lights flicked on. Headlights lurked and went. Other people came home. Shadow creatures spawned beyond his periphery.

The minutes died on the VCR. His teeth ached. It struck seven and he held his breath. At seven ten he started to wonder. Headlights flashed into the driveway.

The car door slammed. Another? The key in the lock.

“Wait in the car.” A man’s voice.

“This is my house.”

“Wait. In. The. Car.”

He was an anvil welded to the couch, ears stretched. The front door pushed across the mat. A hand fumbled for the light switch.

“Mike are you here Mike.” Not his fathers voice? Footsteps towards the kitchen. Light switch. The steps came towards him. He saw father’s hands, fathers shape. He flew behind the TV.

“Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!”

“Mike. It’s uncle John.” In the dark, barricaded in small arms the words repeated.

A warm hand took his shoulder. The bough broke. He heard the words, not his father’s, telling him everything was okay, asking him to pack things.

For three days, his uncle and aunt fed him like he was a rescue dog. “When do I have to go back.” He counted the peas.

“Never.”

And he lived.

The Last Exhibition

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 12:00:00 Z

“Look!” Colin says, pressing his nose up to the painting. “Look at those brush strokes!” He takes a step back. “And his use of light and shade is incredible. Just amazing.”

“Yes,” I say, smiling. I’m no expert but his enthusiasm is infectious. “Isn’t it?”

“What an achievement,” he says, gesturing around at the paintings on the walls.

He sighs, the corners of his mouth drooping, and I can tell that he’s comparing these masterpieces to his own works, knocked up in the garage between shifts in the warehouse. It’s not a fair comparison, I want to tell him. Some artists dedicate their whole lives to their bodies of work. But with that thought comes the guilt that Roger and I couldn’t afford to send him to art school, couldn’t afford for him to do the same.

The painting in front of us is of a sunset, shades of pink and purple merging with the blue. It’s no wonder Colin is drawn to it. It reminds me of the sketches he used to make night after night, never coming in for his dinner until the last rays had disappeared. He was such a good boy, never complaining, ever thoughtful. He used to bring me flowers, like his father before him.

“You never told me he was so talented,” Colin says, and I want to ask what he means, who he means, but the pain stabs my chest unmercifully. Perhaps it’s the guilt. Whatever it is, it takes my breath away.

“You go on,” I say, trying to fix a smile on my face, knowing I won’t be able to maintain it for long. “I’m just going to sit here a while.”

“I should stay,” he says, an anxious look on his face.

“No,” I say before he has the chance to sit down beside me. It comes out more harshly than I intended. I take a deep breath.

“No,” I say again, more gently, “you go on. Please.” My cheeks ache with the effort of smiling; my eyes are beginning to fill with tears. I suppress the words “I’m fine,” knowing they would be a red flag. He was so excited about bringing me to the library today. I don’t remember why. He hasn’t even picked out any books. But I refuse to spoil his day.

“Well, okay,” he says, his hair swinging across in front of his eyes. I wish he would get a haircut. I barely recognise him lately. “Just this once won’t hurt, I guess.” He winks at me. “But don’t tell the boss, eh?”

I open my mouth to ask what he’s talking about, but the pain is too much. I nod and watch as he walks away, struggling to keep my body erect until he is out of sight and I can slump across the bench, breathing into the pain, gritting my teeth as another invisible wave passes through my body.

“Are you okay?” The man is short, well dressed. He is wearing a hat. Roger always wore a hat, though he used to have better style. I shall have to buy him a new one.

“Yes, yes,” I say, trying to straighten up, not wanting Roger to see me like this. But it’s no good. The pain has gripped my whole body.

I reach out a hand to take his, but he pulls away. “Roger?” I say. “Roger?” but he looks frightened and that scares me more than anything. Roger was always so brave, right up until he left. I can’t think where he went now.

“Roger?” I say again, but he turns away, calling out loudly and there’s a woman coming towards me now, a badge swinging around her neck.

“Mrs Fairweather?” she says. “Are you all right?” I know her face but I can’t place her. Who is she and what’s she doing with my Roger?

The colours are swirling in front of my eyes. I feel like I have been transported inside one of the paintings. The pain is starting to ease. My head feels light. I feel there is something I need to say before I drift away.

“My son’s a painter,” I tell the woman, grasping onto her hand urgently. “Such a bright boy, my Colin.”

“Colin?” I hear her say through the fog of colours that swirl before my eyes. “Colin Fairweather?”

I nod and close my eyes, embracing the darkness.

I hear someone gasp. “The artist? But didn’t he-?”

“Poor love,” the woman’s voice says. “Such a tragedy.”

I’m floating now. I can feel their arms pulling me up, up, hear their voices calling to me in shades of lilac and pink.

“Colin,” I say.

“I’m here, Mum.”

Of course he’s here. He was always here. I press a hand to my chest. Or is it someone else’s hand? It’s hard to tell now.

“Hold on,” I say. “I won’t be long.”

The 11th Hour

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 12:00:00 Z

High from the joint he’d had that morning, Noah pushed the door into the second hand shop of 11 Sorcerer Lane, to the sound of a click and a ding-a-ling. He tripped on the few steps down into a small area packed tight with musty goodies. He hadn’t been there before but as John Lennon said, “Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” Just in front of him was a Gothic arch with steps down. Down appealed, the dingier the better. His tall scrawny frame crumpled, adjusting to the steep and narrow steps. Eleven in total.

The dark basement was greedy in its hoard of eclectic stash. In particular, he was drawn to multiple paintings, in different sizes, of the same Asian God reclining on a mouldy wall. The god looked more Chinese than Indian to his ignorant eye.

A thin wispy line of smoke from a half open black door in the far corner, weaved its way around the den, dancing to the faint Asian music which played.

“Come, come.”

Noah jumped and checked his pocket to see if he had smoked two joints that morning or just one.

“Come. Sit,” a whisper said. Behind the black door a tiny Asian man with thick grey hair squatted behind a bamboo mat. A red dragon china teapot lay upon it, with a matching cup, a red candle and an incense holder with a burning stick.

“Sit.”

“Er…” Noah blushed, “I…”

“Time for Tea,” said the old man.

“Tea?”

“11 o’clock. Tea-leaf reading,” the old man said

“Reading?”

“Fortune tell.”

Noah sniggered.

The old man motioned for him to sit and poured tea into the delicate cup, “dink.”

Noah smirked.

“You lucky. Time choose you.”

Noah took the cup; wasting time drinking tea was fine by him. He swilled the tea and put his nose to its brim. He inhaled a waft of green tea bitterness, entwined with a hint of rose or jasmine or what? He didn’t know but it was flowery and he downed it, its taste sweeter than expected. The old man tilted the cup left, then right and rotated it clockwise.

“You, decision?” he said.

Noah shrugged.

“Wrong decision. You regret.” Noah frowned.

“Know decision?” the old man said.

“No.”

“Know? Good.”

“No. Like, NO!” Noah shook his head, slow and precise, using the age old remedy of resorting to exaggerated gestures to assist in times of misunderstandings.

The old man poured more tea in the cup, swilled it, “dink.”

Once again, he rotated the cup. “Decision tomorrow. 11 o’clock.”

Noah laughed, “I don’t do decisions,” and said. “I smoke, play guitar, while away the time.”

“You go out. 11 o’clock you out.”

“Out?”

The old man opened his arms out wide. “Anywhere, where no matter.”

The air was thick with incense and Noah’s eyes watered as he listened to the old man continue. “Want see result of decision?”

He retrieved an old, half empty bottle of snake wine from a glass cabinet, “Rice wine. Magic,” he said. “Left hand.”

He tipped a drop onto the palm of Noah’s left hand, rubbed it in and then mixed a shot in the tea leaves and said “Dink. Close eyes,” and blew out the candle.

“Look hand,”

“I can’t see anything, it’s dark,” Noah said,

“Look”

Noah stared at his hand “It’s fuzzy and -”

Three images appeared, one by one. An old barn surrounded by fields. A double bed on top of which lay an indistinguishable girl on her side, his guitar, scribbled song lyrics, and a recording contract. Last, a ginger cat, half hidden under a pink silk scarf, spooned around a trophy.

“That’s one decision. Right hand.”

“I don’t know what it meant,” Noah said

The old man repeated the ritual with Noah’s right hand. This time, one after another, Noah saw; his name on an official list. A government building and his studio flat without furniture in darkness.

“Reading finish.”

“But-”

“One decision you regret.”

“But how-”

“You feel.” The old man pressed his hand upon his heart.

Noah didn’t remember saying goodbye or leaving the shop as he walked the five minutes it took to get home, woozy from the rice wine, musky incense and aromatic tea. He slouched on his unmade bed and lit a half smoked joint and polished it off. He was holding the business card of the shop, ‘11th Hour’ but he didn’t remember taking it. On the back, written in the old man’s scrawl was, ‘11 o’clock out decision regret.’ One couldn’t accuse him of being verbose, he thought.

Noah awoke at five to eleven the next day. Groggy, he looked for his weed but the first thing he saw was the card. He looked at his watch and a rave of butterflies on speed churned in his stomach. It didn’t matter he told himself, it didn’t, but he jumped up. He had been given direction; given a purpose. He had purpose, he told himself, he was free, so why did having somewhere to be feel good?

He hadn’t undressed the night before so he was quick. He pulled his fingers through this hair, shoved his shoes on, grabbed his jacket, stuffed a chewing gum in his mouth and flew out the door.

On the top step, right outside his studio, he bumped into a young woman, “Hi, do you live here?”

“That’s me,” he said pointing to the door behind him,

“Sorry to disturb, but I’ve lost my cat,” she said,

“Haven’t seen him,” said Noah and leapt down the stairs.

He was out. He didn’t know whether to stay where he was or walk somewhere. In theory he was out. He crossed the grey street to the town square and checked the time, 11.03am. Typical, he wasn’t good at showing up. He slumped, round shouldered on a bench and spat out the gum. He fiddled in his jacket pocket for his lighter and lit a crumpled fag. This is why he never did anything; he wasn’t a player. He pulled hard on the fag, a deep intake of guilt; guilt that only the privileged can feel. He didn’t have a terrible tale to tell. He just couldn’t do it; the drudgery. He broke bonds with disappointed others. Their judgement hard to bear, questioning his choice to live off benefits and play music. The drudgery messed with his wasted time. Wasted time made his music.

He inhaled sharply and noticed a little girl, about six years old, crying. She started to flap her arms about and then abruptly cried out, “Mummy!” He flicked his fag on the ground and moseyed over to her, kneeling down to her level.

“Have you lost your mum?”

Panting in desperate, miniature breaths she nodded with a sweetness that broke him. He held out his right hand to her, and said, “Let’s find her.”

They hadn’t gone far when a woman, laden down with shopping came running towards them. As she got closer Noah’s chest tightened; her expression was inhuman in its ferocity.

“Mummy!” cried the girl. In an instant Noah had the most peculiar feeling. He snatched his hand away from the little girl’s, and looked at his burning palm and clenched his teeth. The result of the decision he’d had a glimpse of with the old man played out. The government building was a police station; he was held for six hours and put on a potential offenders list. His dealer appeared with something new. The vision faded with him unconscious with a needle next to him on the floor of his empty studio. This would be his regret.

He ducked and ran. His chest tightened, squeezed by a public constrictor. He gasped, flailing, prey to societies injustices. He shot up the stairs to his studio, unaware he was counting them as he went, and landed on the last step, the eleventh. Panting, it suddenly came to him. His exchange with the girl who’d lost her cat had been at 11.00am on the dot. On the eleventh step! Eleven’s everywhere. Signs everywhere! He should have helped her look for her cat. He tumbled back down the stairs to the floor below. There were two flats, eleven and twelve. He knocked on the door of flat eleven. He knocked louder, called out, and banged. The door to flat twelve opened.

“You looking for Harry?” the girl said.

“Dunno, she was looking for her cat this morning? I live upstairs and -”

“Oh was she?” she said.

“Did she find her cat?” Noah said,

“I expect so. Blackie’s a little minx.”

Noah nodded, “Right.”

“Did you say you live upstairs?”

“Yep, number 14.”

“You’re above me then.” She opened the door a little more and leaned on one leg and untied the pink scarf from around her head. “Do you play the guitar?”

“Yep. Can you tell her I’m sorry about this morning?”

“Sure,” she said, twiddling with her hair, “I hope you don’t mind me saying but I love listening to you play. Do you write your own songs?”

“Er…” Noah drummed his hand on the side of his leg. “Yep,” he coughed, “I mean, yes, yes, I do.”

She smiled and Noah smiled back and nodded. He wasn’t sure whose turn it was to speak so he blurted, “Er… Can you tell her I was looking for her?”

“Yeh, sure,” A ginger cat slid up to the girl and rubbed against her leg, “Aw, you hungry?” she said and closed the door with a warm smile. “Bye.”

Noah, stood in front of his studio door frowning, chasing a thought he hadn’t yet had. Then it hit him. “Idiot!” He smacked the palm of his hand on his forehead. “Such an idiot!”

The feeling came, clear as the lyrics of his next song. He looked at his left palm and the vision bloomed. They fell in love, he cleaned up and they moved to the country. He wrote songs, recorded an album and they lived an extraordinary life of love and dreams fulfilled. His first hit was called “The 11 o’clock decision.”

As the vision ended he fell to sitting on the top step. Wide eyed, a cheeky grin, curved up to light his once deadened eyes. He didn’t dare to question the truth of the old man’s sorcery but just bathed, for a second, in its hope. His thoughts turned to the girl at number twelve. He opened his door, grabbed his guitar and descended down the stairs.

Finders Keepers

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 12:00:00 Z

It goes without saying that being drunk, tired and lethargic on a wet winter night is not the recommended strategy for making an instant fortune. But it is how Robert Taylor did it. Maybe.

Slumped on a cold bus-shelter seat, trying to read the evening newspaper while waiting for the night bus, his heel hit against something. He flopped his head forward between his legs and looked backwards under the seat. A large brown leather briefcase sat in a puddle.

He hiccoughed and dropped the newspaper. A gust picked up the pages and pegged them against the illuminated advertising board in the shelter. He had enough problems of his own without the blaring headlines about local drug gangs.

The world was against him. It might have been better if they had fired him, the demotion was worse; a daily humiliating reminder of putting a decimal point in the wrong column and losing the company £20M in a microsecond. It might have helped if Janet had supported him instead of complaining she’d have to find a job and economise on his lower salary. And moaning about what her sister would say. You’d expect a wife to support you through thick and thin. Now was the thin and all she did was moan.

He slid the case out and placed it on his lap. He burped and it carried away on the wind. A solitary black cab with its light on splashed towards him, windscreen wipers flapping. He stood, staggered, put out a waving hand and it sped past.

Robert sat back down and pushed up on the case’s catches: they didn’t give. He squeezed his eyes at the indicator board: N29 — due. He got up and fell against the glass shelter, a gloomy red bus approached and he put out an arm.

He staggered onto the bus, case under one arm and pressed a card on the reader. Multiple times. Each time a red LED and a bleep signalled failure. Strange, he’d topped up that morning.

“It’s your library card.” A world-weary metallic voice came from the driver’s perspex screen. The bus pulled away.

He located his bus travelcard after a swaying search through trouser and coat pockets. He clicked in and tottered to the back of the empty bus. He placed the case on his lap and pushed rebellious thumbs at the catches. It opened with a clunk. He had been pressing up instead of down.

The case was full of neatly packed £50 notes wrapped in bank slips. He slammed the lid shut. He lifted it again. Bundles of £50 notes. His eyes widened and his lips parted into a gormless smile. He looked around despite the vacant seats. An electric buzz fought through his clouded mind.

A yellow post-it note was stuck on one bundle. He pulled it up to bleary eyes: sǝʇou pǝsn ‘spunod puɐsnoɥʇ pǝɹpunɥ ǝʌıɟ. Russian? He frowned, turned the note and squinted: Five hundred thousand pounds, used notes.

He flopped back against the seat. He must be hallucinating, he should never have had those shots. Who leaves £500,000 at a bus stop? Or that bottle of wine. Who cares? He’s rich. Or those beers. Sod the company. Or the double vodkas. Sod Janet’s sister too. Oh dear, the cocktails.

He should call the police. No he won’t. The street had been deserted and the bus was empty. Who would know? 500 grand; this was his chance to change everything. A gift from above. A new life. A wife who wanted him again.

He clutched the case to his chest, his grin grew and the bus rumbled on.

Where was he? What time was it? He ground at sore eyes with the balls of his hands, his mouth like a bowl of dust. He sat up in last night’s clothes and coat. He had one shoe on, the other was upside down on the coffee table. He slid off the sofa and stood and swayed. Something acidic burnt his throat, his head thumped like being hit repeatedly on the head with a shovel by Janet. Janet. Loud bangs came from the kitchen. Trouble.

He staggered to find and placate his wife and to locate the medicine of caffeine. Janet was in her new supermarket uniform slamming cabinet doors.

“Please,” he said, putting his hands up. “Quiet?”

“Had a good night?” She folded her arms. Her impassive face failed to disguise the flames in her eyes. “At least someone here is trying to earn money rather than piss it up the wall.” She looked to the ceiling and huffed. “A supermarket job, really. Do you know what my sister said to me when I told her? Her husband is in line for partner. And how are we going to afford skiing this year and to make the payments on the Mercedes? I need a new dress, a coat, shoes.” She transferred her hands to her hips, face pinched, slitted brown eyes fixed on him.

He loved her in her serious mood and, to be honest, the uniform. It was so…, he didn’t know what it was but it was sexy, even in supermarket blue polyester. He tried to smile but had to swallow back something disgusting.

He shuddered and grabbed her hand. “Bugger your sister, I’ve got something to show you.”

He pulled her to the living room, hobbling in one shoe.

She pulled a face, shook his hand away and stepped back, her face creased. “Smells like an explosion in a brewery.” She folded her arms tight against her chest.

He spread an arm out. “I found a briefcase.”

She pursed her lips.

“Full of money.”

Her disinterested eyes scanned the room and settled on his upturned shoe.

Panic flashed across his face. “Where’s the damned case? Five hundred grand.”

Janet tapped a foot.

He knelt and looked under the sofa, up to the top of the sideboard. Around the room. He was sure he hadn’t left it on the bus, he’d clamped the case to his chest like it had half a million pounds in it.

She raised a single eyebrow.

He rushed around the room, head spinning. He went out to the hall and came back. “It’s not here.”

“So it seems.” She pushed past him. “A drunken fantasy?” She strutted to the front door and picked up a large packed gym bag “I’ve got to get to work. Then I’m enrolling at the gym. I’ll be late.” She hoisted the bag over her shoulder and sloped sideways with the weight.

“But I found half a million pounds.” He scrutinised the floor, avoiding her accusatory eyes. “I think?” His forehead creased into lines of doubt and he looked up. “You hate the gym.”

The door slammed. He clamped his palms to his temples. Where did Janet keep the Ibuprofen?

Robert raced past the pile of free local newspapers at the station entrance, they fluttered in his wake reporting an upsurge in drug-gang warfare over a missing payment drop a month ago. He was running late for a job interview.

Janet had never returned home the day of his drunken dream about finding half a million pounds. She never went to her job at the supermarket that day or enrolled in the gym. Only her passport was missing.

Scattering David

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 12:00:00 Z

Angela took another drink of wine and wiped away an imaginary tear. “Maybe he wasn’t such a bad man.”

Her sister shook her head. “He was a bastard.”

Angela looked down at the plastic bag at her feet to check the urn was still upright and that David wasn’t spilling out all over the train.

“He always did the washing-up.”

Her sister held up her arms in mock praise “Well, halle-bloody-lujah. A saint.”

Dropping her arms she topped up Angela’s plastic cup with cheap sweet wine. “He was a rat-faced scumbag of a man who only ever cared for himself. He had affairs behind your back and later, to add insult to injury, in front of your face. He was a bully who picked on anybody weaker than himself. In short, he was an abusive, homophobic, bigoted, sexist, racist bastard.”

“Well … nobody’s perfect.”

The two held each other as they laughed. Tears running down their faces.

Somebody looking from afar, seeing the urn at their feet, could easily be confused into thinking that they were overcome with grief.

Angela looked out of the train window and watched the cows lazily browsing the grass. The same herd David and her had passed just a fortnight ago.

It had been the height of summer, everywhere was busy.

David hated crowded beaches, so they had spent an hour traipsing up and down the coast, looking for a quiet spot.

Eventually they found a cove, deserted, only because its beach was covered in sharp shingle instead of soft sand.

Angela set a towel upon the shore, plugged into Spotify, turned on her Kindle and bathed in the sun.

It had been just by accident that ten minutes later she had looked up to see her husband’s head bobbing in a sea of blue and white foam, his hand waving frantically at her.

Her response had been to remove her glasses, turn up the music, lie back, and let the sun warm her face.

By the time the next track had begun David was fish food.

Once off the train the sisters found the most crowded beach, close to the rattle of the amusement arcade, where the smell of fried food dripped over everything, so full of grease that the bathers had little need of sun oil.

Everything David would hate, for eternity.

Without ceremony they tipped the ashes out of the urn. An offshore breeze briefly played with David’s remains before dropping him onto the sand.

Angela knelt on the wet sand, caressed the sea as if stroking a loved pet and kissed the waves. The sea washed away a little of the make-up from her face revealing the yellow swelling beneath her eye. Changed now from the purple and the green, soon even this would fade and then there would be no reason to hide any more.

On the way home Angela slept peacefully on her sister’s shoulder and dreamt of soaring over the sea on the back of an eagle to a distant shore.

She could still taste the salt on her lips.

It tasted good.

The Mountain of the Women

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 12:00:00 Z

That day in Ireland, from the peak of Slievenamon mountain, if you were looking north east, you’d have seen a red dot of a car moving along the narrow road. It was the O’Driscals out again on another of their Sunday drives.

They were from a small townsland, up north. A good, well let’s say, a good two hours if you were taking your time, less now with the new motorway. It isn’t a place you’d be familiar with if you you didn’t live nearby. The only landmark was a creamery at the crossroads. That’s long closed now. Mary O’Brien, God rest her soul, used to run that creamery for years, and for a while her son Billy, was the milk man, may he rest in peace. So if you ever visit, well now you know a few people who lived there.

And wasn’t it Doreen, the third daughter of the O’Brien’s of the creamery, who married O’Driscal. And wasn’t it him this very minute that was driving that red Toyota Corolla towards the mountain. A fine family of six, out for a Sunday drive.

“Slievenamon is the highest mountain in Tipperary,” said father. “From the top you can see three towns and four rivers.” He talked half over his shoulder keeping his eyes mostly on the road. Their mother, Doreen, from the old creamery, was in the passenger seat, tense, looking hard at the road, making up for the father’s lack of attention, keeping an eye out, for tractors and cyclists and other Sunday-drivers.

In the back seat of the Corolla, the four children were squashed together like ham and cheese sandwiches. Three boys and a girl. The youngest two in the middle, since the bigger were quicker, making sure they got the window seats.

“Why is it called Slievenamon?” said the youngest.

Father smiled. He stopped at a T-junction and looked left and right. Mother looked left and right too. And they drove on.

Well, father told the story. And the children were delighted.

…

But dear reader, don’t you know the story of Slievenamon?

Here’s how I heard it, and it might be different than how Mr. O’Driscal told it.

In olden time in Ireland, Fionn mac Cumhaill, (pronounced ‘cool’) the greatest warrior hunter in Ireland, was down for a few weeks hunting wild boar in the Golden Vale — the name of the region around the mountain. Now as well a being a great warrior hunter, Fionn was a fierce man for the ladies.

After the few weeks, there was many a woman in that county that had, ah, experienced Fionn’s sweet words and many who felt he’d be their husband. Each thought that she was only one hearing his sweet words.

Well, when it was discovered that Fionn was talking sweetly to so many, there was consternation. Every woman and man in the Vale, took the side of the slighted women and the entire county was under threat of falling into complete mayhem. Something had to be done.

So Fionn went and thought about it and thought about it some more and after three days, with the Vale on the verge of disaster — because not a single woman would do a days work till the matter was resolved — Fionn decided he would take for his bride the best of the lot, and how would he decide? They’d have a race.

The date was set and the course would be from Kilcash to the summit of the mountain, about 3 miles, or 5 kilometres if you prefer. The first woman to get to the summit would win Fionn’s hand. The race was held, the woman ran and the first to get to the top, was Gráinne, the daughter of the Cormac Mac Airt, the high king of Ireland. From that day the mountain was called Slieve, which means mountain and na mbán, which means women. Slievenamon, mountain of the women. And that’s how that mountain got its name.

Sure by the time father had finished telling the story the red Corolla arrived at the outskirts of Kilcash, and the rain had come and there was no point trying to climb the mountain. The mother was relieved to be out of the car and instead of climbing, they had fish and chips in a café on main street, except the youngest, he wanted a battered sausage. After lunch they visited the castle, it’s a ruin, but for four children in raincoats, racing around, t’was wonderful.

On the road back, both the youngest two slept and the eldest two looked out through the windows at the rain and the green fields.

“She didn’t marry him” said Mother.

“Who didn’t marry who?” asked Father.

“Gráinne didn’t marry Fionn. She married Diarmuid, one of Fionn’s warriors.”

“Did she?” said the father.

“She did.” They pulled in to one side to let the big truck behind them pass, and continued on.

“Gráinne and Diarmuid eloped on the night before her wedding. Fionn was too old, he was older than her father. Diarmuid and Gráinne spent many a year on the run, with Fionn and his warriors after them. Then they made peace and settled down and they had four children.”

Father smiled. Didn’t he have four children with this wonderful woman, and didn’t he love her enough to run away with her when the O’Briens of the creamery hadn’t approved.

They drove back through the rain, and they talked about where they’d go next Sunday, maybe as far as Birdhill Rock. But that’s another story.

The Day Elisa Went Missing

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 12:00:00 Z

Back then, before the unfolding, it was just another grey Tuesday. A school day of endless lessons held in classrooms smelling of damp clothes, sour milk and pubescent expectation.

Tuesday: registration, followed by maths: dull; breaktime, followed by Spanish: muy aburrido.

Boredom hung in the air like a shroud. Time was full of heavy seconds. It had given up all hope. I had to do something, or it would never have moved on.

In front of me, Elisa’s chair, empty, like a skeleton. On the back of the chair, a new piece of graffiti: a badly drawn heart pierced by a badly drawn arrow with AI L ED scratched beneath it.

I looked around the classroom. Mr Grey had left to get the register. Everybody else was busy. Nobody paid me any attention. Ever. Nobody saw me rise from my chair and stand behind Elisa’s chair. Nobody paid any attention as I took the drawing compass from my pencil case and scratched and extended the top line of the I until it became a T.

This simple act of vandalism would be of little consequence until the naked body of my beautiful Elisa was found, two days later, lifeless, beneath a pile of coal sacks, in Andrew Thorne’s outhouse.

By the side of the inkwell on Elisa’s desk I noticed a long blonde hair. I allowed myself a single tear.

I replaced the drawing compass back into my pencil case just as Mr Grey returned. He looked at me with tired red eyes and sighed, “Annie Isles, go back to your seat.”

On the way to school I had run my hand along the rose bushes by the park railings, loving the feel of the dew on the petals and the prick of the thorns. The pain brought me back to reality and the bubble of dark red blood on my finger proved that I was still alive.

Everything can be broken so easily. You drop a glass and in an instant all is changed. All the pieces are still there but it no longer holds water. What has it become? You drop a hammer. What has become of dear Elisa?

Oh Elisa, do you know that I have rescued you from a certain life of hell with your boring baby face boyfriend. Saved you from those perfect blonde babies you would have produced. Nobody needs them. It is too mundane to even contemplate. You always deserved better. I gave you both another way. I gave him notoriety and you, my dear Elisa, to you, like poor martyred Valentine, I have bestowed a day.

I looked at my hands and noticed another blonde hair attached to one of my fingernails. I rubbed the nail against my skirt to dislodge it. I licked my finger. It tasted of blood and soot.

Exposure

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 12:00:00 Z

It’s the coldness that’s the biggest shock. Many things are familiar: the wooden pews, the heavy scent of polish in the air, the thin light filtering through the stained-glass, the hushed way of talking that people adopt in churches even on happier occasions.

All this takes me back to my childhood: my parents would drag my sister and me along to the Sunday service at our parish church where the sermons were so dull we couldn’t wait to be excused to run, whispering and giggling with our friends to our respective meeting rooms.

I bite down on the thought, tasting its bitterness in my mouth.

There’s no giggling today, though there is plenty of whispering, people shuffling in their seats as they make room for friends and acquaintances.

I look around and wish I’d accepted the offer of a lift from the office. The thought of having to listen to the salesgirls’ chatter all the way here was more than I could bear but now, sitting here alone, I feel awkward and exposed.

I arrived early and chose my seat carefully: at the far end of the row, almost halfway back, at a respectful distance from the grieving family. The others came later and took their seats on the far side of the church. I glance over but they don’t see me. I sigh and turn my attention back to the front of the church.

A huge photograph of Linda looms over the closed casket. I try not to think about what lies within.

I’m still staring at the photograph when an old man shuffles his way along the bench to sit down beside me. I bend my head to feign prayer, but I can feel his eyes upon me. When I look up, sure enough, he reaches out a hand in greeting.

“Tom,” he says, his gaze unfaltering. “And you are?”

“Meg.”

He nods as if that means something to him, though I know it can’t. Linda and I may have shared an office, but that was all we shared. “Ruth will be glad you came.”

I frown and follow his gaze to the door, where a thin girl is deep in conversation with the vicar.

“And how did you know Linda?” I say.

He laughs. “Everyone knows Linda.”

I smile, though I’ve no idea what he means. I open my mouth to press him further, but the organ has started to play and the vicar begins making his way down the aisle. I close it again and join the rest of the congregation in standing.

I glance at my watch. Bang on time. With luck, I’ll make it back to the office before the sandwich van closes.

Ruth is standing by the door as we leave, shaking hands with each person who passes, repeating the invitation to join the family at Linda’s house. Her eyes look tired and red, but she seems genuine, nonetheless.

I have a smile and an apology on my lips but when I reach the front of the queue, I’m taken by surprise.

“And you must be Meg,” she says.

“Yes. How-?”

“Well, you absolutely must join us for the wake.”

“Oh, I-”

“Well, of course she’s joining us,” Tom cuts in from behind me.

“I-”

“I’m so glad,” Ruth says, bending to hug me. “There’s something Mum would have wanted you to have.”

“Really?” I swallow and fix a weak smile on my face. ”Well, in that case…”

“Come on then,” Tom says, taking my arm. “It’s not far, but these old legs won’t carry me there on my own.”

I glance over at my boss, who is staring at me in surprise, and shrug. I guess it doesn’t have to be for long.

Linda’s house is different from how I’d imagined, to the extent that I ever gave it any thought at all. The front room is decorated in a pink, floral print, with double doors that open out onto a well-tended garden at the back.

“Beautiful,” I find myself murmuring.

“Ah, yes, she had green fingers all right,” Tom says, settling himself onto the sofa. He pats the cushion next to him. I smile and take a seat.

The scent of coffee drifting through from the kitchen nudges at my memory. I can almost see Linda sitting at her desk, pouring a dark brew from her thermos flask. It was the one time in the day she would stop and talk, though she never revealed much about herself. How did I not know she had a daughter?

“And these are two of her paintings,” Tom says, pointing to two country scenes that adorn the walls. “Such a very talented lady. And so generous too, always thinking of others.”

I think of the prickly woman I knew, always nagging on at me to get out, to make friends, to get a life, and wonder whether I really knew her at all.

“So, have you got in touch with your parents yet?” Linda had been on typical form.

I sighed. “What?”

“Come on. You’ve got a face like a wet weekend. I’m not daft you know. It’s weeks since your mum called you.” She took a long sip of coffee. “Well? Don’t you want to speak to her?”

“How would you know what I want?”

Linda raised her eyebrows. “Seriously, Meg. What’s the problem?”

I didn’t answer.

“I mean, it’s up to you,” she said. “If you want to live your life like this-”

“Linda, please!”

“Fine!” She raised a hand to silence me. “Your choice. And maybe you’re right. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe she deserves it. Maybe. But do you deserve this?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“OK, so your boyfriend left you-”

“Fiancé.”

“Boyfriend, fiancé.” She shrugged. “And now you’ve fallen out with your mum. Right?”

I didn’t answer, but that didn’t stop her.

“What I’m saying is this: you only have one life. It’s up to you to choose how you live it. But don’t let it pass you by just because you’re too proud to make your peace with the past.”

I turned back to my computer, my eyes burning. I could feel the weight of her gaze upon me as she sipped her coffee, but she said no more. Would I have let her go on, I wonder, if I’d known it was to be the last time I saw her?

It’s a couple of hours before Ruth finally gets to me. “I’m sorry,” she says, shutting the door behind a small group of guests. There are just a few of us left, mainly family as far as I can tell.

I shuffle uncomfortably and adjust the smile on my face.

“I’ll go and dig it out now,” she says. I glance at my watch, hoping it doesn’t take too much digging.

To my relief, she’s back in two minutes, a piece of paper in her hand.

“Here,” she says, handing it to me.

I glance down at it and my breath catches in my throat. The pencil lines are bold and confident, but the subject is not. She is sad; her eyes gaze out of the page, revealing her vulnerability. I realise now how perceptive Linda really was. And I finally see myself through her eyes: lonely, stubborn, locked into a prison of my own making.

The tears well in my eyes, but it is not Linda I’m crying for but myself, for the years of pain and hurt, for the way I’ve been treated by others and the way I’ve treated myself.

I reach out my hand.

“Thank you,” I say and feel the warmth of Ruth’s skin against mine.

Postcards

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 12:00:00 Z

I scratched my head and blinked my left eye. I was changing the bin, as usual, on my morning round on Mortimer street. I yanked off my large orange jacket and tossed it over my dustbin trolley. This was the bin the old lady had been dumping the postcards. I’d retrieved three postcards so far. I’d read them a couple of times and they didn’t say much but I knew she was lying. It was as bad as not writing at all.

I got in there, nice and close and stirred the rubbish around but there was nothing out of the ordinary. I’d seen her bin them on three separate occasions; one each time. I’m sure she’d meant to put them in the post-box next to it. She had a thin long stick which she scrapped from side to side with her old spindly arm and wore large black sunglasses. If she took the glasses off she may be able to see. She was as thin as her stick and so bent over she may as well be crawling.

I dropped off my trolley at the local council and passed the box with ‘valuables’ written on it. I’d found lots of things in the bins over the years, mostly junk. Watches, phones, wallets; some with money in which I’d spent but it wasn’t like I’d won the lottery. I didn’t hand the crap in. I didn’t care. Crap everywhere. Un-get-ridable waste. Only the living decomposed but they still lingered on after death; tormenting. There had been a torn up love letter which I’d stuck back together with cello-tape which I’d found after Mum had died. I’d had nothing better to do. It hadn’t been worth it; I didn’t know anything of love. I threw that too in the end but written things mattered. Writing was alive, lived on after it had been written, whether the author was dead or not.

I headed home when I saw Rick, who had lived next door to me years ago, but he didn’t return my nod. We’d been best mates as kids.

The next day, I was finishing my round when I saw the decrepit old bat drop another postcard in the bin. The forth. She was so slow I wasn’t sure she was moving. So stiff, if she turned her head too far it may just get stuck and fall off, clattering and clunking like the metallic ghosts of a junk-yard. She took forever; the stank of senile old bones and unwashed grime leaving a trail. I waited for her to go, pocketed the postcard and changed the bin bag.

I dawdled home, scuffing my boots with a large heavy foot to Mum’s small dilapidated terraced house on Lower Street. I couldn’t afford to do much with it but I’d scrubbed it some, leaving a mixed odour of lemon and rancid squalor behind. Lots was sold and I cleared piles of rotten things, dead things. Her waste had been the most sickening. I hadn’t been the one to bag her up. That, for once, was someone else’s responsibility but they hadn’t disposed of the rug. That was mine. It would be better once I got rid of the rug. It’d been years. Damn rotten rug.

The fourth postcard was more lies. Like the others, she had signed it Mum and addressed it to Hattie Lee. I’d known a Hattie once. The address was in Berlin. I’d never dreamt of travelling. I laid them out on the table. They read;

“I’m fine,” I retched and slumped onto the chair. I closed my eyes and thumped the table but it didn’t help. “Fine”, that word! I scratched my head and blinked my left eye and then swallowed and read the other cards,

“Don’t worry I’m as fit as a fiddle.”

“I finished the elderly marathon on Saturday!”

“I’m feeling better than I have in years.”

Stupid lying old cow.

I got up to make tea and tripped on the blood stained rug. Damn rug! Damn fucking rug! I kicked it hard and kicked and kicked it. I stamped on it, thumped it, threw it, and finally stared at it holding my breath. Deformed and twisted, its coarse edge pointed up, prominent like a mountain, rigid like a hardened heart, in the centre of the room.

I rubbed hard at the stubble on my chin. I know what I’m going to do, I’m going to expose that blind old witch. I grabbed a red marker pen from the drawer in the kitchen and held it above the cards. I had to kill this lie. Kill it dead. Words have life. I struck a big red cross over her words on each card. I hovered, clasping the red pen like a dagger, still, like the lifeless stiff misshapen rug. Four cards, one line. I wrote “SHE’S LYING” in capitals on each of them and snatched them up, clutched my keys and left the house to post them.

I scampered back and collapsed, gasping at the front door. My hands shook as I fought with the lock. In. I headed straight for the red pen and then the rug. I fell on my knees, threw it flat and scrapped a big cross. I went over and over the two diagonal lines until the ink was dry and my knees hurt. Struggling up, I gave it one final kick.

A week passed. The rug was still there. The cross less red; in fitting with the old stain of my mother’s blood. I’d spilt pizza on it and hadn’t bothered to clean it up. I’d dropped a half-eaten apple on it and left it to rot. I was on edge since I’d sent the cards. I’d revealed the truth.

Back on Mortimer street, I realised I hadn’t seen the old lady since the forth postcard and since I’d sent them. She’s probably done for. But she couldn’t take her lies with her. I’d made sure of that. I wanted to get drunk.

I sat alone in the corner of the stale dank pub, with my third pint and couldn’t think why I didn’t drink more often. Sunken on the rickety chair, I dazed off a little. I needed to get rid of the rug.

I finished my pint, got up and bumped into the man next to me. I put my hand up in apology, and stumbled over to the door. A sullen group, all wearing black, pushed passed as I lent on the wall and held the door open. A woman, lagging behind, bumped into me as I finally shuffled out.

“James?”

“huh?”

“James, isn’t it?”

I fiddled with a loose button at the bottom of my scruffy coat.

“It’s Hattie. We went to school together.”

“Hattie,” I said.

“I’m back for my mum’s funeral.”

“Oh.”

“I got back, just in time, and spent a few days with her.”

“Oh,” the button came off.

“It’s a weird story actually.”

“Hmm,” I didn’t know what to do with the button.

“I got these postcards.”

I scratched my head and blinked my left eye.

“Anyway, it’s a long story.”

I rolled the button between my fingers.

“Do you want to come in for a drink? It’s on me. We want to celebrate her life.”

I coughed, “Off home.”

“Oh that’s a shame.”

I shoved the button in my pocket.

“I heard about your mum too. It was a while ago, wasn’t it?”

I crouched down to tie my bootlace.

“Ten years ago? I can’t imagine. I’m so sorry.”

I changed foot and re-tied the other lace.

“I heard she didn’t leave a note.”

I put my hand against the wall and edged my way up, “Gotta go.”

“Oh,OK. I’m here for a while. Maybe I can pop in for a glass or two?”

I tried a smile but I couldn’t remember how to. “Or a cuppa? Are you still at the same address?”

“Er,” I paused, and looked at her for the first time, “53 Lower Street.”

“Got it. Well, until then then.”

I watched her walk inside, “Hattie?”

“Yes?”

“A note, it would’ve…words would’ve helped; some life to them, given me something to..to..”

She smiled and put her hand on my arm.

“She said she was fine...” I said.

“but she wasn’t.”

“No, she wasn’t,” I mumbled.

She nodded, “The postcards, all rather odd actually, but they changed everything.”

“Words matter,” I said,

“Very much. I wish I knew who’d sent them.”

We stood in silence apart from the sound of the dull indistinct natter from inside the pub. I pulled my coat around me, the steady gaze from Hattie penetrating its fold. Stuck to the spot, I faltered and stepped forward,

“I’m off then,” and took another step away from her. She moved swiftly in, and without warning she gave me the warmest, tightest hug I’d had in years.

“See you soon,” she said and entered the pub.

It was a clear night and the dense heavy clouds had been drawn back, a final curtain call, and exposed the bright stars. I had to get home and bin the rug.