“Do you know what you’re doing?” The beekeeper looked at her with raised eyebrows and tried to ignore how unexpectedly sexy she looked in a beesuit. The tight gathering at the waist; a makeshift belt had hanging from it a hive tool, a bee brush and a rag. The belt was a length of thick string with loops she’d fashioned into it. Penny didn’t look up but answered, “no, not really, but I thought it time to try. I’ve watched you so often.” The beehive at the bottom of Penny’s garden had been in place for some weeks now, ever since the swarm had arrived in her chimney and she’d had the local bee wrangler come to deal with them. She hadn’t expected someone quite so tall and wiry and she found Mr Westerham a little intimidating.
The plan had been that once settled the bees would be moved elsewhere, say to his house or to a local apiary. But he’d kept coming to check on them and unawares she’d found random reasons why they should stay a little longer. And here they were. And here he was too. Again. She’d worried about the weather at one point, but he never did get to the bottom of what the weather had to do with it. Bees are bees. They go with whatever the weather is, wherever they are.
Sweating slightly, she was shoving the thin metal edge of the hive tool under the hive roof to get it loose enough to remove. She’d seen him do this many times. From afar it hadn’t looked that hard. Despite her new, super impenetrable beesuit she was less confident than she had expected. She prodded cautiously at the proposis seal the bees had worked into every possible gap. It was much harder to break than she’d expected. Her special gloves were a bit too big and their rubberised layer meant her fingers couldn’t move properly. She shoved a little harder with the hive tool and heard the cracking sound of propolis coming away from the two surfaces it was gluing together. She loosened the hive’s roof and with a beaming smile dropped her hive tool and grasped the roof’s edges with both hands and lifted it.
“Oh,” she said breathless, stepping from foot to foot, looking about her, her mind a blank as to what should happen next. He reached over and took the roof from her, leaning into her warmth and sensing her worry. He leant the roof against the hive stand and stepped back, saying “now you’ve got to do the same with the crown board, but that’s much easier.” And he turned and headed back to his car. “Yes” she said, “the crown board,” watching him move up the garden on long lean strides. She pried off the thin layer of wood sitting between the roof and the bees, and less stressed put it on the ground against the roof.
She was held in the breath of thousands of honey bees, their propolis, honey, pollen a complex mingling of summer intoxications. Now in his beesuit Mr Westerham was back, peering over her shoulder into the hive. The scent of him reached slowly into her senses. In the unexpected light the bees were momentarily agitated and their sound rose loud and a little angry before settling slowly back to a steady hum. “What next?” she said as he drew in closer, taking her hive tool in hand to reach for the first of the several frames hanging in the top box of the hive. As he reached over she felt herself pulled slightly closer to him as the tethered tool reached top stretch. She felt herself breathe in a drowsing blend, at once exhilarating and soporific. His hand on hers guided the hive tool to loosen the frame as he whispered “you take one side and I’ll get the other.” The clumsy gloves didn’t help, but together they lifted a small wooden rectangle, heavy with summer, heavy with honey and she let out a small gasp amazed at what she was sharing. Standing still, holding a frame full of honey and watching the bees calm and busy, shaping their spaces for winter stores and for new bees. He too was held still in a space he didn’t quite recognise, beekeeper or not.
There was somewhere in Len’s remote memory the image of a girl. Or maybe she was actually a woman, a being fully grown, an adult? But no, Len preferred the girl image instead. The girl he was thinking about would be a woman now he understood, but the memory of her from his schooldays was far more engaging. She was winsome and pretty, with mouse brown hair and the occasional spot amongst her freckles. Maybe he’d see her again sometime and she’d remember him. Such were Len’s musings as he ambled along on his dog walk, smoking his eighth cigarette of the day, unaware of the scent of early bluebells drifting from the woodland floor as he trampled them underfoot. His dog was off somewhere and Len’s big boots raised soft divots from the saturated ground.
The trees swayed and shivered in a chill spring wind as Len’s dog came bounding up and turned almost immediately away again. He took a long drag and fancied he saw a girl come slowly into focus. Len’s memory flashed so many convincing images that he almost called out to her. It was as well he didn’t because the girl that Len could see wasn’t a girl at all, definitely not a teenage girl and not even a young woman. The person who came into view was muddy, slightly overweight and dressed in too-tight jodpurs and top boots. An ugly crash hat was crammed down over her brow, its forlorn silk hanging wet and loose. This was definitely a woman, older by far than the pictures in his head now evaporating into wispy scraps and fragments. Noting the mud and that she wasn’t walking quite straight, Len called “are you alright?” As she approached he saw a tear stained face and the drooping silk. He could see it was attached to the helmet and wondered what it was for.
“No I’m not alright,” she said crossly and then more politely. “Have you seen a chestnut horse come this way? Filthy dirty? We fell over in a boggy puddle that was deeper than it looked. She took off”. Dozey Bitch was fawning at the woman’s knees and she pulled off a glove to fuss with the dog’s ears. She waited for some response from the man who seemed to Melanie to be a few pennies short of a pound. He might have been trying to parse what she had said as he puffed his cigarette. Too impatient to care Melanie decided he was probably just a bit simple. “Have you seen a loose horse pass this way?” she said slightly more loudly and with suppressed impatience. He wasn’t short of pennies, but in the wake of his nostalgic musings Len was indeed struggling to keep up. He watched his fickle dog make a new friend and mumbled something about horses not really being his thing, but that Dozey Bitch was enjoying herself. He stumbled forward to reclaim the dog apologising, “no, sorry, no sign of a horse, but we’ve only just come onto this path”. He tried to be helpful adding “your horse maybe headed up to the fields, maybe it followed the light?” He’d heard somewhere that animals and people went for the light or downhill when they were lost. He wasn’t sure if it was made up or not. He was sure that he’d headed downhill when he’d started losing track of his life. Perhaps it made some sort of sense for horses too.
Melanie considered this a not unreasonable suggestion and revised her opinion of the slow-witted man, upgrading him from stupid to simply vague. She glanced about looking for where the most light might be, standing in silence with the man and his dog for a moment. Len couldn’t bear the empty quiet and started to move along saying “we’ll be off and we’ll keep an eye out”. In an effort to be helpful he added “maybe you should head up that way”. And as he turned and pointed away towards the fields at the edge of the wood, they saw the golden outline of mud splattered horse. It was nosing at a patch of grass, its reins on the ground and a stirrup flung over onto the wrong side of the saddle. The horse gave its nose a blow as it looked up, noted their presence and then went back to grazing.
Melanie was beaming. “I don’t suppose you’d mind just standing here while I catch her would you? I don’t want her to think she’s being chased. She can be a bit flighty sometimes.” “Not at all” Len said wondering if the horse was looking flighty or not. She just looked like a horse covered in mud and eating grass. He admired her tail floating sideways as the chilly breeze gave it a lazy push. Len looked on as Melanie walked carefully towards her horse. Something in her movement brought back the image of that girl he knew at school. It was the same image that had been floating in his brain when he’d seen this horsey woman from afar, and past bled into present. He watched her approach the horse and catch hold of the rein as she gave the horse a little pat. He continued to watch as she peered about looking for something that would work as a mounting block. Len wondered what she was doing. Horse people. He didn’t understand that the days when Melanie could just vault into the saddle from a standing start were no longer hers. They belonged to a time long ago, to her teens. And the times when she could put her foot into the stirrup and spring up into the saddle were also long gone. She remembered sometimes that they ended somewhere around the time of her second child’s fourth birthday. Much ended at around that time, although it had taken some years for Melanie to notice.
With nothing to use as a step, Melanie had no option but to ask for help. “I don’t suppose you could give me a leg up could you? My name is Melanie by the way, and this is Rizzo.” It took Len a moment to understand that Rizzo was the horse and not an imaginary friend, as he raised a hand in greeting. He pulled Dozey Bitch back in time to stop her planting a couple of paws on Rizzo’s foreleg. “Len. And this is Dozey Bitch, DB for short. Happy to help. Not sure if I can but I’ll try, a first for everything right? What do I do?”
Rizzo and Dozey Bitch were giving each other little nose to nose kisses, but the mare was less inclined to get up close and personal with Len. He had a strange scent about him and he held onto the dog a little too tightly. At least that’s what Rizzo had got from the dog in their brief conversation. Melanie still could see nothing she could stand on where overhanging trees didn’t get in the way of her swing, or where there would be room for Rizzo to stand while Melanie climbed aboard. The wind was getting colder, she was wet and her hands were freezing. What had started as a glorious excursion in the early spring sunshine was turning miserable. Len was still there standing with a dead fag end in his fingers and a gormless smile on his face. It was a kind face Melanie noted.
He repeated that he was “willing to have a go, but what should I do?” “Ok. What you have to do is to cup your hands, so that I can put my foot into them like they’re a stirrup. “Right” said Len observing the muddiness of her booted foot. “Then on the count of three, you give me a boost and I get into the saddle. Does that make sense?” Len pondered this. Given his twenty a day habit, total lack of upper body strength and Melanie’s general bulk, he should have said that it made no sense whatsoever. But with remnants of his teenage fantasies tangling his memory and his manly pride in play, Len did not say this. Instead he crushed his defunct dog-end into his pocket and found himself bellowing with considerable enthusiasm “Perfect. Absolutely. Let’s get this done”. Melanie looked at him askance as he crouched down and leading her horse away took Dozey Bitch to a nearby tree. She looped the lead over a low branch and knotted it tight. She then came back to Len, still bent over, positioned Rizzo closer to him and waited. He became aware that Melanie wanted to give him instructions, so he uncurled and stood upright. “This is how you need to stand and how you hold your hands,” she said, crouching down in a half-squat with her hands cupped in front of her, arms extended, elbows slightly bent.”
As she showed him what to do, Len was reminded of how rugby players get into position for a scrum and remembered that once upon a time, he played rugby for his school. He could even run quite fast. But that was before the fags and the stress of business, marriage and kids, relocations and missteps, all the things that made him feel so very old. How did he get such a distance from the Len who played rugby, the Len besotted with a spotty teenage girl whose image had unexpectedly floated up from the bluebells on chilled spring air.
He cleared his throat with a little harrumph and looked to the side. He made a vague engineer’s calculation of the total load, the height he would have to lift up to and the duration of the carry. “How hard can it be,” he said with a laugh as he approached the mare and went to half-heartedly pat her neck. She immediately swung away from him, a suspicious look in her eye. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll have hold of the reins and keep her head facing in your direction.” Rizzo, well aware of the entertainment value in swinging away from Melanie when she tried to mount, understood that this new version of the game might even be better. Rizzo could smell the stranger’s concern mingling with his peculiar bodily stink and the sweet aromas of bluebells and aconites. Melanie was waiting. Len nodded and stretched up manfully ready for a go at the required half-squat. “Let’s give it a try shall we?” she said trying to sound encouraging. Melanie was getting cold and the mud was drying on her clothes, as well as on her horse. It would be too chilly to hose Rizzo down once they got home so she’d need to be brushed, she thought crossly. “Ready?” she said plastering a bright smile on her face. She gathered up her reins taking care to hold the nearside one a little shorter and half turned towards Len who shuffled closer, his hands ready to take Melanie’s left foot. But he wasn’t quite close enough and as Melanie placed her muddy left boot into his cupped hands the mare took a small step sideways and Melanie swung over into empty space as Len tumbled forwards into her ample rear. He let go of Melanie’s foot and fell to his knees as she also fell while DB barked her encouragement. Unperturbed Rizzo rested a hind foot and gave her head a little shake. Melanie tried hard to be patient and not irritated, as she helped Len back onto his feet. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m so sorry. What did I do wrong? I’ll get it right this time.” His voice was shaking a bit, as he searched for the someone lost in his life’s maze who was the man who could do this. Surely he was still there. Surely he could be sufficiently bold to stand close enough to a horse to help a lady get back into the saddle. Trying hard not to hiss as she spoke, Melanie pointed out that he needed a) to be sideways on to the horse and b) close enough to said horse that his shoulder was almost touching her. She added that c) he should give her, Melanie, the biggest boost he could muster. And that he should let go of her foot once Melanie was airborne.
These instructions Len repeated, a), b), c) trying to joke that c), a), b) probably wouldn’t work. Melanie gave him a blank look and began to think that walking home was an attractive option, despite the lowering sky and the oncoming dusk. One more try though, so they got into position for the second attempt. Rizzo’s reins were more tightly held and Len’s back more tightly bent, his legs more firmly planted. Melanie got her foot into his hands once more and felt an upward boost at best described as pathetic. It got her ample bosom only as high as Rizzo’s saddle, and she had no prospect at all of casting a leg across the horse’s back. Dropping back to the ground Melanie noticed that Len was wheezing as he tried to make light of the second failure. “Well, at least she stood still this time,” he observed encouragingly. “Let’s give it another go, I think I’ve got the movement now”.
Len crouched once more, braced and ready to put every bit of his middle-aged unfit self into the heaveho. On the third attempt Len lifted her so forcefully that Melanie shot up into the air and came down hard onto her horse’s back. A much surprised Rizzo shot forward in alarm almost unseating her rider and knocking Len once again to the ground. Melanie lost hold of one of the reins so Rizzo, pulled to the left and circled back towards Len now on his knees coughing and spluttering. He struggled upright in time to feel Melanie’s foot hit square and hard in his chest, as she reached for her stirrup. An epic coughing fit turned his face a shade of sunset crimson and he dropped his hands to his knees in an effort to get back his breath. Her stirrup, reins, control and composure regained, Melanie pulled up her horse, turned her and returned to her new friend at a measured jog. His face still puce but his breathing getting steadier, Len was wrestling with the very tight knot Melanie had put in his dog’s lead. He had almost stopped coughing and wheezing and vowed aloud that he should stop smoking. “Yes you should,” Melanie agreed as she turned towards home. “Thanks again for your help. Are you sure you’re alright?” “Fine. Fine. Glad you’re back on board” he wheezed. Len clutched at Dozey Bitch’s lead and headed for home. He watched as Rizzo, carried her bouncing mistress away and out of sight. He leant over to cough with more vigour but the cold air was making his lungs hurt. He let DB off the lead and saw her head off at speed after Rizzo. DB ignored Len’s feeble calls and he soon reverted to his coughing. The afternoon chill reached into his over extended lungs, slicing like razor blades. Len tried to find the space where he’d been a mere half an hour ago, calmly smoking and lost in the memory of a teenage crush and youth’s warm glow. The sound of his wheezing reminded Len that he wasn’t dead yet and that he probably shouldn’t try to hurry after his dog. He even wondered if she might follow Rizzo home, and that Melanie might try to bring her back to him in the dark and chilling woods. A teenage girl on a horse and a promising rugby player might yet end up somewhere warm, somewhere they could come in from time’s unrelenting cold.
The dust blowing in from the Sahara was turning everything orange. Joe could barely see the tops of the hills from his little window, and the gold of the dust shimmered as the sun crept up behind the houses. The colour reminded him of a traffic light’s glow, the warning one, the one that meant put your foot down. But here in this remote place there were no traffic lights and no need to hurry. Here life was lazy, slow. This he knew, so he didn’t put his food down and instead turned away from the light. But his fingers were clenching and an urgency pushed at him as he filled the kettle and put the toast on.
In the distance he heard the putt-putt-putt of a fishing boat coming in and wondered how long it would take her to get home, how long before the toast started to burn, the tea to stew. He could hear the sound of voices drifting up from the shore, but he couldn’t see the people. He couldn’t see the man lifting crates of dead fish onto the quai. He couldn’t see her jump out of the boat and turn away from the boat, the man and the crates. But he thought he could picture them in his head, her, the captain and Mattia. Mattia. Tall and narrow, classic Roman nose, receding hairline hidden under a grubby beany. His large hands are worn and crabbed, his voice mumbly and infrequent. He walks ramrod straight, muscular, intimidating. He fascinates Joe.
Joe had only met this man a few times, but each time he had studied him carefully. He was to be Joe’s model for the romantic hero in Rock of Sorrows, Joe’s novel. An engimatic Italian speaking English with a lazy accent, waving his hands with every phrase, sucking on his cigarette. Seductive beyond the random scowls and silences. But getting this man onto the page was proving harder than Joe had expected. He wasn’t sure where to start. Joe was having the same problem writing his main character’s love interest, he just couldn’t find the thread. The plot and narrative arc were also more of a challenge than Joe had anticipated, so the writerly journey was going very slowly. Sometimes he couldn’t even spell.
Joe suppressed the nagging sense that maybe he wasn’t a writer after all, that it was just a vanity. He heard the door bang and called to Cathy “How was it?” He poured the tea and buttered the toast as she kicked off her sandals and threw her jacket onto the little chair by the door. Warm air drifted in as she tossed a couple of red mullets into the sink. They narrowly missed a bowl half filled with the dank remnants of yesterday’s washing up. They floated sadly on greasy grey water.
“Oh it was as lovely as usual, although the sea was a bit choppier than I like”. Cathy smiled up at Joe, open eyed, loving and gave his arm a little squeeze. But Joe had drifted off thinking again of what he could do about his novel, how to make his version of Mattia a bit more talkative, more friendly. He aimed a sincere smile at Cathy, and almost made it. “He’s an interesting guy, that Mattia”. In life Mattia wasn’t particularly interesting, he was just quiet. Joe was sure he ought to be mysterious and sexy in the book, but how to achieve it? Joe handed Cathy a mug of tea, watching as she slid into her chair and blew gently at the steam. It wasn’t really tea weather, not really a tea climate even but, being English, tea was always the answer no matter the question. The question was hovering but it hadn’t yet arrived.
“Did you manage to get anything written last night?” she said conversationally. She really did want to know, want to hear that his book was progressing. Joe considered a small fib, a couple of details to give Cathy reassurance, but not necessarily the whole story. There was no story to tell. “I’ve got the structure outlined, I think”. An easy lie. Structure was something someone had said was important for a novel. He wanted to understand it so much, but writing Chapter 1 at the top of one sheet of paper and The End at the bottom of another surely didn’t count. Cathy’s late night fishing trips gave him extra time and space to write. The emptiness of night, the silence and aloneness, it was all supposed to create the perfect writerly atmosphere. And for Cathy it was wonderful to be out on the sea in the dark, waves slopping at the boat, creaking sounds and random splashes, silent fishermen.
When Joe and Cathy had first asked Mattia and his father if she might come out on the boat with them, the two men had been baffled. They couldn’t understand if they had misunderstood and if they hadn’t, why she would want to. “It’s very late at night, we go”. Mattia’s father had said with each hand holding fingers to thumbs and his wrists rising up and down. “What you want to do in the dark, on a stinking fishing boat?” Cathy earnest and intense was hard to resist. “Sometimes I want to be out on the sea in the dark and quiet and we don’t have a boat of our own. I won’t be any trouble. We have Euros for the fuel”.
Joe had stayed in the background during the curious negotiations, pondering the idea of including the father in his book as well as Mattia. He gave a little cough and expanding on what Cathy had said, gave it a sort of patriarchal stamp of approval. “Yes, we’re happy to help defer any additional expense you might incur”, he concluded, smug and superior in his excellent use of the English language. The two Italians looked at him for a moment, and recognising a fellow male, but not entirely understanding what he had said, nodded. “Okay, we do this. You come tonight at three, we go. €50. Okay?”. And they returned to their boat, muttering and gesticulating with the occasional glance over their shoulders at Cathy, waving and beaming over her shoulder as she and Joe walked away.
That was two months ago and not much of Rock of Sorrows had made it onto the page, not even a structure. But he was pleased that Cathy gave him those extra hours to work in, flattered that she made sure he had a fully charged laptop and phone, pencils and notebooks. He had been content to sit there with an oil lamp casting gentle light over his random notes and sentence scraps. But there weren’t many more words now than there had been at the start of the experiment. And the struggle was getting too much, despite the online forums with other writers in other time zones working on similarly tricky dilemmas. Those conversations had started out being very stimulating, with story prompts, advice about narration and how to make the show-don’t-tell thing work. But it hadn’t been as easy as Joe thought to put any of it into practise. Instead he was getting bored with listening to people whinge about the costs of self-publishing, the impossibility of finding an agent, artificial intelligence and recalcitrant characters and dialogue.
“Let’s see where you are? Can I read what you’ve got so far?”. Cathy bright eyed and caffeinated was searching the desk, fingering notebooks and looking at him expectantly. Silence. Joe turned away, went to the window and opened wide the shutters. He saw the orange dust shrouding the tops of the hills as he let in the broadening day. He put the notebooks and his pencils in a drawer, smiled a rueful smile and gently pushed down the lid of his laptop.
The sea, the sea, the sea, the slowly swelling sea. She looked up from her book to see if his boat was coming in yet. They should have been back in port by now. Evening light was lingering slowly grey across the risen waves as they pounded the harbour wall. From her viewpoint halfway up the hill, warm and dry in her sea facing room, she could see no boats coming in, just the churning feathered and unrelenting waves.
Startled and cricking her neck as she came too suddenly awake, the thumping on the door chorused in sync with the booming wind hitting the house and calling a warning. On the doorstep stood her lover, wet and weeping. “What’s happened, what’s the matter? Come in come in out of the wet and tell me what the matter is, what’s happened. You’re crying. What’s happened?”
He was a small man, Jason, and he moved with a strange sideways gait, thanks to a legacy hurt, a childhood injury that didn’t heal right, something to do with a slide as she recalled. She always noticed this movement and its curious irregular swing. It never changed. A constant, a strange sort of comfort. But the tears, the tears were not a constant, nor a comfort. She watched as he dumped rain slickers, boots and hat on the hall floor, splashing sea and rainwater onto the narrow walls where the water droplets slowly dribbled into corners and wept away into the carpet.
“Come in by the fire and tell me what’s wrong.” She pictured a run over dog, damage to the boat or a landslip that might’ve overcome her beehives. She was a little alarmed to see him go straight to the booze cupboard and pour himself a stiff one. Then he stood, staring out at the darkness and watching the rain hurl itself against the windows. Sparks as she threw another log on the woodburner before closing the door swift and tight against the surging heat. “Jason, what is it? Please.” She was starting to feel urgent, a more than anxious foreboding rising up inside, almost to nauseousness. She watched him sip his drink through the tears and choking gasps. The choking gasps might’ve been the whiskey: Jason didn’t drink. Even more cause for alarm as he contiued to sip and wheeze.
By now the storm had overwhelmed ocean, sky, hillside and all the rooftops, pathways and trees. Nothing was beyond its reach. Everything the storm touched was held in a tight and noisy and deadly embrace. Everything was teased with its terror, with rising fears that this time the weather might win and somehow take them all. She often told herself this, that it would one day take them all, that the weather would be the ultimate winner. But this was a silliness and she focused again on Jason. As Fiona leaned in close to him she felt fear tighten its grip and she knew it wasn’t the boat or the bees. “What happened?” she whispered, her round face tight and drawn of colour despite the woodburner’s warmth stretching throughout the room. “I was watching for your boat, but I must’ve nodded off so I didn’t see you come in.” Jason swallowed the last of his whiskey and slowly reached out with great deliberation to put the empty glass on the little table beside him. His face was very red and his tears were slowly falling. His eyes downcast and he picked at random bobbles of wool on his jumper. Then he took her hand and tried to look at her through the tears. Her eyes were wide with anticipation and her face pale with unsaid understanding, despite the warmth of the room. She knew. She was calm. But she needed the words. “It’s Callum isn’t it? It’s Cal. Where is he?” “Gone.” Jason sobbed and put his free hand over his face, clutching Fiona’s hand tighter and trying to keep his shoulders from rising with his buried sobs. “He went overboard with a huge swell we didn’t see coming and we got him out but by the time we did, in fading light and with the ring and the boathook and even a net we got him out, we didn’t lose him but it was too slow, we were too slow; he was too long under the water, he was too long without air, he drowned in front of us and the sea just kept pulling and pulling at him and we kept trying to get him in close to the boat and he fought and struggled and reached out for us but the sea kept burying him under, kept on and on and on until there was nothing but the bulk of him, dead and us still hanging on to the net. We lost the boathook and the ring. Nothing worked, nothing worked to keep him above the water. But we got him back. The sea couldn’t take him, but it was too late for Callum. Too late.” An overwhelming torrent and Jason fell sobbing into Fiona’s lap, buried under waves of sorrow and the horror of his last few hours.
Fiona sat very still stroking her lover’s wet hair and damp back. She noticed he was sodden through and that a soft mist rose from his crumpled body as the spirit of the sea drifted up now to claim her in a steamy caress. Her heart seemed to have stopped in her chest and her breathing was blocked. As night and storm slowly faded across the hours, the lovers were still stiff and still and silent as the morning light stretched into the room and eventually roused them.
Then to face the horrors of police, inquest, funeral, and all the ancillary processes of death. And then six months later what Fiona and Jason did next. What they and Callum would have forever, together. A window. A stained glass window in the village church that would memorialise Callum and all the other sailors the sea had claimed.
She said loud “I want the window to be blue. I want it to be of sea and sky, of dawn and dusk, of what is beneath and above the surface, of truth and of turmoil. I want it to be modern and old, a luminous link between what is and what was, something ancient.” A little confused Jason nodded his agreement as the artist took notes and smiled a gentle understanding. “What was he like, Callum?” she said looking from one to the other. That neither of them could answer straightaway was at once a little puzzling and somehow encouraging. The artist tried a different tack. “You want this window to memorialise Callum, yes?” Jason this time with a sudden blurt, “no, no, not a memorial, a celebration of the sea and those it has claimed. A celebration of glory, of wonder and of life.” Fiona squeezed his hand. “Yes” she said, “that’s it, a celebration so that every scrap of light that shines through your work will be like a new light, a new life.”
The window took some time to complete, but it was finally installed one sharp winter morning, with a ceremony and blessings and the trappings of holiness. The watching sea glittered proud and beautiful whispering to a gleaming sky and the light of life. The small gathering stood back to hear the whispers and watch life’s glow reach into the church, illuminating all that it touched. Life. Immutable. Endless.
And error. The journey wasn’t improving and her map-reading skills were clearly nonexistent. The blind date had been fine, but what could go wrong in a Mexican restaurant where they served margueritas in glasses so big you could barely lift them. But this, finding a party somewhere in Santa Monica, was different and here they were on the 10 looking for the exit by trial and error. “I know exactly how we get there,” she’d said when she suggested this Santa Monica excursion as a second date. They’d met downtown, driving their cars on the 110 to the 10 stopping for coffee and leaving her car at a Denny’s somewhere off La Brea. He was driving and she was reading the map on her ’phone. He should’ve known this wasn’t going to work. She’d been a bit confused getting them back onto the freeway, so they’d ended up taking Apple Street running parallel to the 10. Slowly.
He knew the way to Santa Monica, but chose to support her agency. It seemed only fair. On the surface street he took advantage of the dawdling pace to glance at her. He was wondering what had made that first date so great. Was it the voice, slightly drawling, peppered with pauses as she stared at the ceiling in search of the next words. Or was it the soft gleam of such very pale skin, almost translucent and unworldly in this dessicated Californian climate. Or was it that endearing vulnerability that made him want to wrap her up in his arms and just hold her forever. Or was it just tequila and lust. Libidinous joys had been sparse of late.
That voice, still gentle and sympathetic, was getting annoying. It never got out of second gear; he was trying to confirm that her friend’s baby shower was down on Second Street in Santa Monica. But the drawl was almost tidal in its relentlessness, so he tried hard not to show his exasperation and to be conversational in an eh-huh, ok, uhmmhmm, sort of way. And now they’re facing another navigational challenge, cruising within spitting distance of the 7B on ramp at Washington Boulevard, but her directions take them not onto the 10 but to Venice Boulevard running parallel to the freeway. Again. Her concentration on her ’phone meant momentary suspension of her droning voice; he could finally tell her, “listen, I haven’t been quite on it with you. I told you I’m not from LA. True. But I have lived here over 10 years. I can tell you we need to get on the 10, so I’ll take it from here. Okay?”. Those big baby blues turned on him as she slowly twisted in her seat and lowered her sunglasses from the top of her head to the well-sculpted bridge of her nose. She said nothing as he took the Culver Junction and got them back onto the 10 heading finally at a decent clip in the direction of Santa Monica and the now questionable joys of her friend’s party. A baby shower? Really? What was he thinking?
They crossed the 405 in silence and when he asked if she was sure about Olympic she said nothing. He took the exit and made a U turn at 14th to pull up in front of Tacos Por Favor. He knew Mexican was a fave food and he knew he’d gotten them back on track. He knew too that her calculations for how long the journey would take were wildly inaccurate. From where they were on Olympic would take them about fifteen minutes max to get to the party. They had almost an hour to spare. “We’ll be there way early. I need to eat. I think you’ll like this place.” She said nothing, wrestling instead with Google and its confusing maps. “So are we staying on Olympic,” she ventured, not moving. He was standing in the sharp sunshine, doing his best to keep focused on why he was bothering with this vague and annoying woman. But there was something in her winsomeness, her trial and error approach to getting somewhere. The Santa Ana wind was starting to pick up and he fancied he could already smell the hint of smokey air from distant fires. She was out of the car and looking at him with an equivocating expression; sunglasses up, brow slightly wrinkled, eyebrows raised, the mouth a quizzical pout. He melted a little. “Let’s go inside, let’s order; and I can explain.”
I can remember George Lewis and how the room smelled of smoke and beer and sweat. Breathing deep I can remember being up so very high and seeing the top of my Dad’s head. I can’t remember why I was on George Lewis’s shoulders when I was two years old, only the persistent rumbling noise; shapes, shadows dancing random across my eyes. Maybe the pictures were real, maybe not.
I can remember later in the street feeding the rag and bone man’s piebald horse. The horse couldn’t see me unless I stood front of him and my mother wouldn’t let me do that. She didn’t understand that the blinkers blocked the view or how the scent and heat of his shining black and white coat embraced me. I stared up not down, breathing deep. I never saw what Dad helped the toothless rag and bone man load up onto his cart. I can remember too the meandering echoes of Billie Holiday and New Orleans jazz.
I can remember much later standing on the corner of Cambridge Circus and Shaftesbury Avenue waiting for you. Looking. Would I know you now that you are old, would you know me now that I am nineteen? And then there you were, I saw you. I watched you looking furtive and anxious and guilty. But for whom the guilt? Maybe for all of us. Then we sat awkward and afraid of each other, no mention of sitting on a man’s shoulders or wanting to look a piebald horse in the eye. It was just uncomfortable words passing as conversation between a lonely daughter and her estranged father. The girl was unacknowledged. The man was unknown. They were anonymous, cloaked a hidden shared yearning, wanted none of this to be true, wanted that none of it had happened.
But it had; it could only keep on happening unless the pattern changed. She wanted it but he didn’t. “It was a long time ago.” Denial, hiding, blocking, rejection. Rejection again, but that wasn’t true either, just the thing he knew he had to do. There were other considerations, other truths, other hearts he must not let break.
The sounds and chaos of emotions grown and slowly settled over many years, over many sad walks around Cambridge Circus, over many times in the 100 Club and the Pizza Express in Soho. The tears in the dark, the heaving gulping sobs, the weeping and slow tears for what was so long gone, were ceased. The laughter came back, the joy of hearing him play, of seeing faces smiling from the past. “It should never have happened” Monty said. And then Dad died. And no it never should have happened but it did and out of destruction he had build much more. He had given something to share, something of love remembered.
A new CD with tracks from 1959. Dad on drums and George Lewis on clarinet. Listen to it? Absolutely. But not just yet. I can’t …
The women were gathered around the steps in the creeping cold of a November Saturday, waiting for a heavy black door to open. The shadowed air was damp and clinging. False lashes were wilting, tight blonde pony tails were limp. A handful of long black spirals, laquered and permed had lost their spring. Only the botoxed lips and the fingernail claws were holding up. Some of the women were holding small children, some had slightly less small children in pushchairs. Some women were pregnant, a desolate cast to their faces. Jolly grandmas with lots of missing teeth were making jokes and smoking. Grim faced male friends and brothers kept their faces tight and unnavigable. They waited at the foot of the stone steps, slightly apart from the women and fidgetting from foot to foot.
In front of them all the high flintstone walls of the prison tipped forwards against the sky, looming and threatening to fall and engulf them at any moment. Somewhere inside their men were waiting, some keen and impatient, anxious to discuss what would change when they got out. Some were bored and unrepentant, disinterested. Some were annoyed that visiting hours, the visiting 90 minutes, coincided with the footie on the telly.
Behind the thick locked door the black and white uniforms, faces carved, colourless and set were waiting. And the keys on long chains, the security cameras, the registration forms, the sniffer dogs, weapons and id scanners. The curious atmosphere of routine boredom and habitual watchfulness. And time, flaccid and loose, moves patiently along the confining walls and corridors, leans lazy against hidden ceilings, hides in corners and under the furniture. It distorts the days and nights to create a new continuum.
The loneliness of the women, their patience and confusion, their anger and fear keeps company with time’s distortion. Inside in the waiting rooms, it is too warm, too close. The hovering testosterone of angry young men blisters the air and pock marks our sights and conversations. The slow tango that happens most Saturdays is not a scene we want to see, to share. It’s not a scene we can truly share with the regular visitors, or with their children. But we try to do it anyway.
We all go through the complicated security, sadly simple for the women who do it every week. We all put our stuff in lockers and throw tissues and chewing gum in the bin as instructed, because they are not allowed. We all go through the scanners and let the sniffer dogs do their thing. We all listen to the stern warden who tells us that smuggling drugs into the prison will get us a long prison term. Her voice is strict but also bored and as she calls the names of the women who can go through to the next stage, she jokes about not needing to repeat her other reminders. They try to laugh politely except the granny who guffaws and declares, “alright darlin’ we got it first time around”. Except that the man they are visiting, did not get it the first time around and now here they all were coming to see him again as he waits out his fourth term in prison. Petty thefts and drugs and some violence. He didn’t get it in goes one to four, so five when it comes may be his chance to make a change. All a mistake, granny says.
A little boy of four or five smiles through all this and plays on the floor with the toy farm and its plastic animals. He asks his patient mother endless questions and she answers soft and indulgent, makes him sit beside her and holds his hand tight. He asks me where I live and I tell him and I ask him where he lives. He asks his mum and she tells him and he tells me with a proud smile, rolling the name of his town around his mouth for the first time and then again as he laughs through the word. He repeats it and repeats it and I laugh and his mum tries to laugh too. Tries hard to crack her golden face and stop the welling eyes from overflowing. She reaches for her little boy and folds him tight against her shoulder and he laughs and laughs as her tickling fingers caress him. He has no idea that he’s all there is to keep her from screaming her fear, her loneliness and her shattered belief that it wasn’t meant to be like this. And it wasn’t. It never is.
The whisper went around the classroom, every time Miss turned to the board. Fight. They’re going to get him. After school. That’s what John Carter said. Little new boy‘s gonna get it. But Mrs Vurley didn’t hear it as she turned back to her year 9s and reminded them of the homework. Pointing to the board and “… by Friday no later please.” The bell rang and Mrs Vurley watched them pile out from behind their desks, rushing towards the door. She hadn’t heard the dark whispers but she watched as the new boy slunk away from her, separate from the rest. Did she see fear? “David, David? How are you settling in?” “Yes Mrs Vurley,” he mumbled. Mrs Vurly put her pencil behind her ear and looked at the boy again, eyebrows raised. She sighed. “Hurry now, it’s hometime, you’re out of here for today.” Looking up at her he said, “Yes miss, but John Carter said …” “John Carter? What about John Carter?” Mrs Vurley didn’t have a John Carter in her class. “John Carter? I don’t think I know him. What about John Carter?” “Nothing miss” said David moving quickly to the door. Delete.
Mrs Vurley looked out of her window at the usual scene of children milling towards the school gates, the lines of cars waiting for some, parents waiting for others. A few were on foot heading home or for the bus. There was only one small knot of boys, with a couple of girls in tow, lingering by the gate. She didn’t see David out by the gates and gradually the group of boys and their groupies drifted away.
When David came to school the next day as soon as his dad dropped him off he ran a gauntlet of teases and taunts. His dad smiled as he watched with fond memories of his own school days. He didn’t see what he was seeing as he drove away, lost in reveries of a super posh school for boys. Delete. He didn’t hear when they said “white boy, hey whitey, come on, come on tell us who’s in that picture. We got the picture innit. Who is she?” As he drove away his brain had the scene with his boy centre stage, but he wasn’t seeing it. Delete. His brain heard the voices, unhearing the words. Delete. He moved on and stopped thinking about his boy. Delete.
The catcalling was lost in the group, and no one was brave enough to be seen specifically to call out to the new boy. “Fresh off the boat are ya? Fresh from Alabammer are ya? Black Lives Matter ya know, yeah.” Fist saluting and laughing and then mocking his accent, like he was from the deep south and not from New York City. That accent was harder to copy his dad said David had told him when it first happened. And his dad, strong and tall and believing himself a streetwise New Yorker had no idea of how alone his child was. Delete. And so David didn’t speak much at school, not after the first day when he said his name in class and they were all supposed to welcome the new boy. Instead they stared at him and laughed at the way he spoke. Afterwards a couple of them had asked him his mobile number, although he didn’t know what they meant at first. “Oh, cell you mean my cell?” And that had set them off. “Yeah, your cell Yank. Give us your cell.” And they’d all laughed. David small and living in his head, processing the new country, this city school, the scale of it, the weird sports and having to read so much, write so much, confused and uncertain and very alone.
In the staff room Mrs Vurley was reminding herself of what they were supposed to look out for so that they could submit a pupil concern email. In her day bullying was just part of the day, some children were just marked out for it. Would it be how fat or thin they were, how shabby their uniform or beaten up their shoes? Would it be how clever they were or how stupid? Would it be their accent or how clean or dirty their hair was? Would it be how small or big they were, geeky, Jew, Christian or Muslim? She knew that it was impossible to predict, but that it hung on a chance moment, a thin thread and an unpredictable hook. And it was part of school life, ugly or not. Now they had guidelines and rules which at least gave an opportunity to do something. Now at the first sign they were alert and could take steps. And guidelines meant there was no need to convince sceptical staff or heads. Guidelines meant they could do something, not nothing. But guidelines and actions could also push it out of view. Delete.
It was Mrs Vurley’s day to monitor the lunch room so she made a point of watching this new boy, freshly arrived from America with his heavy accent and fretful eyes. She saw him sitting alone as two bigger boys took their places on either side of him. But she didn’t see David leaning forwards into his tray nor did she see the two boys sit closer and closer. Both had been held back from last year. Neither was bright and both were strong and confident, popular. They had pulled their chairs in close to David and were leaning into the boy. She smiled as she saw the Kendulu boy suddenly pull away and David fall sideways under the force and weight of the kid on the other side and they were laughing. Relieved Mrs Vurley turned away to deal with a fuss about mashed potato blowing up in the queue. Delete.
But her attention was soon drawn back to the boys. David’s tray had fallen sideways with him and Kendulu was no longer laughing, but up on his feet. “Look what you done man, look what you done, your shepherd’s pie is all over me trousers. Look at the mess you made!” And his friend jumped up to join in. “Look what you done to Ken’s gear man, look what you done.” They were both towering over David, hands pointing upwards, heads turning from side to side, voices rising, looking for the audience, for response. And they were laughing and patting David on the back. It was impossible to see that the pat was just that little bit too hard, lingering just a little bit too long pushing the boy down. David tried to stand but they had blocked his chair with their feet so he was stuck between the table and his chair half up half sideways and now Ken’s leg with its smears of shepherd’s pie is in David’s hair. It was time to intervene and as Mrs Vurley hoved into view both boys stood back, moving their feet and smug as David’s chair scraped unexpectedly back and he fell onto one knee, baked beans stuck to the tears and his tormentors with their hands in mock surrender. “He’s such a laugh Miss, he spilled his food on me on purpose miss. I done nothin’” and “Yeah Miss, it was on purpose, he’s bullying us, he thinks he’s cool ’cos he’s an American miss.”
As two other staff members started ushering the small audience back to their food, Mrs Vurley looked at the two boys. “What’s this about?” “David?” “Ken?” “Jason?” David said nothing, but shrank even smaller into himself. Kendulu repeated it was on purpose and that they were being picked on by this new boy, who thought he was so great because he came from America. “And you Jason, what do you have to say?” “It weren’t me miss.” The bell rang and Mrs Vurley gestured them away and the two boys sloped off leaving David alone. As he looked up to answer Mrs Vurley’s unheard question David saw Jason draw a long finger in a straight line across his throat, before turning it into a wave and a laugh as Mrs Vurley followed David’s gaze.
“David, how long have you been at this school?” Mrs Vurley was a little embarrassed that she hadn’t really noticed the boy. Delete. Embarrassed but unsurprised. He was an unprepossessing thing, quiet and withdrawn, keeping his head down, avoiding contact. “Five weeks Mrs Vurley.” “Five weeks” she repeated, ”and how long have you been friends with Kenulu and Jason?” David stared sullenly at his lunch tray and its unappealing mess. “They’re not my friends” he mumbled and tried to straighten his shoulders, tried to claw back some sense of dignity. “But they like to follow me and send me messages on FaceBook an’ all. So maybe. Dunno.” There followed a series of questions, questions that Mrs Vurley knew she should ask, even though in the back of her mind she knew the answers already.
Yes, there was harassment, although he was evasive as to its frequency and intensity. Yes there were incidents, like today only mostly unseen and yes there had been unflattering pictures posted online and shared with various school groups. Girls and some boys sent him flirty messages and then ridiculed his replies. They invited him to online chat sessions only to block him at the last minute or worse to hide behind fake accounts and make ugly threats, sometimes with pictures of cats with their throats cut, or birds with their wings ripped off but still alive and bleeding. They threatened to tell his dad that David was staying over with friends, but really they planned to kidnap him and sell him as a sextoy to white supremacists. Mrs Vurley rolled her eyes at this, but still. The digital world’s a dangerous place. “How many David? How many boys and girls are doing this to you?”
By this time David was crying and the lunch room was empty. Mrs Vulney was glad she had no lessons this afternoon and persisted. “Do you know what mobbing is David?” “No miss,” he sniffed. “Do you know how to block people on your social media accounts?” “My dad’s told me I should do that and I’ve tried. But Snapchat messages disappear straight away and they use fake names. I know it’s them, and I want to be their friend though. That’s why I kept my Facebook account after … ” “After what? After what David?” “Nothing” he mumbled drowning in their power. Delete.
As she hit send on her email and its attached Pupil of Concern form, Mrs Vurley hoped that her colleague’s initial call to the family would go somewhere. It didn’t. They laughed it off. Delete. But later Mrs Clayman tried to talk to her son, except that the talk was more a forced encounter. A bully’s privilege? “It’s gone.” “What do you mean gone, David? Are you being picked on or not. You have to tell me.” “It’s gone because it’s SnapChat. The messages disappear straightaway.” “Don’t lie to me David. That makes no sense. I know you’re hiding something from me.” Mrs Clayman didn’t know she needed to get him to take screen shots. Would he have done? Would she have looked? Delete. Mrs Clayman tried another line. “Well what about FaceBook? Show me what you’ve got on FaceBook.” Here David had more to say, “I know I should block them on FaceBook, but if I tell them I’ll block them they just laugh, ooh you know how to block do you. Then they send me notes in History saying sorry. So I unblock them, then it’s ok for a while and then it starts up again. And on Instagram they pretend to like my pictures, but they’re just mocking me. You can tell in the comments.” The tears were rolling down his cheeks as David continued: “And I tried setting WhatsApp so that no one can see my picture and status and Aunty Jean got upset, so I put it back.” David could see that she wasn’t hearing what he said, wasn’t seeing, was inhabiting her own old world. Delete.
Mrs Clayman was starting a block of her own. This was all too silly. They’re just boys being boys with the new kid. It will pass. He was still adjusting to the new life. The school had it in hand. “David, let’s keep this in perspective shall we? They’re just lads and you’re different and sensitive, you know that don’t you? Let’s not get all bent out of shape about kids at school. It’s just their way, the British way, you know that I am pretty sure. You’ll get used to it. It’ll be fine.” Delete.
Meredith March studies the wreck peering at her from the mirror and adds a touch more mascara to already overly mascara-ed eyes. She is always heavily made up, having never fully recovered from her Dusty Springfield circa ’69 phase.
She’s sitting at a mock rococo dressing table wrestling with curling tongs. The dressing table has three mirrors so there’s no escape. The curling tong cable has folded back on itself in many places and refuses to straighten. Not in its nature. When Meredith tries to grab a lock of hair with the tongs, the tightly wound cable kinks, stiff and unyielding, knocking over bottles and assorted lipsticks. Stuff rolls to the edge of the dressing table. Meredith tries to stop things falling to the floor, but the tongs burn her cheek and tear her hair. Weak tears streak black under her eyes. Three sad faces remind her that she is tired and forgotten and life’s pretense is overwhelming.
The dressing table vibrates. There’s a message on her phone. “On way,“ it says. “Flight on time.”
Very happy to have been included in this collection. And flattered.
Delete, she says. Delete and back to the primping which needs more care to be convincing. Delete says Meredith aloud at her three reflections, carefully unwinding her hair from the too-hot tongs. Delete she says again, dabbing cold cream on the red burn mark.
Delete. But then what?
What would she do instead, how would she persuade herself to do anything, go anywhere, see anyone if not for the stranger buckling up and peering out of the window at an airport monotony. He’s her main topic of conversation, with her friends, with the children … but with them less often, they know how she feels about their dad. They understand.
She knows it isn’t love with him, never was really. They don’t know that. It’s not lust any more, and they couldn’t even go there. It faded in about year three. “When I was seven,“ she ponders, struggling into a loud floral print dress he bought her for Christmas.
Seven in dog years is 49. Too old to still be living in different countries. Too old to be waiting for him to get a London posting. Too long to be so old, so static, so floral, so tired. Too long for this same routine.
It wasn’t so bad when the children were young. It wasn’t so bad when the money was anovelty, and the holidays too. New cars. Shopping with the girls. Inane gossip. Housey housey fixy upping. Following the lines. All of it too old. And now: Delete.
Downstairs, Meredith checks her black outfit in the hall mirror, florals now under the wheels of a dark revision. She searches for her car keys, checks the time, puts down food for the cat who’s asleep on a sunny window ledge. He ignores her wistful stroke of his head.
Meredith takes frozen pastries out of the freezer. He likes those Danish cinnamon whirls.
She puts on her coat, picks up her bag and … Delete. Puts the bag down again and runs upstairs. Breathless, she finds her passport and retrieves her stash of €784 in old holiday money. Waters a plant. Glances around the kitchen.
The journey to the airport is about as long as the flight from Madrid, give or take. There’s no need to hurry. She ponders his appearance in arrivals. He’ll be underdressed for the murky Manchester skies. He’ll shiver as they leave the terminal. He’ll say: “Ooh, so much colder than Madrid. I’ll need to pick up a coat.” He’s coming back to his home town, but he likes to remind her of his difference, it will give them something to do, something to fill the space between them. Meredith hears the reruns of those filler conversations as she starts the car and switches off the radio. Delete. No distractions now.
The phone tracker app shows flight BA0461 casting its line across the sky. The M6 is slow as ever and Meredith March has time between stops to scan her phone, check flights, book parking in the short-term carpark. £20 should be enough. Sitting in the traffic, silent, another message on the phone. She texts back: “Yes, I know I booked parking.“ Delete.
It’s Friday night. They can go and get him a coat tomorrow, hit the shopping mall masked and hand-sanitised and count the empty stores. He’ll want a pub lunch. She’ll explain that they can’t. He’ll tell her this commute will only be for another few months. And then he’ll change the subject.
She turns on the radio: “A shooting in Tampa, Florida … ” Delete. Tampa, Florida. We were there once. Flew in direct and spent two weeks arguing about alligators and sun cream with the children. Tampa. Delete.
Pulling into the short-term car park, watching the barrier bounce satisfyingly up, Meredith March smiles, parks and switches off the engine. She leaves the key on the rear passenger side tyre and turns away. She is early. There is time to kill. Kill or be killed. Delete.
When Mr March in his too-thin coat comes out of arrivals, his expensive four-wheeled carry-on in tow, Meredith is watching out of sight. She notes his handsome profile and the way his look slides across the people waiting, as he seeks her out. She’s not quite ready to turn away.
She sees him frown, sees him tap at his phone and wonders why her phone isn’t ringing. As Mr March stands legs astride his case, Meredith March heads quickly for Security before anything can happen to divert her. Amidst hoards of people she is reminded to social distance and to keep moving.
The bored security man in a purple turban is repeating his lines as he scans the queues, checking, always checking. “Laptops, tablets, shoes off, coats off, number four please, and madam to number two. Take off your jacket please”.
Bang bang with the boxes, through the screener, then shoes on, coat on, tablet retrieved. Phone buzzing.
A host of duty free shops on the other side, a host of strangers, a host of new worlds. It’s credit-card heaven in the Kurt Geiger shop with an excessively-made-up young woman, also channelling her inner Dusty. “Lovely make-up,” Meredith can’t help but say and the lovely young girl beams and pats her beehive. She hands over three bags with three new pairs of shoes and one with Meredith’s discards. “I’ll keep these on and you can keep the old ones,” smiles Meredith, handing back the bag.
Next stop is an expensive Tumi expandable carry-on for the shoes and now the Hugo Boss Japanese stretch crepe jacket and matching trousers. The Hermés scarf. The Cartier watch. And the lingerie. And the many hundreds of pounds worth of Sisley make-up.
Another glamourous young woman is massaging her face and holding sample skin tones, head on one side quizzical, eyebrows tight, unfeasibly long fingernails flickering under artificial light. “You have wonderful skin, you know. Shall we try something a little different?”
“Yes, please,” says Meredith. There’s a message from him. “In arrivals.” Delete.
She hands over the credit card and glimpses something a lot different in the mirror. She packs the new beauty regime in the new carry-on and heads for the cashpoint, teetering on her new heels. She withdraws maximum cash from all of his credit cards and has to sit down to stop from feeling dizzy. Picks up her phone again. “Waiting.“ Delete. “Are you held up?”Delete.
Meredith March steps away and checks her gate number, 46. Meredith March heads for the lounge. Sipping cava and picking at cheese she goes online and posts a picture on Facebook of her new suitcase and stilettoed feet with the message: “At airport still waiting for John.“ She crafts a text message to their son: “When you get this, tell him the keys are on the tyre. Level 2 K32. ”
The phone is buzzing again but it’s time for gate 46. Deep breath. Stand tall in those high heels. Tits and teeth. But that buzz. “Where are you?” Delete. As she wheels along in the high new shoes, behind her mask Meredith is gone. Delete.
