Tag Archives: short story

Cellar door

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Mark had run to catch up with the others, held back by Hobson over some minor imperfection in his trigonometry workings. He didn’t want to miss his bus and, more importantly, she might be at the stop. He definitely didn’t want to miss that. He slowed to the rest of the group’s walking pace as he came up behind them.

“That’s what she said, I’m not making it up.” It was Cooks – Jason Cooks but just Cooks to his friends – spreading his arms in sincerity.

“Seriously ? It’s that easy ?” said one of the others.

“What ? What are you talking about ?” asked Mark, still slightly out of breath.

“Cooksey’s sister. Apparently they’ve been doing something in English that’s got the ladies of St Benedict’s all excited.” This was Johnson – David to his Mum but Johnson in present company. St Benedict’s was the local girl’s school: a place that was equal parts magical, mysterious, and terrifying for Mark’s friends

“So ? I don’t get it ?”

“Exactly, you don’t and never have. But this just might mean that one day you do.” The others laughed. Mark continued to look confused.

“I mean that they get really – really – excited”. Johnson raised his eyebrows meaningfully. Mark shrugged. “Jesus, Marky boy, I mean more excited than when they had that supply teacher who’d done that modeling for Topman.”

“Ah, right…” a kind of comprehension dawned on Mark’s face. “So what’s got them all worked up then ?”

“Phono something” started Johnson. “Phono… what was it again Cooksey ?”

“Phonoaesthetics” declared Cooks, looking pleased that he’d remembered it. “They do it for A level but the 5th formers won’t know about it yet”. On this point he looked particularly pleased.

“Yeah but what is it ?”

“From what she told me it’s something to do with the sound of words” said Cooks. “But the important bit is that some words, apparently, sound so beautiful that they’re almost hypnotic. Especially when you’re, you know…”

“You know what ?” said Mark.

“When you’re chatting to girls” said Cooks. “I’m telling you, like I told the others, it’s what she said. She reckons some of the girls were practically in a trance when they heard them”.

“What words then ?” asked Mark. “The only sound I can hear right now is the sound of bullshit”.

“What do you mean ?” said Cooks defensively.

“What words give you these Jedi powers over girls ?”

“Well not Jedi for a start mate. Don’t start talking about Star Wars. No wonder you never get anywhere.”

“No, no, I know that.” Mark looked away, less sure again. “But come on then, let me in on it. What words ?”

Cooks smirked, his authority restored. “She gave me one phrase that I think sounds pretty good.” He paused until he was sure he had everyone’s full attention. “Cellar door…”. It hung there whilst everyone contemplated it.

“Selador ? What does that even mean ?” asked Johnson.

“Cellar door.” corrected Cooks. “You know, the door to a cellar.”

Everyone stopped and looked at Cooks. His great reveal was met with a mixture of derision and disbelief. “I know, I know” he said, trying to pacify them. “It sounds ridiculous but it’s true. This phonoaesthetics isn’t about what the words mean, just what they sound like.”

“Phono arse pathetic more like” said Johnson.

“Don’t believe it if you don’t want to” protested Cooks. “It works though. I’m definitely going to try it.” He suddenly looked conspiratorially at Mark. “Maybe I’ll use it at my sister’s party at the weekend. She knows that Caroline Jenkins. I bet she’s coming. She’s in the 5th year so she won’t know about it yet.”

“Don’t do that Cooksey” said Mark. “You know I like her.”

“Well do something about it then. I can’t have this secret weapon and not use it now, can I ?”

“I will, I will” said Mark.

“Ask her now or I’m using cellar door on her” said Cooks abruptly. The others were interested now, waiting to see what Mark would do. “I’m giving you first go Mark – you can even use the killer phrase if you want.”

Mark took a deep breath in and rubbed nervously at the back of his head. “Alright” he declared. “Alright. I’ll do it. I’m going now.”

They’d all started walking again and as they approached the bus stop a group of girls, uniforms emblazoned with the crest of St Benedict’s, noticed them and began whispering to each other. One of them turned from her friends and acknowledged the boys.

“Alright little brother.”

Cooks grinned cockily. “Less of the little. Just been telling the boys about that thing you did in English.”

“Oh really ?” his sister smiled back before briefly turning back to her friends who were all struggling to suppress giggles.

“Yeah” said Cooks, slightly less certainly. “In fact Mark’s gone to try it out right now on Caroline Jenkins.” He nodded his head towards a figure that was now marching with grim determination towards a pretty girl stood with her friends at the next bus stop along. “He’s been wanting to ask her out for ages.”

The older girls couldn’t contain it anymore and burst into hysterical peals of laughter. “He’s not going to use cellar door is he ?” asked Cooks’ sister.

“Yeah. Like you said. The most beautiful phrase in the English language. So beautiful it made you all…”

“Made us all quite giddy with excitement” she finished for him. “Practically unable to control ourselves. Ready to do whatever anyone asked”. She span around in delight. “That was it little brother, wasn’t it ?”

“Something like that” muttered Cooks. “What’s so funny ?”. He looked anxiously over at his friend who had now reached the object of his affections and had begun talking. Caroline Jenkins didn’t look like she was in a trance. She looked slightly scared. Cooks didn’t have much experience in this sort of thing but he was pretty sure scared wasn’t a good sign.

“Turns out I had it wrong” said his sister. “Turns out the most beautiful word in the English language is something different.” With a flourish she turned back to her friends. “What was it again girls ?”

“Gullible” they chorused together.

 

……

This is the fourth story in my series of 42 shorts that I’m writing to raise money and awareness for Mind, the mental health charity. Please share if you liked it. If you’re interested in donating to a great cause then please visit my fundraising page: https://www.justgiving.com/42shorts/

Polaris

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There is no fixed point in the universe. That’s what she used to say to me, with that half smile, lips together, eyes dancing, back in those early days when I fell for her. You’re the fixed point is what I’d told her and that’s what had started it. Later she’d told me that it had felt too soon to hear something like that but I still remember catching, just momentarily, the startled look of delight that surfaced on her face as I’d said it. As quickly as she’d revealed herself it was hidden away again and she settled her features back into that half smile. We were walking home from a bar and though the lights of the city dimmed the canopy of stars above us she picked out one, pointing up at it and grabbing my shoulder so that I looked. That’s Polaris she told me. Teased me that it was sometimes known as the guiding star and that perhaps that was what I was looking for. Did you know that it’s brighter now than when mankind first looked on it ? She didn’t tell me this, I looked it up later. She had been teasing but she was right; I was looking for a guiding star and though I never told her I saw some equivalence in the steady brightening of that distant celestial body and our relationship as it blossomed between us. We came back to it, as our little lover’s in joke, again and again. It’s not fixed she would insist. It might as well be I tried to reason with her, all of the other stars in the Northern sky appear to rotate around it. We can take our position in space relative to that point. She used to laugh and assert that everything was inexorably expanding out from the moment things began, that everything was getting further away from everything else. More distant. Nothing was fixed. I would pretend to be sad and playfully detach from her, taking literally her inference that all things pull apart until she’d give in, wrap her arms back around me and whisper that changes in the universe were happening so slowly that we’d never even notice it. The universe won’t pull us apart I would whisper back.

I remember this each year, particularly as the season turns to Autumn. The sun always hangs lower in the sky and it more directly catches my attention. I find myself staring at it, the most prominent star that we can see, marking out our days in constant motion.

There is no fixed point in the universe. Not anymore.

……

This is the third story in my series of 42 shorts that I’m writing to raise money and awareness for Mind, the mental health charity. Please share if you liked it. If you’re interested in donating to a great cause then please visit my fundraising page: https://www.justgiving.com/42shorts/

Fission

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“His wife’s dead lieutenant.”

“General ?”

“She’s dead. The British know she’s been dead since ’41 but they’ve been keeping it from him so he stays… stays motivated shall we say”. General Groves sat back in his chair behind his impeccably tidy desk and motioned to his subordinate to stand at ease. There was no trace of doubt or regret in his voice.

“He’s asking for news again sir.”

“My hands are tied lieutenant, this is for the British. Rotblat’s with Chadwick and I don’t think they want that group disrupted. If Oppenheimer needs Chadwick and Chadwick needs Rotblat then our job is to make sure nothing gets in the way of that.”

“Then what do we tell him sir ?”

“Use your initiative lieutenant. Find out what the British are telling him and tell him the same. The Soviets are going to take Poland, it’s a mess. No one knows what’s going on in there. Tell him we’re doing everything we can to establish contact with her.”

The lieutenant fell silent and lowered his eyes to the floor. There was a short intake of breath as if he was about to speak but then thought better of it. Groves noted the reaction implacably.

“Do you know the story lieutenant ?” he asked suddenly.

“Sir ?”

“Rotblat’s story. How he got here.”

“No. No sir, I don’t. He doesn’t talk about it to us.” By “us” Groves assumed the lieutenant meant the military personnel on the project. He nodded briefly in acknowledgement.

“He’s a brilliant man. All of them, of course, are brilliant men lieutenant. We won’t build this thing without that. They need to be able to see this..” he thumped the desk abruptly “…and this…” he rolled a piece of paper between his thumb and forefinger “…in a way we can’t comprehend.” He stood and spread his arms to take in the room. “All of this lieutenant, this desk, this room, you and I, they need to understand all this as matter, as constituent particles, as the building blocks of the universe.”

“I don’t think I understand sir”

Groves laughed.

“I don’t need you to lieutenant. I need you to make sure that nothing distracts them from their task. Rotblat’s mind should be on atoms and nuclei and reactions, not on flesh and blood. They are scientists lieutenant – I need them to deliver the most extraordinary science project man has ever devised not ponder on the nature of humanity.”

“But he keeps asking after his wife sir.”

“Rotblat left Poland two days before Hitler invaded.” Groves paused. He was a practical man and war had hardened his pragmatism but he was not entirely without heart. “She was supposed to come back to England with him lieutenant but she was unwell. He was needed back with Chadwick and left her behind. Way I’ve heard it she was supposed to follow as soon as she was well enough. She never left Poland and our intelligence suggests she died, maybe in Majdaenk, maybe in the Warsaw ghetto.”

Groves sat down again behind his desk and lowered his voice, almost as if voicing his private thoughts aloud, softly.

“He writes to her. He still has hope. He writes to her every week, mailing the letters to his old address even though he’s heard nothing for almost three years. He knows about the camps and he knows what’s happening in his country but he still writes. Hell, somewhere in that head of his he must know we intercept every piece of mail that leaves this base. What does he think ? That we’d allow correspondence from the most important project in the war to a country occupied by the enemy ?” Groves shook his head. “He doesn’t think that. He knows those letters don’t go anyplace. I think he just writes to remember. I think he writes because it’s the only way he can talk to her.”

“So when he asks… ?” started the lieutenant.

“When he asks…” snapped Groves, his precise military tones returned, fixing his stare directly on his subordinate. “…you tell him what the British are telling him and keep his mind on the work.”

……

My dearest Tola,

Forgive my habits but I trust that you understand them well enough by now. I must write to you each week, the thought of you reading my words sustains me through the project and I fear that I need that sustenance now more than ever.

I am a foolish man writing letters that may never be read but I carry their words in my heart and will tell them all to you when we are reunited. It is my intention to return home soon to do whatever I must to find you; the Soviets loosen the Nazi grip on our home daily and surely the war’s end must be near ?

Our work here is close to being done Tola but the nearer we get to completion the more my concerns grow. Chadwick is committed and I owe him so much that it pains me to even contemplate what I am coming to realise I must do. The work itself is exceptional. You would not believe what we have achieved ! It is truly a miracle of scientific co-operation. We have come so far in understanding the power in the tiniest fragments of matter in such a short time. It is overwhelming and impossible not to be caught up in the thrill of such an endeavour.

And yet, at the same time, my doubts grow. They brought us here to contribute to the fight against the Nazis, to unleash an energy never before unleashed in the world. I understood the urgency; we all understood the consequences if the Germans built a fission weapon first but I don’t know that I believe that they can anymore. They still have Diebner and Schumann but everyone else of any standing is here, the sum total of our knowledge of atomic power is here. When I see what we have achieved I can’t believe they could have done so much. How could they without Oppenheimer ? Without Chadwick ? Without Fermi ? Even without Groves. I’ve never seen a man so driven, so certain of an outcome.

Only now I don’t know what outcome Groves seeks. What is he being asked to do ? We dined at the Chadwick’s last week and, quite off-the-cuff, I heard him remark that the project was really designed to subdue the Soviets. He laughed it off but I took something of truth there in what he said. Are we building a bomb to end this war or to start the next one ?

My love I will be with you soon. My mind is almost made up. The price of us being split apart was perhaps worth paying to end Hitler’s menace and free our home but my conscience will not allow for that price to be the end of all things. Patience, sweet Tola. Wait for me a little longer. I will be with you soon.

Always yours,

Jozef

……

Joseph Rotblat was an extraordinary man: winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 and the only person to leave the Manhattan Project on grounds of conscience before its completion. Most of the bare facts in this story are – I hope – true although the devices by which the story is told are all fictitious. I have no idea if Rotblat wrote to his wife but I like to believe that perhaps he did.

This is the second story in my series of 42 shorts that I’m writing to raise money and awareness for Mind, the mental health charity. Please share if you liked it. If you’re interested in donating to a great cause then please visit my fundraising page: https://www.justgiving.com/42shorts/

Beginnings ?

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There should be a beginning, a middle, and an end, right ? That’s how stories work. So you’re probably wondering what this is ? The beginning ? The end ? Somewhere in the middle ? 

Let’s give ourselves something to work with. I’m clinging to the hand rail on the Severn Bridge, wind blowing in my face, cars rushing past behind me. Does that make this the end ? I haven’t told you on which side of that hand rail I am standing. What did you suppose ? Is this just an innocent walk from England to Wales or the prelude to a plummet into the tidal depths of the water below ?

I’m clinging to the hand rail, retching across the side of the bridge, watching flecks of my own vomit disappear, whipped in the wind, down towards the river. There’s a stationary car behind me at an angle across the carriageway, driver’s door open, headlights on. So perhaps this is the middle ? The reaction to what happened in the beginning but with somewhere still to go.

A hand on my shoulder startles me into pulling tighter on the hand rail. I look round to see a woman, her face furrowed with concern, her car pulled to an abrupt halt behind us, headlights left on to illuminate her route to me. She asks if I’m alright and I note the sadness in her eyes even as the wind wraps her long, dark hair across her face. A beginning then ? Two strangers meeting at the mercy of circumstance.

I want to tell her what happened and why I come back. Why it always leaves me like this; physically sick, violently forcing the memories back out of my body. I imagine that you want to know too. That’s how stories work, isn’t it ? If this was the end you’d already know, if it’s the middle then you’d be finding out, but if this is the beginning then you only know what I want to tell you. Perhaps I will tell her and you can listen.

I tell her that I’m okay. She frowns and I don’t blame her. I’m throwing up over the side of a bridge in the middle of the night. I’m clearly not okay. She asks me again, this time assuring me that she just wants to help. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and let go my grip on the rail with the other. Really, I tell her, I’m really okay. Just a sudden wave of nausea. Maybe vertigo. Now she starts to look annoyed. I don’t know why I bothered lying or at least I don’t know why I didn’t come up with something even half way believable.

She starts to turn away to return to her car. The bridge isn’t busy at this time but I guess she’s suddenly aware that she’s blocking up the inside lane, was in such a rush that she didn’t flick on her hazards. I take a step after her and start to speak. She looks over her shoulder and says that she’ll be back in just a minute. I watch her clamber back up to the road and walk back to her car, a featureless black silhouette in the headlights.

It’s the hazards that do it. I notice them wink on and then off and it all comes back. Lights flashing on this bridge a year ago. Lights that I could see reflected off the thousands of pieces of broken glass, the fractured remains of a windscreen. Fractured as I’d been thrown through it and onto the tarmac on that still, cold night. I thought it was the end.

And so I come back. I come back because it wasn’t the end but it won’t leave me. I am stuck in some kind of middle.

She finds me again sitting and weeping, my head buried in my knees, wrapping myself up tightly against the echoes of the accident. This time she doesn’t ask if I’m okay, she just sits beside me and puts her arm across my shoulders. I tell her about my friends and our trip to Wales. I tell her about the minibus and how I’d taken to slipping off the seatbelt when I sat in the front so that I could turn around to speak to everyone. I tell her that I should have known he was tired, that we should have done more to share the drive home. We were so close to home though. I tell her that I was thrown out when we hit the central reservation before the bus span around in the road, turned up onto its side and was ploughed into by the lorry behind us. I tell her that I only survived because I wasn’t in the bus. That’s what the police said later. They called it a miracle.

Now that you’ve listened to me telling her I guess this is the end ? This is the first time since I’ve been back that anybody stopped, the first time I haven’t stood on the bridge alone. It’s the first time that I’ve told anyone what happened. It’s the first time I’ve cried. With so many firsts perhaps this is actually the beginning ?

She still has her arm across my shoulders, that worried furrow creasing her forehead, and those sad eyes watching me with concern. I wipe my eyes clear of tears and ask her for her name.

……….

This short story is the first in a series of 42 to try to raise awareness and money for Mind, the mental health charity. Please feel free to share it if you enjoyed it. More details here:  https://www.justgiving.com/42shorts/

Are you alright there ?

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“Are you alright there ?” asks the girl with the green hair behind the till.

I set down the books I’m buying on the counter: “Overcoming Anxiety”, “Mindfulness: Finding Peace In A Frantic World”, and “Man’s Search For Meaning”. Oh, and Robin Hobb’s “Ship Of Magic”. Three parts self help, one part pure escapism.

Her question isn’t literal. I know that. It is a very British way of wrapping up “hello” and “can I take some form of payment for those books you’re holding ?”. It doesn’t need a response. Certainly not an honest response; that would be a clear violation of social etiquette. You don’t really tell someone whether you’re alright. Particularly someone  you’ve never met.

But the books… It’s so obvious. It seems too absurd to be asked that question, lay down those books, and not say anything. And she has green hair. I had already decided, in a distracted moment in the queue, that nobody who had green hair could be a bad person.

“Evidently not…” I offer apologetically. “As you can see by my choice of books”.

It hangs there uncomfortably between us. As soon as I say it I feel awful. She clearly now feels desperately awkward. There had been nothing in the Waterstone’s customer service training that covered this terrain. Nothing, frankly, in much of our usual social intercourse amongst strangers that covered it. I was in clear violation of all of the unspoken rules and I knew it and regretted it.

“Well I hope the books help…” she starts. A pause. “I suffer a little with anxiety too so I know what it’s like…”

She leaves it hanging there. What had started as a straightforward transaction – small pieces of paper handed over for larger, bound ones – had turned into a mental health confessional. A tiny, strange connection.

“Books help most things, don’t they ?” I offer back.

“Yeah” she agrees. “And it’s good you’ve got the Robin Hobb. Bit of self help and then a big story to get lost in”. We are silent for a moment as she scans the books and I pay. “Hope they help” she says again, putting the books into a bag, folding my receipt, and handing them both back to me.

“Thanks” I say. Not just for the books but for forgiving my intrusion, for acknowledging my admission, for showing some empathy, some vulnerability, and for liking Robin Hobbs. I didn’t say those bits. My ingrained social etiquette is back in control.

I hope she knew that was what I meant anyway. At the very least I hope I didn’t mess up her day. Our briefest moment of recognition was pretty much the highlight of mine.

Just Write: Week 7, 10th March – part 2

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Week 7 of this term’s writing class pulled together a few of the themes from the last three or four weeks and focussed on one slightly larger exercise than usual. We all, without a huge amount of thought, came up with four potential characters – just name, age, and profession – which gave us a selection of about 30 to choose from. We picked two and then had to write three scenes – or, effectively, two scenes and a brief ending – with some direction.

First up was a scene in which the two characters are at either a wedding or funeral, second was the start of the overall story, and finally a few lines that suggested the ending of the story. We didn’t know about parts 2 and 3 before writing part 1 and, ultimately, we read back the work in chronological order (i.e. part 2 before part 1) rather than as written. I’ve reproduced here in the order it was written, however.

So I picked Joy, a 34 year old book shop owner, and Grace, a 21 year old student. This is what they got up to:

It was on occasions like this that Joy was given to rue her name. There was something toe curlingly embarrassing about introducing herself at a funeral:

“Hi, I’m Joy”.

There was no getting past it, no matter how sad she made her face, how remorseful her follow up words, there it was. “Joy”. On the least joyous occasion.

She was loitering near to the edge of the room, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, desperate to avoid an introduction. It was worse here – she’d barely known the guy, he just used to come into the shop pretty regularly. An avid comic reader she remembered. Thought it was graphic novels now she’d asked him once, you know “all grown up” she’d added with a smile. Apparently not. Comics, he’d declared, boldly reclaiming the word from her projections of childhood and the Beano and all that stuff. She’d barely known him but his wife had come to the shop, said it was his favourite place and asked her to come.

Just then she was startled away from her thoughts by a young woman entering the room just next to her. She’d somehow caught her foot on the small step on the way in and tumbled forwards, landing at Joy’s feet.

“God, are you alright ?” said Joy extending her hand, pulling the woman up.

“Yeah, yeah. How embarrassing !” said the woman.

“I’m…” Joy hesitated. “I’m Joy”. An apologetic smile.

“Thanks Joy, hi” said the woman, extending a hand. “I’m Grace.”

……

“No, no, no !” Grace exclaimed. “It just couldn’t happen.”

“It would !” retorted her uncle, turning back to the pile of comics on the table. “There’s precedent Grace.”

“Precedent ?” she snorted.

“Yeah ! There was that arc where the Marvel guys came in to the DC universe…”

“That was just money” she cut him off. “DC did it chasing sad old fan boys like you !” Her uncle cheerily winked at her. “Just money.”

“So you really don’t think Bruce Banner would team up with Bruce Wayne ?”

She rolled her eyes. She knew he was just teasing but they both loved these conversations, she wasn’t sure when they’d stumbled on a shared love of superheroes and the fantastic but it had kept them close now for a long time.

“Wayne’s a loner. Banner’s a loner. They work alone.” It was her final word. Almost her final word. “Besides, one argument and you’ve got the Hulk smashing up the Bat Cave and trashing all that hi tech gadgetry. Never gonna happen.”

Her uncle raised his hands in supplication, accepting defeat, and delighting in the act they’d created, each of them playing their part so well. Sometimes he thought it was all he had.

……

She found it tucked in his oldest pile of comics; she’d been leafing through, inhaling the dusty pages, remembering him. The pink piece of A4 fell out, a single name written in the middle under her birth date: Grace Jenkins.

The room flipped as she caught sight of her father’s name.

……

I enjoyed this exercise albeit I felt the results were a little mixed. I was pretty pleased with my first piece – okay the play on the character’s names is arguably a little trite but I thought it worked quite nicely. However, having made my characters meet in the funeral scene and, consequently, making it feel like the beginning of the story, I was then a little thrown by the instruction to make the second piece the actual start of the story. The outcome was that I pretty much jettisoned Joy altogether and it turned into Grace’s story and her, as it transpires, father (uncle). I didn’t intend that at the outset – it was making itself up as it went along.

Second scene works less well for me. I don’t know where the comic thing came from in the first scene and I kind of ran with it in the second. I’m not sure I’d stick with it if I was revisiting the piece overall. It was interesting though (to me) that I ended up with what was essentially a close father / daughter relationship that hints at some deep sadness to come – well, not really hints, he ends up dead. Fairly big hint. This is at the heart of the bigger story idea I have with the character of Emily from the last couple of weeks.

So, not an unmitigated disaster… but still not quite right in terms of the tone I’m looking for. Last week of term next week. Not long to get it right (fortunately there are more terms to come…).

It must be the time of year…

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9. December – All About Eve                                                             Nottingham, December 1996.

A short story.

This feels true. It isn’t, of course. I know that. She would know that. The details are all wrong and nostalgia and memory aren’t the same thing. But you don’t know that. All you need to know is that once upon a time we tried again. Failed again.

……

I think it must be the time of year; it had started in late Autumn. Back then we were two chronically shy souls tentatively finding each other; the falling leaves marking our own inexorable falling in love. There was an awkwardness between us, somehow in us, at first which held a certain naïve charm. An innocence. I don’t know, maybe we were just foolish kids. It had ensured that those beginnings had run on from October into December, two months of careful courtship – our painfully slow reaching for each other as old fashioned as that word implies.

So this time of year always brought it back, the magical blaze of the beginning sustained over those months that ran from fireworks to fairy lights – the world alive with lights in the darkness.

It had ended a handful of years later in the same span of months; still those clear, crisp skies, and the aging sun hung low, but now with a snap and bite to the wind. Still discernibly Autumn but withering into Winter.

And now here I was, lost and lonely, reaching for her again across the years, looking for what we’d once had. Choosing to be blind to the reasons why it had failed the first time, the second time, all of the times. I reached for the phone, dialled a number. The brief silence before the dial tone sounded was enough to give me pause and I hung up, put the phone down again, picked up a bottle of cheap red wine and poured another glass.

Eventually I reached again for the phone. Dialled a number.

……

She had stayed for the weekend as usual – it had become our habit over the past six months. She’d even stayed on Sunday night which was less common as it meant an early start for her long drive back south to make it to work on Monday morning. Neither of us could have known for certain that it was our last night together, lying there squeezed together on my single bed. If we had would it have been different ? Would we have made love, reconciled to the end and spending those last moments lost in each other ? Perhaps we’d have talked, spent the time making sure we were right that this was the end, that there wasn’t some way we could make it work that we’d missed ?

I don’t think we’d have talked. We’d never spent our time together talking, never found a way to open ourselves up honestly and ask for what either of us needed. We wrote, that was what we did. Even in those beginnings we wrote to each other, exchanging letters in person, the sender waiting nervously as the recipient read. It was the only way we found to express ourselves. The next day would bring a reply – a conversation played out over days, in slow motion, that might have taken minutes if we’d been able to break the silence. Perhaps we imagined ourselves characters in one of the Austen novels we’d been studying. Maybe we were just foolish kids.

Things had briefly flared again in those last months, occasionally a spark catching flame in the dying embers, but ultimately turning to ash. Picking our way back across familiar ground felt good at first, a small reminder of the rush of being sixteen and falling headlong into first love. But we weren’t sixteen this time. Besides, even when we had been the evanescent rush hadn’t sustained us once that initial thrill had passed. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not denying the truth of what we felt that first time: it was something extraordinary. You only fall first once and we fell so hard we were left gasping for air. But this time ? Could it be taking our breath away again ? Were we just clinging on to the feeling of being in love or were we really in love ? That I even wondered seemed to suggest an answer.

She left before dawn as I slept.

……

When I got up I found that she’d left a letter. Carefully placed where it couldn’t be missed. A letter to say all of things that we couldn’t say. Just like in the beginning, just like always. It was a letter of the future, talking of all the things she would do, all the places she would go, all the dreams she still had. She wanted to move on with her life and was asking if I wanted to come along.

I knew that I didn’t.

I knew but it broke my heart all the same.