This strange tale won first prize and was printed in The Pages Anthology (UK) June 2009

I remembered the first time, walking home from work, I saw the poster.  They called themselves Birds of Paradise, one bird in particular caught my eye.  Stretched with languor on the stage floor, his body melting into a pool, a pool of molten flesh, the face of a boy, eyes widened, almost afraid.  Dark hair and brows, his mouth open.  I still heard the sound of broken glass but I bought a ticket for that nights show at the Midas Theatre.

     At home I ran a bath in preparation.  Put on a slow, seductive blues CD and slipped beneath the bubbles.  I wanted to look good but not too obvious.  He must tire of painted ladies falling in his path.  I practiced what I might say.

     “Hi.  Olivia.  Call me Livi.”  Then a laugh at something he said.  My head would tip back and a dainty laugh would escape my lips.  And how we would meet, losing my way, looking for the exit, we would stumble across each other.  Our eyes locked, we would both know, like animals.

     I walked to the theatre, wearing my dark cloak over a white dress.  The evening cooling as I strolled beside the river, avoiding the dangerous streets.  The first green on spring trees, blossoms in bud.  Big boats and small boats, people milled around, dressed up and expectant.  What would their evenings bring?  I knew what mine would bring.  I’d watch him closely all through his set, never taking my grey eyes from him.  And then I would disappear into the night.  A woman of mystery.

     “Good evening, ma’am.  Could I see you ticket?”

     A stocky man with salt and pepper hair, wearing a suit, leant towards me.  I passed him what he asked for.

     “Thank you.  Follow the lights down the steps, sixth row from the front.”

     “No.  There must be some mistake.  I bought a ticket in the first row.”

     “The numbering can be a little confusing, independent theatres, you know.”

     No, I did not know.  Rage flooded me.  I made my way to my inadequate seat.  And waited.  Things would proceed slower than I had planned, a rumba rather than a cha-cha-cha.  Three acts before him, mostly female dancers dressed in tight fitting flesh coloured gowns.  Others in white leotards, bright lip-sticked mouths but no smiles.  Then from centre stage, where one minute there had been a gaping chasm, the door between life and death, the boy.

     He led with his upper body, curled and weaving, dressed in white.  He slid to the floor, turning himself seemingly in knots, knots that bound and then unraveled. 

Later I couldn’t sleep.  As I tossed and turned a flickering image, like a flame, danced through my conscious mind.  The boy in tight white danced and turned until he rolled like a cocooned moth spinning inside my head.  Finally before night turned to day, I fell into a deep sleep and dreamt of dark streets lit by moonlight. 

     When I awoke, late, almost lunchtime and bathed in sweat, I couldn’t remember what had happened, although I knew something had.  A space, where something had moved in.  Scratching around my thoughts and memories I retrieved him, my dancer, not the other boy.  I thanked God I had bought another ticket for tonight’s show.  But I had missed work.  I heaved my bedding aside, untangled it from my legs, and wrapped a single sheet around me.

     “Hello?  Is that Simone?  Yes, it’s me.  Olivia.  Yes, I know.  I was sleeping.  I have the most horrible migrane.  Yes.  Yes.  I should be fine for tomorrow.  See you then.”

     The office would run along without me, I doubt they would even miss me, so efficient I’d become invisible.  Selling on the phones, role-playing, it came easy to me.  Selling advertising space to corporate executives, a work of theatre on its own.   

     I would go back to work tomorrow but I had to see him again today.  His beautiful face, pale with those dark brows.  Half moon crescents on pools of ink, his black eyes without expression.  Sinewy limbs that seemed liquid. 

     I opened my wardrobe in search of something to wear.  I may be older than the boy but I dressed well.  Mummy left me her tea dresses from her youth, my sister Rebecca didn’t want them.  She thought them too flimsy, said they lacked substance.  I loved them.  Dusty pink and cream.  Ribbons and silk.  Roses and lilies.  I chose cream roses on the palest green silk, my ivory court shoes and a cream shawl to wrap around my delicate shoulders.

     I would not eat.  I wanted to look pale and thin.  Besides I had no appetite for food.  I ran my bath and picked out golden ear-rings, the sort that dangled.  Pretty, glittery, jittery.  If my pale grey eyes didn’t hypnotise him maybe my ear-rings would.

     Sitting in the front row, old velvet chairs in cherry red, I watched those girls sashay across the stage.  How well they danced, turning circles in on themselves, throwing pale arms to the sides, east and west.  I bided my time.

     The boy walked onto an empty stage.  I stared hard but his eyes didn’t see me.  It was haunting, as if only a memory, he looked through me, ignored me.  Let him dance, let him perform, I’ll throw him pennies and he will move to my tune.

     Before I walked home, alone in the darkness, I bought a ticket for a front row seat for the rest of the tour.  I didn’t look for the boy’s name on the billing, I didn’t want to know.  He belonged to me and I would call him ‘the boy’ forever.

     That night I slept well, content in the knowledge that I had control.  I dreamt of doves, blurry against a night sky.  The doves cast no shadow.  When I awoke the dawn was coming up and I showered and dressed for work. 

     The wonderful thing about a city apartment and a city job is that I walked everywhere.  No need for a fuel-guzzling car or parking tickets.  Heels snapped on the concrete, the sound of birds perched in an occasional tree and small trucks dropping off deliveries.  Beep, beep, beep, the reverse song assaulted our ears.

     I stopped in front of a café.  Bright lights in the yellow glow of early morning with the smell of croissants and bagels, ground coffee.  I placed my hands on the glass.  The smell of scorched rubber and fear.  When did I last eat?  My mind swam as I entered the café.  I ordered a coffee to go.  The dizziness pleased me, it was euphoria.  The thought of hot food made me nauseous. 

     I stopped in front of a black glass and chrome building and took the lift to my office.  I walked across the blue carpet to my desk.

     “Liv, you can settle this.”  Simone was holding court, Tim and Adam on chairs rather than at her feet.  “The first non-native animal introduced into Australia, any idea?”

      A day away and things hadn’t changed.  Simone’s blonde hair swept up and held by a bejeweled clip.  She looked glamorous and felt competitive.  Long red finger nails, her chin jutted the air precociously.

     “Liv, you okay?”

     I sat down wearing a Mona Lisa smile.  Their faces all turned to mine.

     “Yes.  Why?”  I removed the plastic lid and sipped my coffee.  Would I keep him secret or throw snippets to the poor?

     “You look odd.  Maybe you should have taken another day.”

     “I’m fine, good actually.”

     Simone’s skillfully plucked eyebrows draw together in a frown.  I smile and say nothing.  I don’t want to share.

     The day dragged, a day in monochrome.  Printing machines whirred and buzzed and beeped.  Phones trilled melodically.  None of it meant anything.  No flash, no sparkle, no beauty.  Simone bent over her computer, worked hard, added value.  Tim and Adam on the phones, sold things you cannot see.  Smiling helps the voice sound happy.  I remembered all those bullet points in sales training.  Wear a dark suit, don’t wash the car on Sunday and don’t be ordinary.  What was this if it wasn’t ordinary?

     “Hello Liv, nice to see you back.  Can I tempt you to your usual?”  Matt, the sandwich boy.  Toothy and tall. 

     “I don’t think I will today.  Thank you.”

     “I hope you’re not on a diet, Liv.  You’re perfect as you are.”

     Perfect?  What did he know?  Those girls in flesh coloured dresses, willowy with clean lines.  No lumps or bumps.  Nothing to spoil their silhouettes.  Like lines on a page, some straight, others with a graceful curve, perfect.  But not me.

     The hum of a busy office blurred the afternoon.  Snatched conversation then heads down.  The strip lighting constant, denying us the colour changes of natural light.  Yellow through to white, then the pink grey of late afternoon.  I left before the light faded.

     I dressed all in black and twisted my hair into a chignon, standing in front of the mirror, with no make-up.  My skin pale and my enormous eyes, delicate silvery lashes.  In the partial obscurity I was just a white face suspended.  When I sat in the front row, like a girl from another place, he couldn’t fail to notice me.

     After six I slipped into the streets, a dark figure moving against a tide of office workers.  I felt ghostly, like an aberration walking through the tiny streets of Venice.  It was dark and the rain started, slate coloured clouds blocking out the stars.  It reminds me of another time, the reflection of light on rain on tarmac.  I swore as my dress soaked up the rain, absorbing it greedily.  I reached the theatre and walked through the enormous entranceway.  I dripped like a water feature.  I went to the ladies to repair the damage.  In the mirror I checked my face, now lined with messy tracks of mascara.  I look strange, otherworldly.  I don’t recognise myself, only the smell of burnt rubber, it won’t let me forget.  A sound behind me startled me.  The toilet flushed and a girl emerged from the small cubicle. 

    “Hi.  You here for the show?”

     “Yes.” 

     “Thought I recognised you.  You’re usually in the front row, right?”

     I nod dumbly.  The girl lights a cigarette. “Hope you don’t mind.  Dancers curse, ciggies.  Sadie.”  She held out her free hand and I took it.  I forgot to let go.  I felt awkward but Sadie just smiled warmly and waited.

     “Olivia.  Livi.”

     “Who’s your favourite bird of paradise?  It’s him, isn’t it?  All the girls love him.”

     “Do they?”

     “Oh, yes.  He’s oblivious of course.  Mar…”

     I put my hands over my ears.  I don’t want to hear his name.  It would spoil everything.

     “Are you okay?”  Her hand reached out to touch me, concern in her voice.  I pulled back and ran.  Out of the bathroom, into the dark corridors, the opposite way from the auditorium.  Doors everywhere, I tried a handle and it opened.  The room dark but I knew it wasn’t empty.  It had a muffled quality, as if lined in cotton wool.  Something feathery and soft brushed my bare legs, a store room.  I daren’t turn the light on for fear a sliver of light under the door would give me away.

     I must have fallen asleep.  I was awoken by voices and light footsteps outside.  “Come on, Penny!  We’re on in a minute!”  More footsteps, and voices, indistinguishable words.  I waited for the voices and footsteps to subside.  I turned the handle and closed the door behind me.  There is no one around.  I slip down the noiseless corridor.  A door sprang open and a white dressed figure emerges.  It was him.

     “Hello.  Are you lost?” His beautiful face, leaning askew. 

     “No.  No.  It’s okay.  I know where I am.”

     “Good.  I have to be backstage.”  He smiled and brushed past me. 

     Electricity.  Chemistry.  Isn’t that what they call it?  I faced his dressing room, I know he wouldn’t mind.  I could wait until he finished his performance.  A delicious surprise. 

     A large mirror, the bench in front on it lined with pots of make-up.  I sat down on a chair facing it, racks of clothes behind me, on chrome rails and every piece white.  I checked my appearance, pale without makeup and my hair is frizzy from the rain.  What must he have thought?  More hag than harlot.  I saw a photo and picked it up.  It’s him with a girl, a shiny shiny girl.  White blonde hair and honey coloured skin.  The frame slipped from my hands, fell to the hard floor.  The glass splintered.  My hot tears ran down over lines of mascara and rain drops. Time to go home. 

     Outside it is dark and a beautiful moon shined silver on the pathway.  I wandered near the river where the chatter of people having dinner or drinks after work filled my ears with noise and my insides with loneliness.  It didn’t seem fair.  I looked at their faces, interested in each other, laughing together.  I was an extra in my own life.  I didn’t even have centre stage in that production.  The moon as a spotlight didn’t shine on me.

     It must have been three or four days, maybe a week.  Or it could have been moments later, I heard pounding on my door.  Was it at the door or was it in my head?  I got up from the bed and pulled a robe from the back of the door, walked with a light head, in the direction of the noise. 

     “Livi, it’s me.  For Gods sake let me in!”

     Rebecca.  I buzzed her in, the door opened, all silk blouse and sensible shoes.  My sister, the only woman I knew who dressed up to come into town. 

     “Oh Livi!  You look awful, you really do.  Please don’t faint.”

     My head sped up, spinning and spinning.  I felt I could spin into another dimension.

     I sat in an armchair, the red one, and the light from the windows came in in shafts.  I couldn’t see the room, bleached of colour.  I heard a sound from the kitchen, water on glass.  “Here.  Drink this.”

     Ah, yes.  Rebecca.  “What is it?”

     “Water.”

     My throat felt so dry, as did my mouth.  I took small sips from the glass. “What are you doing here?”

     Rebecca looked close to tears.  Has somebody died?  Again?

     “Simone rang me.  You haven’t been in work for days and she couldn’t get an answer here.”

    “I had to sleep.”  I felt sleepy again.  My eyes began to close.

     “No, Livi.  We need to talk.”

     Rebecca took my hand.  “I know it’s been hard.  But it’s been months now and… I think you ought to come home with me, for a while.”

     “What about my job?”

     “Simone suggested it actually, no problem, she said you should take as long as you need.”

     “As long as I need to what?”

     “Oh for Christ’s sake, Livi.”  Rebecca paused.  “I’m sorry.”  She knelt in front of me, took my hands in hers.  “It wasn’t your fault.  There was nothing you could do.” 

     The accident.  Shards of glass inside me.  Splintering, sharp, that’s what pain is.  The rain, late, driving back from shopping.  So late.  The street lamps shone on the wet roads, no one around.  He was dressed in grey with his hood pulled over his head.  He stumbled out into the road, holding something.  I put the brakes on.  Thud.  He rolled across the bonnet.  I got out of the car.  Screaming, the boy was lay face down, hot greasy chips all over the road.  No blood, just screaming, who was screaming? 

     I looked down.  Rebecca was still there, crying.  I took a deep breath, the light rose, the lines aren’t as blurred, my focus regains.  The walls I’d painted midnight blue, my Louis Ghost dining chairs, transparent, barely there.  The Persian rug under my feet, my feet feel like ice.  And Rebecca, her face close to mine.  Where have I been?  What have I been doing?  Was the boy was real?

     “I want to stay here, Rebecca.  I’ll be fine.”

     She didn’t look sure.

     “Thank you so much for coming.  There are some things I need to face.  We’ll have that lunch though.  I’d really like that.”

     Later, after Rebecca left and I caught my breath, I knew what I needed to do.  I took an old ashtray from the back of a kitchen cupboard and placed the unused tickets for The Birds of Paradise tour inside.  Using a lighter that someone had left here, I set fire to them, watched the flicker of orange and red like a dance itself.  And out of the flames I could almost see the boy emerge as fire turned to ashes and he disappeared forever.

I wrote this light hearted story four years ago. The main character was inspired by a Mike Leigh television show character from the early 70s. It was awarded a High Commendation in the CJ Dennis Literary Award 2009 (Aus)

Thursday evening, Susanna’s heart sank as she walked from the bus stop home. She loved Keith but sometimes things got a bit ordinary, pedestrian even. In their little house, with their little jobs, their little lives. What did it all mean? What was the bigger picture? She’d once heard a fable, when the world began humans were created with no idea what they were doing on earth. They decided to divide into two groups. One group would go off looking for the meaning of life and the other group would hold the fort waiting for the other group to return. The first group never came back with the answers but still we get up each morning and distract ourselves with jobs and pay rises, weekend barbecues and visits to Bunning’s, the latest metallic nail varnish colour and flavoured waffles that go in the toaster.

“Bugger!” Distracted as always Susanna had stepped in a puddle. “Bloody expensive Italian leather too!”

Her key turned in the lock, she pushed the door and before she had even retrieved her key she heard him. “Is that you love?”

“Who did you think it was? The Pope?”

“Aw you! Come and give’ us a hug.” Keith came towards her arms outstretched.

“Let me get me put my bag down please, Keith.”

Ordinary looking with a gorgeous smile. He could be a bit wet sometimes but lovely all the same. Dressed in his smart casual attire, beige pants with his blue shirt tucked in.

“I’ve made you a mug of tea. Sit down and have a breather, love.”

Susanna dropped her bag to the floor and plonked herself in the nearest chair. Her mind ran with the theme of the people who got left behind. There had to be a plan didn’t there? She sipped her tea and thought about where she wanted to be, her plans for the future. The question they ask at job interviews floated in her head. “Susanna, where do you see yourself in five years time?” She imagined an earnest man in a sharp suit sitting in the spare armchair leaning forward with a notepad balanced on his knee. Perhaps with his elbows on the pad and two fingers resting on his chin.

“What’s up cherub, off with the clouds again?” Keith, ever perky, looked over at her with raised eyebrows.

“Nothing.” She looked up. “Do we have to go tonight?”

“But we always go to mum’s on Thursday.”

“Exactly. Can’t we do something wild and reckless and go to see her on Wednesday?” Her bottom lip stuck out and Susanna knew she looked childish.

“Silly.” Keith got up, folded his newspaper twice and laid it carefully on the coffee table then ruffled his wife’s hair.

“Hullo Keith love. Susanna.” A smaller, slightly more feminine version of Keith greeted them at the front door.

“Hello Ruby.” Susanna still couldn’t bring herself to call Ruby mum, after four years of marriage.

“You look thin love.” Ruby stared at Susanna’s middle. What she meant, Susanna knew, was that she didn’t look pregnant.

“Oh, Mam! Smashing dress!” Ruby beamed.

“Thank you Keith. I got it down the market.” Ruby did a twirl but the over bright turquoise polyester creation didn’t twirl with her as it was firmly stuck to her tights. Ruby was the only woman Susanna knew who still wore American Tan. She ushered them through to the good room while she put the finishing touches to dinner, which usually meant chopping a sprig of parsley to adorn the savoury mince. They always had savoury mince because it had been Keith’s dad’s favourite. Odd really as Keith’s dad hadn’t so much died as scarpered when Keith was born.

“Sit down you two. I’ll be through in a minute.” Ruby would never let either of them help in the kitchen. Keith was a man so she couldn’t possibly let him in, I mean, he bought home the bacon. Susanna wasn’t allowed in because of her incompetence, completely overlooking the fact that she earned a good salary. Anyway the time she threw the oven gloves on top of the grill and set fire to them was ages ago.

“Ta-da!” Ruby walked through holding aloft a serving dish of savoury mince, topped with a sprig of parsley. Ruby passed around dishes of mash and over boiled carrots, Keith tucked his napkin into his shirt and got stuck in. Ruby beamed proudly at her only son. “Hard day, love?”

“Same as usual, Mam.” Keith worked as a foreman for a building company, in charge of a building a servo on the other side of town. Good at his job, everybody liked him. Keith was hard not to like.

“Karen rang this morning. Those kids keep her on her toes.” Karen was Keith’s big sister. She had three children and lived near the sea. Her husband, Dave, worked in IT.

“Are you still enjoying your little job, Susanna love?” Ruby sipped from her beer glass. Here we go thought Susanna.

“Yes, thank you, Ruby. They’re installing new software so we’re all having training this week.” She answered knowing full well that Ruby would think software was cushions.

“That’s nice. ‘Course, looking after three kiddies, that’s real work!”

“Mam.” Keith shot his mother a warning glance. “We’ll have kids in our own time. We need two incomes with the mortgage and everything at the moment.” Ruby continued to sip her beer and eye them both like a maternal toad with glassy, blinking eyes.

Once the plates and glasses were cleared Ruby shooed them through to watch the telly and came through with dessert, an oversized packet of Jaffa’s, to devour in front of Wheel of Fortune. Susanna sat amongst the cat calls and crunching of Jaffa’s and felt, not for the first time that week, stuck. It seemed like they had got married and hit an oil slick which had brought them up smartly to the present, with no memory of what went before, save for three square meals a day and a pile of ironing. She used to feel glamorous, special, her and Keith’s lives would be different from all the rest.

They had met at that posh bar in town, the one that went bust shortly afterwards, both there on works do’s. He was celebrating the birth of one of his labourer’s first child and she was there for a 21st. She’d managed to spill three glasses of wine down his shirt, she was carrying a tray back from the bar. There was a reason she worked in a bank and not as a waitress. Keith, so gracious about it, said it didn’t matter as he always carried a spare shirt in his briefcase. And his smile! Even now it did things to her.

But his face used to stop her panicking only now the fear was so big nothing made a difference. She was scared to have children, not to have children, to move house, to not move house but the biggest fear of all – the fear of the ordinary. Life went on and on … Ruby’s on Thursday, fish on Fridays, Bunning’s on Saturdays, roast on Sundays, and so on and forever into the black of infinity.

“Where’s my fish?”

“I thought I’d try something a bit different.”

“What is it?” Keith gingerly put his fork into the unidentified meal, as if it might still be alive.

“It’s Thai beef salad.”

“Salad. For dinner?”

“Yes. Lots of people have it for dinner. It’s Asian.” Susanna smiled. “

Asian?”

“I thought it would be nice to have something other than fish on Friday.” A scream gathered in Susanna’s chest. It felt like unwanted furniture sitting on top of her lungs.

The next morning Keith brought up their identical mugs of tea to bed. He had made them at pottery classes and was very proud of them. Susanna hadn’t the heart to tell him how ugly they were. And heavy. Your arm got a workout just lifting the sodding things.

“Are you happy Keith?” Susanna turned to face her husband. He had such a kind face. She knew she should be grateful to have a caring husband. Some of the girls at the bank, their husbands were rough and treated them badly. Keith treated her with respect and love. Wasn’t that enough?

“Yeah, course I am. I’ve got you and this lovely house. And sooner or later we’ll have little Keith’s and Susanna’s running around.” Susanna didn’t answer. She was imagining her fairy godmother at the end of the bed, dressed in electric purple with arms crossed. She had a cigarette instead of a wand and on closer inspection appeared to be a man in drag. He winked a sparkly eye and dared her to make a silent wish. Susanna closed her eyes and wished to be anywhere but where she was. “You’re not going back to sleep are ya?” Keith looked over at her with a soppy grin pasted across his face. “We’re going into town to buy paint for the spare room.”

“Do I have to go, Keith? I’m not feeling too great.”

“Course you do! I’m colour blind. Remember what happened last time I picked paint for the lounge room?”

“Yes, Keith.”

“You wanted eau de nil and I got beige!”

Susanna threw her bag across her shoulder as she pushed the glass door of the bank as she left work for the day.

“Hey, hang on a minute.” Donna teetered on her stilettos as she made a grab for the door. “Sorry to make you wait. I had to go for a wee. Given up on me had ya?” Susanna could see Donna had reapplied Magenta Dream to her lips. Somehow she got away with it. It made Susanna look like an extra from a disco movie, probably one on roller skates.

“Yeah. Concentrating on what I was gonna do Keith for his dinner.”

“Sod Keith. Come for a drink with me.” Donna stopped and got her compact out to study her lips again. She flicked her hair, closed the compact and faced Susanna. “Well?”

“No. I can’t.”

“Yes you can. You’ve been right miserable all week. A G&T will cheer you up.” Susanna hesitated. “Oh, come on. It won’t kill you!”

They went to Pepe’s Bar on Central and sat on the high velvet covered stools with chrome legs. Susanna felt glamorous, gin and tonic in one hand, dangling her own legs. “So what did you get up to at the weekend?”

“Oh, decorating. The spare room wanted doing.”

“Decorating! Whoop de do!”

Susanna smiled. “You know Keith; he likes things done. He’s very steady.”

“You mean dull.”

“Oh, Donna, he’s not that bad. We just need a bit of a shake-up. Change our habits. We’ll be fine.” Susanna used the plastic stirrer in her glass to dash the ice cubes together noisily.

“Oh bugger it, Suse. It’s time to move on.” Donna retrieved her phone from her bag to check for messages then continued. “The way I see it, one of you is going to be miserable. Might as well be him.”

“What’s this then?”

“You know what it is, Keith.”

“Looks like fish fingers.”

“Then that’s what it is then. You don’t find fillet steak going around masquerading as fish fingers, do ya?” One gin and tonic had soon turned into three. The shops had closed and Susanna had had to be creative with the freezer compartment. Keith eyed her warily.

“Leave the dishes. I’ll make us a cup of tea. We should talk.” Susanna sank into her armchair and accepted the homemade mug of tea. “This is hard for me, Suse. Talking’s not my strong point.” Susanna checked her clothes for bits of fluff. “I know you’re not happy. Even a bloke as daft as me could work that out.” Keith’s face looked concerned. “The thing is, what do we do about it?”

“Oh, Keith, what can we do about it?” Suddenly a phantom judge appeared on the spare armchair, full wig and gown stuff. He took out a black cloth as if from nowhere just like those old court room dramas. Susanna was sure that she had to keep talking or he was going to put it on his head. And she didn’t want that. “It’s not you. I just feel life has got a little staid. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“But I do.”

“I didn’t want to upset you with all this, it might blow over. What? You do understand?”

“Don’t be daft, love. Of course I do. This is our life, how could I not understand?” Keith’s voice caught as if snagged in a zipper. “If you still want me?” Susanna felt that whatever she said next could change her life beyond recognition. A big sign shot out of the ground, the kind you have at t-junctions and crossroads. One way said ‘Keith’ and the other ‘No Keith’. She imagined the judge with the black cloth, the fairy godmother and the interviewer all awaiting her reply. Keith with his pale, sad face waited for her to speak. “Suse?” He sat on the arm of her chair. “I didn’t want to say anything to you but I’ve been mulling over things for a while and I know you think I’m careful and a bit boring and not very adventurous…”

“No, Keith, I…”

“Its okay, Suse. Instead of getting you the sort of anniversary present I usually get, flowers and chocs and the like, I got this.” Bugger. So wrapped up in herself she’d forgotten their wedding anniversary. Keith handed her a blue envelope. She tore it open mumbling excuses to Keith about forgetting. “Shhh. Tell me what you think?” Inside the envelope was a voucher. Surely not a book token, that would be the limit. No. In the middle of a large white card were two words – tandem skydive.

“This was your idea?”

Keith smiled happily. “Completely. You interested?”

“Bloody oath!”

“Now I know this won’t sort everything out but I thought it would be a start. The beginning of a new life together. The adventures of Keith and Susanna.” Keith grabbed Susanna with one hand and swept the other majestically across the space in front on their eyes. Susanna saw in her mind’s eye the pair of them, undies over tights in primary colours with great big grins splashed across their faces. The judge put away his cloth and the interviewer and her fairy godmother exchanged smiles. Keith nudged his wife. “And with your imagination, I’m sure we’ll work out the rest.”

I wrote this story on a camping trip in Sawtell a couple of years ago. It recently came third in the Writers of the Coral Coast Short Story Competition

Who does he see when he looks at me? Does he see the girl I am inside or the actress played by an older woman? Someone middle-aged who scrubs up well. I am his mother. I make his lunch, buy his shoes and all I want him to do is tidy his room and not get in the back of his mate, Declan’s car.

     I’m not old but I’m on the conveyer belt that takes you there. Options are few now and I can’t get off. My age has gone beyond the median point, it stretches out before me and I can see how short it is now, how insignificant. How one day I will slowly fade to dust. One cough from a careless bystander and even the dust will disappear.

     Graeme and I share a bottle of wine at the end of another day. Billy’s music throbs behind a slammed door. Does he know that 20-odd years ago I saw the band he’s listening to now, in London with a man who had hair down to his waist. A man who isn’t his father. What would he think of that?

     “Graeme, do you ever feel scared that time’s running out?”

     My husband smiles. “No, love. You know me, I try to concentrate on the now.”

     “Sometimes I can’t breathe properly, thinking about not being here. Billy going on with his life without a mother.”

     Graeme looks at me, his face serious for once. “He’s in year 12 and you won’t always be here, Jo. One day the sun will come up and you won’t be here to see it.”

     “I know, I’m a control freak. I won’t ever let go.” I laugh but there’s fear underlying it.

     When I was seven I would wake screaming, calling out for my mum. “I don’t want to die.” I would wail into the night. Mum would brush the sheets distractedly, she wouldn’t even sit on my bed. “Think of something nice, Joanne. Think of Christmas and all the presents you’ll get.”

     And I knew. I knew that she was frightened too. I watched it in her death mask, as she slipped away years later, still sniping and complaining. Raising a child on her own was hard but Kaitlin Young found nothing easy. In the end I held her thin, cold hand in the hospital, trying not to crush her bird-like bones. She was in her late fifties, perhaps she would have lived longer if she hadn’t given into fear. “You can’t do yoga, Joanne. It’ll send you mad.” “Don’t be late, I can’t sleep until you’re home.” I remember her brushing my hair roughly as her sobs ripped and grated. I had been caught stealing chewing gum and mum had read in a tabloid newspaper about a child who had started her criminal career with petty theft and gone onto murder. I thought she was mad but am I any different? I’m starting to develop an oval look to my mouth, like I’m channeling Edvard Munch. I inherited that from her, that and frizzy hair.

     I remember Billy as a small boy, three years old, how beautiful he was. The best time of all, we were each other’s world. I miss that fair haired child with a grief that’s overwhelming. My big boy is drifting away and the more I try to bridge the gap, the more he steps back. And I become sniping and demanding, trying to mould his life when I have no right.

     Graeme suggests we take a trip, get away for a few days, drive south. He knows I love the landscape, the cliffs and beaches, little coves.

     “Billy has exams, you know that.”

     “I meant the two of us. Billy needs his space, Jo.”

     I know he means Billy needs his space away from me and he’s right. I’m like a dried-up ancient woman sucking away at his life force. I have become my mother. “Sit with me, Joanne. Tell me what you’ve been doing.” I’d slam the door behind me. A chat with my mother sapped my joy, made everything greyer.

     I stand in the kitchen, stirring the sugar in my tea when my son’s shadow reaches the floor, almost touching my feet. It stops, falters. He knows I’m here. “Do you want something to eat, Billy?”

     I hear his retreat like air escaping from a balloon. My attempts at mothering flop empty on the kitchen tiles. He doesn’t need me anymore. But he is the bookend between me and my mortality. Graeme laughs at me, he finds my preoccupation with death endearing. He can’t see the shadows, fingers of fear that live on inside of me, in the womb where Billy nestled a long time ago.

     We pack the two-man tent, the one only Graeme can put up. I sort out some groceries hoping we’ll eat out. I’m not an outdoors sort of woman. We have a deal, Graeme and I, he does the lawns, windows, water tanks and the swimming pool while I have my interior decoration, cooking and laundry. When he’s to be found covered in grime and sweat replacing pumps and washers, gaskets and air filters, I’ll be on the lounge, drinking coffee, my head in a Margaret Atwood. The thought of living outside, if only for a few days, has panic rising inside me. I can’t remember the last time I spent any time outdoors. In my house-car-shopping mall days.

     Graeme pats me on the bum to signal it’s time to leave. Billy is still sleeping. It’s Saturday, no school.

     “Don’t worry, love. He’ll be fine. I told him to go to Ruth’s if he needs anything.”

     My sister has six kids and can’t wait for them to leave home.

     “He’ll be fine.” Graeme rubs my hand as we drive south on the highway. Graeme says that Billy’s a normal boy, attempting to untangle himself from the jaws of his family, into the world. A vision of a mother rabbit eating her young flashes behind my eyes. I look out of the car onto greens, blues and browns. Nature’s palate is not a broad one. I love those paintings where the artists have picked out reds, pinks and oranges. Their eyes catching unseen shades as if some colours have died and the painter is flirting with their ghosts. Graeme asks what I’m thinking but I don’t know how to explain about the colours to him. Billy would know, at least a year or two ago he would have. Now he can’t share a room with me, let alone a thought.

     “Shall we pick up a coffee, Babe?”

     I nod and am aware how feeble I am. Graeme puts so much into our relationship, without asking for much in return. We continue our journey down the highway, driving south to cooler climes and sipping our long blacks. The weight that has anchored my chest for weeks lifts slightly. The breeze rustles through the trees and speaks to me through the open window, as if the words, spoken in tiny fragments, bristle the leaves. My breath deepens and fills my chest. After weeks of wasp-like gulping breaths my body feels as if it’s being fed. I smile at Graeme, who smiles back as always.

     “You look beautiful, Jo.”

     Graeme has booked a campsite by the ocean. Rocky cliffs and ever-changing tides. Slate grey clouds float on a rosy backdrop. By the time Graeme has pitched our tent I have made a modest meal of salmon and crunchy lettuce. We sit in our camp chairs and clink our frosted wine glasses together. I sense something moving in me, not gone but wandering into another room. Maybe there is a life for me and Graeme after Billy has moved out. Giddy with a hint of a way forward and the wine I sigh.

     “I love you, Graeme.”

      Graeme smiles. “I know you do, sweetheart.” He clasps my hand as the weather changes and droplets splash into our wine glasses. And I can’t tell my tears of relief from the rain that washes the past away under a southern sky.

     A couple of mornings later, as Graeme takes down the tent and I watch the tide draw towards the horizon, I’m still frightened. Of Billy growing away from me and my inevitable death but I have made a decision. Not to control, not to grasp onto time that runs like grains of sand through my hands. To respect my fear as if it were a surging ocean and know that tomorrow grey may turn to blue.

     “Ready, Jo?”

     “Yes.”

I wrote ‘Living with Second Best’ a few years ago. Last year it was short listed for the Autumn 2011 Brighton Community of Writers (COW) Award (UK)

I’m on my own in the shop today.  It’s quite a responsibility, we have break-ins sometimes.  Chancers trying to get their hands in the till, a few boxes of fags, booze.  Not exactly the big league but scary when they happen, they sometimes carry knives.  Some people are so desperate.  It’s a shabby little store really, two narrow aisles.  The counter faces the door and I can see through the glass pane in the door.  Here’s comes Mr Benson & Hedges, not his real name of course, that’s just what he buys.  Sometimes he’ll buy a bottle of red to go with it.  Hope he doesn’t mention Rob.

     “Hello, Annie.  How are you?”

     “Fine thanks, Mr Bamford.”

     “Not joining our Donna at uni this year?”  I catch a trace of smugness in his smile.

     “No, Mr Bamford.  Not my thing really.”

     “Quite.  Donna’s reading politics.  That means…”

     “I know what it means, Mr Bamford.  “Seventy five pence change.”

     That’s the trouble with this country.  Because I work in a corner shop they think I’m thick.  They look down on me.  I would be going to uni if things were different, if we had the money.  I might have worked part-time and saved up or gone to night school.  But mum needs me now Rob’s gone and her life has shut down on her.

     I pop out the back to put the kettle on.  There’s a bell over the door that rings every time someone comes in.  Otherwise I would have to have eyes in the back of my head.  It’s mad who will steal stuff, not only small boys.  Well dressed women and young men popping in for condoms.  Opportunists.  We haven’t got CVTV.  One of those old fashioned convex mirrors is hung at both ends of each aisle.

     I sip my coffee and watch the rain bounce off the pavement.  Grey paving stones, grey sky and grey rain.  Makes me glad I’m in here with my hands clasped around my coffee mug.  There are worse places to be.  It’s not so bad here.  The blue and white checked polyester overall I have to wear makes me sweat.  It doesn’t breathe and it crackles.  I reckon if I ran up the street in it, it would burst into flames. 

     I grab a chocolate bar from the shelf near the till.  I keep looking at their coloured wrappers and give in to the 10 seconds of sugar oblivion.  It keeps the tears away.

     I don’t intend to spend my whole life here, working away for Mr Bishop.  Cleaning down shelves and dusting the products that don’t have a fast turnover.  Tins of prunes, bottles of Irn-Bru.  One day things will work out and I will venture out into the world.  Learn a language, drive to the continent, get a flash job in the city working in marketing.  Somewhere away from cheap overalls and discount pet food.  I keep sight of my dream like a lighthouse at night, intermittently flashing hope and darkness.  I like the darkness, no one can see me there.  I answer to no one.  Except for Mr Bishop.

     There she is, one of the smart women with everything, including an urgency to acquire more.  Mr Bishop told me to watch out for this one, she has expensive taste.  Caviar, smoked salmon and foreign cheeses.  Doesn’t like to pay for it mind. 

     I catch a glimpse of her, Mrs Palmer her name is, over by the fridge loaded with deli items.  I see her hands clasping a large chunk of Roquefort in the mirror, one I’d unpacked this morning.

     “Let me know if I can help you!”  I shout out brightly.  Greedy Mrs Palmer jumps in shock and drops the French cheese.

     “Is that all you need today?”

     Mrs Palmer puts down a bottle of spring water and a packet of tooth picks on the counter.  She does all her shopping in town, only comes here for a cheap thrill.  She shifts from one foot to the other.  Russell & Bromley shoes I bet.

     “Yes, that’s all.  Don’t need much today.  I like to browse though.”

     I bet you do, Mrs P.  I have her down as an executive’s wife.  House decorated in white carpets and dusty violet soft furnishings.  She has silver tongs for the sugar cubes and bores her husband senseless.

     “Don’t forget your change.”

     She turns, takes the money giving me a genuine smile.  You can’t tell with people.

     An hour later I’m pulling the roller blind down over the door when there’s a knocking on the glass.  It makes me nervous as I can’t see who wants to come in.  Might be a thief, as if I would know what a thief would look like.  Stripey jumper, wearing a mask?

     “Let us in, Luv.  I’m out of ciggies.”

     The voice of a young man desperate for his fix of nicotine.

     “Okay.  Keep your hair on.”

     Up goes the roller blind revealing a young bloke with dark curly hair.  I open the door.

     “What brand?”

     “Sorry?”

     “What brand of cigarettes do you smoke?”

     “Embassy, thanks.”

    He is staring at me and I think I recognise his face.  I feel a sharp pain in my chest, like an incision.  A metal skewer is piecing my lungs, I can’t breathe.  

     “Aren’t you, Annie?  Rob’s sister?”

     I nod and turn towards the rack of cigarettes behind the counter, hiding my grief.

     “Full strength or light?”

     “Light.  Thought I’d kill myself slowly.”

     Did he mean that?  I watch his face register his words, a slow creeping horror crawls up from his mouth to his hairline.

     “Oh, God.  Sorry.  So sad to hear about what happened to Rob.  How’s your mum?”

     “How do you think?”

     “Goodbye then.”

     “By the way, both strengths will kill you.  Lighter fags don’t mean you’ll get a better kind of cancer.” I follow him, Jason I think his name is.  Before I close the door I yell at the shape of him retreating.  “Tosser!”  Fighting talk but I have tears burning the backs of my eyes.

     I lock up and pull down the roller door again, grab a frozen pie from the freezer before making my way out the back.  My hands shake as I unlock the car.  The light is starting to fade as I drive from the car park and head for home. 

     How did you go yesterday, Annie?”  Mr Bishop looks relaxed after his day off.  The collar of his overall is sticking up at the back and his smile is easy.

     “Fine thanks, Mr Bishop.”

     “Any difficult customers?”  He loves the difficult ones, they make better stories.

     “That Mrs Palmer came in.  I caught her with one of those deli cheeses.”

     “Did you confront her?”

     “No.  I shouted out, asking if she needed any help and she dropped it.”

    Mr Bishop chuckled.  “What would I do without you, Annie?  How’s your mum?”

     “Much the same.  Last night I found her in the same chair I’d left her in that morning, cigarette still in her hand, the line of ash intact.”

     Mr Bishop pats me on the back.  “It takes time, love.  It’s not right what she’s been through.  Bad enough for you, but a mother…”

     Mr and Mrs Bishop couldn’t have kids, he told me they’d tried for years.  Trying meant having sex but people don’t say that.  ‘We’ve been having sex for years and nothing has happened.’  Some people seem to not want to talk about sex at all.  I remember bursting in from school and seeing mum having coffee with a few of her friends.  Sitting round the old formica table, all four of them smoking.  Mrs Wagstaffe wearing her pinny, she washed her doorstep everyday.  Its funny this preoccupation the working class has with cleanliness, as if they can clean away the stain of their birthright.  Mrs Evans who wasn’t even a Mrs.  She had several children to a motley crew of uncles.  And Mrs Bennett of course.  Mrs Bennett used to mouth sexual words she didn’t want us to hear.  Rob and I used to curl up in silent laughter, trying not to be sprung. 

     I didn’t want to see Rob in his coffin.  He was my bright star.  I was happy that he had been the favourite.  He was everyone’s favourite.  Now it’s just me and mum, living with second best.

     I remember clearly Rob starting school while I had to stay home with mum.  We picked him up at the gates, he held both our hands as we walked home and he told us every moment of his day.  A box of colourful crayons, drawing stickmen, reciting the alphabet as his teacher, Mrs Marsh, pointed a cane at the alphabet poster on the wall.  Rob’s favourite letter was N for nurse.  He said it made him feel safe, looked after.  Funny that.  The last face Rob saw before he died was the face of a nurse.  A nurse who held his hand as he was wheeled into theatre, a bag of broken bones after the accident.  Rob would have felt safe as he slipped away.     

     “Fancy a coffee, Annie?”

     “Yes, Mr Bishop.  I’ll do it.”

     “You’re alright, I’ll get it.  Have a flick through one of the magazines while we’re quiet.”

     I prefer to stare out at the narrow piece of world I can see from the counter, through the glass door.  The rain has stopped and I can see sunlight reflected in the puddles.

     Mum hasn’t left the house since Rob died.  She’s barely said a word either.  Her job at the bakery is being held open but I can’t see her going back.  All the colour has leaked out of her.  I try to keep her clean but its hard work coaxing 10 stone of uncooperative flesh into the bath.  She’s eating a bit more but she’s no longer the cuddly mum she when I was small.  I’m not the greatest cook but I do my best, tempting mum with spag bol and shepards pie.  She lost her favourite but so did I.  I’m too young for these responsibilities.  I should be out stomping in those puddles, not thinking with the head of a 40 year old, about the dirty washing they create.

     Mum’s eyes are dead.  The shine burnt off.  But one day her eyes will flicker, choose life.  I can imagine her getting up, walking towards our little kitchen and putting the kettle on.

     “Fancy a cuppa, Annie?” She’ll say.  “Looks like you could do with a biscuit or two.  You’ll waste away, my girl.”  Hands on her hips, giving me a disapproving stare.  She doesn’t like skinny, my mum.  How is she going to feel when she looks down at her own body.  Drowning in lengths of cheap fabric, bones I’ve never seen before, searching for hands swamped in sleeves that once were too tight, too short. 

     “You alright, Annie?”  Mr Bishop is back with coffees.

     “Yeah, fine.”

    “I love having you here, but I hope you’ll take flight one day.  Get out in the world, a bright young girl like you.”

     I shrug, we both know for now that isn’t possible.  I couldn’t leave her, there’s no one else but me.

     A young mother struggles with the door, her face frowning.  A kiddie in the push chair and another one at her heels.  Mr Bishop holds open the door smiling, she barely acknowledges him.  He winks at me.

     The girl moves clumsily round the narrow aisles with her second-hand pushchair.  The boy, sees something he wants, marshmallows, reaches out .

     “No, Alfie.  I don’t have the money.”  Alfie sits on the floor crying.  The girl’s shoulders sag and she looks around, slips the packet into her raincoat pocket.  I decide I will put the money in the till for the sweets. 

     As she unloads her groceries on the counter I recognise her.  Cheryl Baker, a couple of years ahead of me at school but she looks a decade older.  Her hair is limp, her clothes made for someone else. Two snotty-nosed kids.  She avoids eye contact, maybe she remembers me or its guilt for the packet which must burn in her pocket.  I remember a girl with wavy hair, short skirt, glowing with any number of possible futures.  Now her view stops a long way short of the horizon. 

     “Why don’t you go home early, Annie?  It’s quiet here.”

     I don’t want to go.  The only time I feel I’m still living is when I’m here in the shop but I’m tired so I nod and hang up my uniform out the back.

     When I get home mum has her face in her hands and for the briefest moment I think she is laughing.  But she’s crying, at last. 

     “Mum, it’s alright.  I’m here.  We’ll be fine, you’ll see.”  And for the first time I think we might be.

Gargling with Gravel was published in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual 2012

He gets up earlier then me, shuffles around softly. Thinks I cannot hear but how can I sleep? It’s barely light and our bedroom is still grey, a light tapping on the window suggests rain. He zips up his trousers as I roll on my side, offering my back.

     Oh God, the meal last night, James’s boss and his wife. Did I accuse James of flirting with the waitress or did I ask about the new receptionist at work? James, flushed cheeks, biting his bottom lip. His boss’s face blank, his wife, Beth, a subservient name which suits her, fucking powder blue cardigan and neat pearls around her neck. Her nostrils flaring in disgust. Shame hits my chest and my stomach. I can hear the kettle boiling, my mouth feels as if I have been gargling with gravel. Does she work in his office, is it the girl on the front desk? I wouldn’t blame him, slutty red lips and heels that stab. My heart. Or worse, someone older with a degree and an office of her own. They have sex on her desk.

     James creeps in carrying a cup of coffee, he places it down tenderly on my bedside table. My eyes, bloodshot and pleading forgiveness. He doesn’t speak but he kisses my forehead and closes the door behind him. I hear the front door clunk shut and the powerful surge of a motor come to life, as James drives away, leaving me.

     I fill the kettle and peer onto the street. Cars still parked affluently on the driveways. The husbands haven’t left for work, nor have their wives. The house prices too high for young families on one income. Nothing flashy, discreet and understated, from the highlights in the hair of the women to the glinting cuff links in their men’s sleeves. Groomed.

     The kettle boils and I pat my hair, matted together with roots that a badger would envy. Coffee, strong and bitter, to stand a spoon up in, to stop the clock and wind it backwards. My hands shake and hot liquid spills. “Shit.” I run my hand under the cold tap, my mind scrapes up the past. What happened to the earnest young woman who swore she’d never drink?

     I open the fridge, I need to eat. It’s empty apart from half a carton of milk and an unopened bottle of wine. Bloody pathetic, I can’t even keep the fridge stocked. I pull on a coat and leave the house, catching a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror. My face the ghost of Christmas past, of all my past etched in deepening lines. No make-up and my hair a nest for vipers. It’s only around the corner, I’ll walk. I think I may be still over the limit. My dad never drunk and drove.

     My dad, always a big hit at parties, spending money at the pub, buying every sod who claimed to be his friend a drink. “Money we don’t have. That’s your new school shoes gone down someone’s throat.” I didn’t want to hear my mum complain about him, he was my dad, my hero. Years later when mum got sick I took over the role of picking him up at closing time. I’d find him alone, sitting on a bar stool, not a friend in sight. Friend? What friend would take advantage of a roaring alcoholic? Seeing my dad, tie loose around his neck, face flushed with booze singing ‘My Funny Valentine’, broke my young heart.

     When mum died, I looked after him. He no longer drank but you could see the damage. Sometimes he’d wander off, wearing only his striped pajamas, if I forgot to put the latch on. Once I found him swaying on the curb of the arterial road, gusts from the semi-trailers like dragons breath filled with dust. My dad inches from death.

     “Come on, Daddy. Let’s go home.”

     “Is that you Jean?” I’d nod a lie. I miss him every single day, whereas my mother, my good saintly mother, buttoned up to her chin, only slips into my memory occasionally.

     I return with the essentials. The man who runs the shops had raised his eyebrows. “Big night was it?” What makes an alcoholic? How many drinks does it take? How early in the day do you start, because it’s 8.30 in the morning and I’d bloody love a restorative red, the hair of the dog that bit me.

     I have to find something to fill the day, harder since I was sacked. Then I managed to hold it together until five o’clock, wine o’clock, all of us off to the Elephant Bar. The women matching the men, drink for drink, no one more than me.

     “For a beautiful woman, you can be so ugly.” James said one time he’d picked me up. He must have had a call from Steve, my boss. I had no idea what I had said or done that night, and many others if I’m honest, parts of my life stolen or given away. I gladly swapped fragments of time for the path to oblivion.

     After a few drinks I transformed into a sharp, urbane and witty woman, happy to be centre stage. For a sliver of time it worked, before I became a monster with black lips and teeth stained from the sediment at the bottom of my glass, diluted blood running in my veins. Screaming like a hag at James because another woman, a nicer, kinder woman than me, had smiled at him in sympathy.

     I line the shelves of the fridge with bread and milk. There’s the bottle cooling in the door. Will one sip leave a mark or go unnoticed?

     Should I scour the shower to keep my hands busy? Wipe the mould from the tiles, sweep the grit from the kitchen floor. The phone rings and I let it as I look at the bright shiny photo frames holding pictures of me and James. They grace the walls and sit on the mantelpiece, hopeful faces, clear eyes and bright smiles. I pick up our wedding photo. We are toasting the camera with glasses of champagne, our future. I throw it to the floor. It hits the tiles and small fragments fly. A shard sliver of glass in the side of my foot, blood seeps. I bend down unsteadily to pull it out, there is blood on the cream carpet.

     I press a band aid to my wound, sit in the chair with my foot up on the ottoman, remote in hand. I watch Days of our Lives with the sound turned down and the telephone rings again. Five months since the CEO of Richardson Brokers marched me from my window office after a lunchtime session in the pub. I clung to a thirsty pot plant and a small box containing Dido cd’s, shouting obscenities, making threats. I walked to the corner and burst into tears. Poor James. He married a sweet girl from the suburbs who’d turned herself into a festering pile of unresolved issues.

     I turn the television off, hobble to the kitchen, open the fridge. A half decent New Zealand white, buttery to the taste. Its frosted glass shows a slight yellow colour, like my skin. The chill would touch my throat like an icy hand stroking. Hitting my stomach with a buzz of well-being but I know it’s a lie. I slam the fridge door and take the stairs two at a time. In our bedroom I gulp the air and when I am calmer, take a couple of sleeping pills. I drift off to the sound of a telephone ringing.

     I wake hours later, cotton wool head. I roll onto my back and the ceiling stares back, saying nothing. I feel my forehead with clammy hands. I need to feel cold air on my body but not I decide the shock of icy wine flooding me. I am still dressed in jeans and a thin jumper. My foot, sticky with blood, the band aid stuck to the sheet. Dried blood gets caught in the carpet tufts, pulling the wound to gaping.

     On the back step I overlook the patch of grass we optimistically call the garden. My breath clouds on the breeze, reminds me of cigarette smoke. As a child I would pretend to blow smoke from a pencil clutched in my hand. I don’t hear the car pull up but I hear James.

     “Bloody house. It feels like a crypt. Hope? Where are you?”

     Kind of ironic but my mother named me because I was hers. Hope. Bless her, she had it in short supply.

     “I’m here, James. The back step.”

     He strides in, coat still on. “Hope, I’ve been ringing. Why didn’t you answer?”

     The tears I have held onto are finally let go, they run in lines and drip from my chin. My arms clasp my knees and I rock from side to side. I look up into his white face and his eyes full of concern, not disgust. “James. I need help.”

     He doesn’t smile, he sits down beside me, holds me in his arms and cries with me.

Violet and Silver came joint first in The Global Short Story Competion (UK) in September 2011.

I like the beach in winter, the cold air biting my naked toes, the water numbing them, like shoving both feet in a snow cone.  People avoid the beach in winter.  It’s a totally different place in January.  School’s out, kids running into the soft blue ocean.  Overweight mothers with angry tan lines, shouting, “Hey, Billy, look after yer sister.”  “No, ya can’t have a bloody ice cream, Jocasta.”

     In summer I come down here dressed in black with my hood up.  My notebook clutched tightly to my chest.  My note book has pictures of coloured kites on the cover, kites against a sharp blue sky.  I write my thoughts in it, my feelings and my plans.  Sometimes when my head and heart are empty I write what I hear.  The clawing of the waves at the sand, the bickering of the gulls, what people say.  “Oy!  Nigel, d’ya want a Chinese burn?”

      “No, I don’t pig-face.”  And people call me the retard.

     But in August it’s just me, my notebook and my frozen toes.

     Mum has stopped asking me if I’m going to school.  Before her words dribbled out like weary water.  Now she is silent.  The silence like empty boxes, all appearance and no weight.  I should love her but I don’t.  I despise her rheumy eyes and her stretchy polyester dresses.  She still drinks, her relationship with discount cider goes back further than her relationship with me.  I hate the odour that pours from her, her badly shaven armpits wetting the fabric of her dress and her washed out bra.  She stinks there too.  She’s hopeless.  You’d have thought giving birth to a fuck-up like me would’ve stopped her drinking.  But everyday she seeks solace in nowhere land earlier and earlier.  These days I can hear her brain screaming for me to leave at 8.00am, my pretence of taking the bus to school going over her head.  She doesn’t spot the clues, how I’m not wearing the uniform.  My saggy bag contains only one book and a pack of cigarettes.  I leave and I know she opens the bottle and pours it into her special glass.  The one I bought back from a school trip to Newcastle a long time ago.  ‘World’s Greatest Mum!’

     Mrs Ellis from junior school told me I was special, that I could sense things others couldn’t.  “You’re as smart as anyone else, Luke.  You’re just wired differently.”

     She didn’t re-assign me to the remedial class, she let me stay in my grade.  When things got too much I could sit at the back of the class and sort the play figures Mrs Ellis had put in a drawer.  Pirates and soldiers, kings and queens in plastic ermine and furs.  I found it hard to concentrate sometimes and my head became muddy, the words fuzzy.  Mrs Ellis understood and because she did, all the other kids played with me.  They didn’t think I was weird.  Because of Mrs Ellis, who smelt of roses.

     On my tenth birthday mum was too drunk to bake a cake for my class celebration.  Mrs Ellis baked one instead.  Double chocolate with a smiley face made out of jelly snakes and smarties.  It was soon after this that Mrs Ellis’s smell started to change.  It was more talcum powder and her breath became metallic.  Not like the angry metal of mum’s breath, it was different.  Her tummy became round and when Mrs Ellis left she gave me her phone number written on a blue piece of paper.  It said, ‘Nina 0407 629333.  Call me if you need a friend’.

     She came back with the baby but I pulled a sickie so I missed her.  I liked her too much to put a fuck-up like me onto her happy life.  I still miss her.

     All that was years ago.  I’m in high school, year 10.  I guess I’ll give up at the end of the year.  There’s not much more they can teach me.  I know how to roll a joint and survive on a dole cheque.  I could get a job packing shelves at ExpressShop, night work.  They pay pretty well and it would leave time during the day to come down here and write about stuff.  Mum used to work at ExpressShop but they binned her when she turned up drunk one day.  The manager, Mr Banks, asked me to come and walk her home.  “Sorry, Luke.  She’s getting too much.”  He felt sorry for me, I reckon he’d give me a job.  

     I don’t feel sorry for myself, things are what they are.  Sometimes I’m sorry for her.  I remember before I started school and she didn’t drink during the day.  She was young, her smooth face and bleached hair were beautiful to me.  She smelt of cherry lip gloss and strawberry shampoo.  She took me to the play park.  She’d sit in the middle of the roundabout and I tried to push her around.  She’d laugh.  It’s been years since I heard that laugh.  And of course she brought me here, to the beach.  She taught me how to skim stones when the water was flat.  She’d tell me of her dreams to fly to another country where the colours were brighter and the language foreign.  She tried to make curry but it turned to black paste in the bottom of the pan, the acrid smell filling our noses.  We laughed and she talked.  Of any place but here. 

     Something happened to her face over the years.  It thickened and became hard.  An alcoholic mask.  It isn’t pretty.  She’s slipped down so low I don’t think she’ll ever climb back up.  I don’t know what goes on in her damaged brain, all I know is that I wasn’t enough for her.

     It’s getting late.  I watch the change in the air as daylight fades.  It’s colder, but it’s thinner too.  And the colours; chocolate box pink meets fountain pen blue.  The sea becomes milk which is drunk by the greedy shoreline and sand the colour of goblets.  She’ll be passed out now.  I’ll make myself beans on toast and take a book to bed.  My favourite book, a travel book with sparkling photographs of India.  I got it from the library, it smells frowsty.

     The door is open when I get home and there’s a strong smell of vomit.  Mrs Pritchard from next door stands in the doorway – a worried frown wearing a housecoat.  “Luke!  Where have you been?  I rang the school.”

     “What’s happened?”  Ice runs through my veins.

     “It’s your mum, love.  Come on, I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

     “Mrs Pritchard…”  My voice doesn’t belong to me.  It belongs to a little man in a racing car, driving too fast. 

     Mrs Pritchard puts a hand on my arm.  “Luke, your mum had a heart attack this afternoon.”

     Is she dead, is she dead?  I see the fear in Mrs P’s eyes.  Is she scared of me, of what I might do?  I’ve seen that look before in my teacher’s eyes and the mothers of my few friends.  But never in my mum’s eyes.  Not even when I got caught nicking cash out of the principal’s desk. 

     “I phoned 20 minutes ago.  She’s critical but stable for the moment.  They have to make sure she doesn’t have another one.”

     The hospital is ablaze with lights.  I can feel them burning my skin, my eyes.  Mum is lying down with electrodes over her chest.  She is wearing one of those hospital gowns, like the one she had worn when she’d had me.  There’s an old Polaroid in a tin in the sideboard.  Mum smiling at the camera, holding a baby.  The smile reaches her eyes.  We are both wearing blue hospital gowns.  I never asked who took that photo, there were a lot of things I didn’t think to ask.

     Mum isn’t smiling now and neither am I.  Mrs P has disappeared but I can hear her voice, a low murmuring, talking to a nurse or a doctor.  I take one of mum’s hands in mine.  It isn’t soft or well looked after.  It doesn’t have painted nails like Mrs Ellis had.  But it’s my mum’s hand and I don’t ever want to let it go. 

     Although the lights are low and it is deathly quiet I start to tell her about the beach.  The colours and the people, the subtle changes of time and season.  Of how most people just see a golden beach and the blue sea but if you look between those colours you can see violet and silver.

     When the words dried up, I look at her face.  The lines have been ironed out and with a shock I remember that she is still a young woman.  Her name is Mary and she never knew her parents.  She had been raised in a children’s home.  She tried to tell what went on there but she could never finish as she gave way to sobbing.  I don’t want her to die without having known happiness.  I will try to be a better son, if there is another chance.  I’ll spend more time with her, I’ll help at home.  Make sure she’s eating. 

     A young nurse appears, hair scraped back off a face without make-up.  “Don’t stop.  It will calm her, hearing your voice.”

     When my head and heart are empty I take out my notebook from under my jacket and I read to mum, my thoughts, my feelings and my plans.  I think of the beach where I had hidden from her, where I pray I can take her again as she had taken me, a long time ago.

I wrote ‘Going Home’ a couple of years ago. It was awarded Highly Commended by the CJ Dennis Literary Award 2010.

I don’t like it here.  I’m on display, wheeled out to amuse.  My bed has wheels.  I sit here with my fellow patients, inert with eyes glazed over while doctors in white and nurses wearing horrible floral blouses, their thick calves in flat shoes, stoop to pick up the chart at the end of my bed, make a note and move on.  I cannot see a window from here, only charts and tubes and drooping flowers in jam jars. 

     Propped up by many pillows I can see two women in beds opposite mine.  One without her teeth, the other without her wits.  She thinks she’s given birth and is waiting for a nurse to bring her baby for a feed.

     “He’s such a bonny boy.”

     And I don’t know whether to feel sorry for her or envy her. 

     The curtains are drawn around the bed next to me.  This one only came in this morning and by the sound of her screams I’d guess she doesn’t want to be here.  None of us does, love. 

     I can’t remember who’s visiting me today.  I used to remember everything.  I was a woman with a wide net, friends and colleagues, dreams and aspirations.  Now look at me, a pile of shrinking flesh in an NHS bed.  I’ll never see the man I love in this world again.  I’m not sure about the next world, if there is one.  It bothers me that there might not be, all that darkness stops my breathing, maybe that’s the point of it.  Lights out until eternity, a frightening thought in a Godless world.

     Ben was a beautiful man.  I’ve seen women with their heads on backwards trying to get a look at him.  He didn’t mind that I was plain, except when some girl decided to make a play for him.  Ben hated the rudeness, how they would ignore me, elbow me out of the way.  All because I wasn’t pretty.  It didn’t bother me.  I trusted Ben to say the right thing and I knew I was worth ten of them.  Beauty and brains, we were, in an unconventional way.  That’s not to say I wasn’t without my charms.  I had long legs and thick chestnut hair, wore pencil skirts and Blue Grass perfume.  Whilst here I lay breathing in the smells of cleaning fluids, over cooked vegetables and the nurses sweat. 

     The new woman isn’t making any friends, she’s still screaming.  Her name is Mrs Richardson.  I heard the doctor trying to reason with her.

     “Come now, Mrs Richardson.  We’re not the enemy.”

     No, they’re not the enemy.  The enemy doesn’t have arms and legs and pens in its top pocket.  The enemy is shapeless and dark and spreads like a stain. 

     Ten o’clock, visiting time, she’s always on time and wearing a dress two sizes too small. 

     “Hello, Mum.”  She leans forward and kisses me.  Gawd, look at her.  No one should have a daughter as old as her. 

     “Hello, Kay.  How was the bus trip?”

     She gives me a funny look, doesn’t think I saw it but there’s nothing wrong with my eyes.

     “I drove, Mum.  I haven’t been on a bus since 1972.”

     “Of course not.  Breeding ground for germs, buses.”

     “I see you’ve got a new one.”

     “Yes, a screamer this one.  I’m not supposed to get stressed but it’s impossible.  I haven’t seen her yet, I don’t know if she’s our sort.”

     “Mum!”

     “You don’t know what it’s like here.  Her with no teeth…”

     “You mean Lillian.”  Kay likes to keep up with their names.

     “Yes, Lillian, I know what she’s called.  Her husband comes in wearing overalls, stinking of oil.  Not a tooth between them, they share a packet of digestives, sucking them until they’re soft enough to eat.”

     “Hello, Dorothy.  How are we today?”

     Irene, the tea lady, puts down a cup of tea on my tray.  It’s not Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchong.  She pats Kay’s hand and smiles weakly, thinks I don’t notice.  I may be old but I’m not dancing with madness yet.

     I used to go dancing with a girl called Rita, Rita Robson.  She could dance, such energy, I couldn’t keep up.  I learnt a lot from Rita, not just how to dance.  She knew a thing or two that girl.  Everyone wore white for their weddings in those days.  Rita wore a scarlet, off-the-shoulder cocktail dress.  Magnificent and five months pregnant. 

     “Mum, do you need help with your meal plan?”

     Kay homes in holding a strip of paper in her rough hands.  Her swollen knuckles are too big for that lovely wedding ring.  My hands were the most beautiful part of me.  Smooth and even now, still white.  I might have done hand modeling if it hadn’t been such an absurd job, advertising coral nail polish or white gold wedding bands.  I used my hands for my job anyway, doing the books for Ben’s coach business, Newcombe’s Travel.  Not a glamorous job but I had my child too.  What blessings they are.

     “Mum?”

     “I’ll have the sea bass with a garden salad.”

     “Fish cakes with peas?”

     “Yes, yes.”

     “Where’s my baby.  He needs a feed.”  The woman opposite is agitated.  A nurse murmurs something under her breath.  I look at Kay.

     “Her name is Mary.”

     “The immaculate conception?”  I suggest.

     Kay laughs discreetly, she does discreet very well.  An overrated sentiment, indiscretion is more fun.

     “How’s Emma getting on?”

     My granddaughter, Kay’s daughter, has recently given birth.  How depressing to be a great-grandmother.  Are we meant to live for so long?  Ben’s mum lived to a hundred and two.  I couldn’t imagine another 15 years of getting up in the morning and going to bed, hoping to make it through the night.  Ben’s mum outlived him.  That’s not natural.  But there was nothing natural about Mrs Ellis.

     A thin woman with a sharp nose, she could sniff out weakness.  I don’t have to tell you that Ben got his looks from his father.  I thought of his mother as a receptacle, the instrument used to give birth to my Ben.  I wish I’d had the guts to tell her this.  Even my mother, and she was a lovely woman, couldn’t stand Mrs Ellis.  She would walk into a room and the temperature would drop a degree.  A dried up witch, she must have had something on Ben’s father.  Why else did he stay with her?  He was a nice man, Stan Ellis, would forgive anyone anything.  Led a dog’s life though.  Sometimes it’s better to forget than forgive.

     “Mum.  You keep dropping off.  I’ll leave you to sleep.”

     I do feel drowsy.  My eyelids are heavy, my head’s slipping this way and that, a line of drool is collecting in the corner of my mouth.  I half-open my eyes to see Kay talking to a nurse, she wipes away a tear.   Why is she crying?  I must ask her when she comes in next.

     The sound of a plastic tray being dumped on my side table wakes me up but for a fragment of a second I reach out for Ben.  He’s not there of course but I rarely wake these days without feeling his presence.

     “Mmm.  Fish cakes, Mrs E.”  Irene, she’s a joker.  I hoist myself to sitting and re-arrange my pillows.

     “Did I miss sherry o’clock?”

     “Yes, dear.  The Queen popped in for a natter too.”

     She’s very efficient for a large woman, swiftly delivering trays, albeit noisily.  I stare down at my fishcakes and wonder if there is any fish in them. 

`     A sadness creeps over me.  I am in bed, the most intimate place a person can be and I am surrounded by strangers.  The curtains next to me have been pulled back.  Mrs Richardson has long hair, dyed black, and tied in a plait.  Her eyebrows are tinted too and her crimson lips are parted in silence.

     “Hello.  I’m Dorothy.”  I leave it at that for the moment.  I don’t want her to start screaming again. 

     Mary has been given a doll, she’s sleeping, holding onto her baby like a lioness.  Her face looks peaceful and is free of the lines that sketch the women in the geriatric ward.  If it wasn’t for Mary’s grey hair and the baby’s ghoulish plastic grin, she could be a new mother.

     I didn’t sleep at all for the first days of Kay’s life, I didn’t want to miss a moment.  The love I felt for her was colossal, it wiped the floor with me.  This ridiculously small creature had driven a road through my existence, where before there had been only fields.  Now my child has a child of her own and her child is a new mother.  We are a daisy chain of only children, all girls.  How I envy Emma for what she is feeling now.  I loved Kay as much as Kay loved Emma but neither of us wanted another.  I couldn’t bear another child pushing in between Kay and I.  She’s an old woman herself now.  It’s time for me to move on, it’s the nature of life.  But I can’t move on, I’ll never be ready, I don’t know how to let go.

     My fishcakes have cooled as I contemplate a meatier subject.  Mrs Richardson has requested the shepherds pie.  She’ll only do it once.  She has lipstick on her teeth and a catheter.  Her eyes, caked with mascara, meet mine.

     “It’s so undignified.  I don’t know how you can stand it.”

     “I wasn’t aware there was a choice.”

     “I was Miss Glamorgan 1952, you know.”

     That explains the make-up in bed.  I think it’s harder for the pretty ones, at least I didn’t have looks to lose as well.   

     “How’s your meal?” 

     “Inedible.  Did you say your name was Dorothy?  I’m Gloria.  Not my real name, I used to do amateur dramatics.  I was christened Joan.”

     “Didn’t do Joan Plowright any harm.”

     “No.  But she wasn’t a looker was she?”  Gloria’s face froze.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean…”

     “Who are you?”  Toothless Lillian barks.

     I raise my eyebrows at my new friend and feel a little less wretched.  The evenings are the worst.  Evenings should be spent with loved ones.  Or at least with choices, of books to read, of wine to drink, soap operas on the telly.  Here in God’s waiting room we know our stories are ending and as far as I can tell, there is no happily ever after.

     Someone is shaking me, I can smell perfume.  “Rita, is that you?”

     “How did you know? 

     I open my eyes.  “Because you’ve worn Joy since rationing stopped.  How are you?”

     “More to the point, how are you?” 

     I pull a face while Rita shoves a bunch of irises messily into a jam jar.  “If the cancer doesn’t get me the boredom will.  I drifted off after breakfast.”

     Rita sits down in the green vinyl chair next to my bed.  Age has consumed her too.  She is dressed in beiges and creams, I miss those vermilions and scarlets.  Rita notices me staring.

     “Do you like it?  I got it at the Oxfam on Dury Street.”

     “Mmm.  So what have you been up to?  I want all the details.”

     “Well not much, Dot, I’m 87 you know.  I’m cloistered in home help and meals on wheels.  It’s just like here but better decorated.”

     “Who’s she?”  Lillian pokes a bony finger at Rita.

     “The Queen of bloody Sheba, love.”

     We laugh until Rita starts coughing.  “Have you seen much of the baby?”

     “I don’t want Emma bringing her in here, all sorts of germs and super bugs.”

     “No, suppose not.  What’s she called her?”

    “Pearl.”

     “What an old fashioned name, I had an Auntie Pearl.  What happened to all those wonderful celebrity names, Betty Kitten and Fifi-Trixibelle?

     “I know.  We’re surrounded by Ruby’s and Lily’s these days.  Dorothy hasn’t made a come back.  The old girl next to me, her name is Joan but she’s done a bit of amateur dramatics and goes by the name of Gloria.”

     “Is she the one with her face on?  I saw her in the television room, holding hands with a dishy looking man.  Must be her husband.”

     “She doesn’t wear a ring.  Perhaps it’s someone else’s husband.”

     “That’s more like it.”

     I find it hard to keep up as Rita chatters on.  Eventually Irene appears with a plate of food as beige as Rita.

     “Guess you want to kick me out now, Irene?”

     “Absolutely.  No guests for lunch.  This isn’t the Savoy Grill.”

    Rita kisses me on the cheek and wanders off.  Even she has slowed down.  Irene deftly delivers lunches to Gloria and Lillian.  She gets to Mary’s bed and stops.  There’s a pause before a cacophony of noises erupt; bells ringing, feet running, the efficient swishing of curtains being pulled.  The pause had seemed louder.  We listen to the jerking sound of the defibrillator and hold our breath in the hope that silence might help.  It doesn’t.  More doctors appear and eventually Mary’s body is taken away on a stretcher.  Later when the curtains are pulled back, her empty bed serves as a warning to us all.  Next to me Gloria cries softly.

     “You didn’t even know her, none of us did.  We could have made the effort, she might have died among friends.”

     “I’m not crying for her.”

     “Death is a shadow.  Always there even if we can’t see him.”  Lillian with her teeth in for a change.

     “What happened to all that time?”  Gloria wipes the tears furiously.

     “I want to go home.”  I think of another Dorothy who wanted to go home.  Was Kansas a euphemism for the afterlife?

     The mood in the ward is tangible, a solid mass of gloom.  None of us ate our lunch, or said much.

     “Hello, Mum.”

     “Kay?  Is it that time already?”

     She sits down.  “Where’s Mary?”

     “She’s gone.”

     “Home?”

     “No, dead.”

     “That’s sad.  Tom’s parking the car, he’ll be up in a minute.”

     “I meant to ask you last time, how’s his retirement going?”

     Kay smiles with her eyes.  “He’s driving me mad.  Doesn’t know what to do with himself.”

     Tom appears, pushing a wheel chair.

     “Who’s that for?”  I notice the bag at Kay’s feet.

     “We’re taking you home.”

     “But… the cancer?”

     “The doctor says old age will probably get you first.”

     I make a silent prayer to a God I don’t believe in and promise not to make too much of a nuisance of myself.  “Was that why you were crying last time?” 

     Kay kisses me on the forehead.  “Let’s get you out of that nightdress, eh, Mum?”

     “I hope you brought my blue dress.”