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Powder blue

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That bit was true. She wore powder blue. A skirt that shifted up and around her legs as I watched her walk, hips lifting and falling as she retreated from me. I didn’t follow her. She’d made it clear that I shouldn’t but there was nothing I wanted more than to chase her. Powder blue skirt, white blouse, hair pulled up in a loose bun, loose strands tumbling down her neck. I memorised her back. Her walking away was as good as it was going to get so I fixed it in my head. I love to watch you leave. Jesus, now you’ve got me sounding like the lyrics from some 80s hair metal band. Shot through the heart and you’re to blame.

That bit was true though. That bit I remember. The stuff before that I’ve tried to forget and mostly been successful. I expect it was the usual easy let down lines about not the right time or not in a good place right now or it’s not you it’s me. Your mouth said some words. Your perfect kissable mouth said some words. I watched it and remembered feeling it on mine but couldn’t reliably say what it said. You never listened. Perhaps that’s what it said. It’s a fair cop. Guilty. There’s not a court in the land that wouldn’t acquit though when I submit, in my defence, the glory of watching that mouth and tasting those lips and feeling that tongue tease and test mine. Who’d listen under those circumstances ? A better man than me. You were just too distracting. Too arresting. Does that make me shallow ? Did you get tired of splashing around in shallow old me, looking for some depths to sink into that just weren’t there ? I don’t know. Maybe I am. You just walked out on me and I’m fixing the image of your swaying hips and perky backside in my brain as my memory of this moment. I’m not proud.

There’s other stuff I’ve forgotten. Dates we went on as a prelude to sex. Conversations we had as a prelude to sex. Staring romantically into each other’s eyes as a prelude… You get the idea. The prelude was always pretty predictable. As we’ve established I’m shallow enough to have my well rehearsed moves fixed down to a tee. Like muscle memory. You could drop me down in a bar, in a cinema, walking down the street hand-in-hand, in a restaurant, in a gym, on a train, even one time buying some throat sweets in Boots, and it would end in bed. Or the floor next to the bed. Or stairs. Or an alleyway. As I say, you get the idea. I’m not boasting, it’s just something I know how to do. That part is always a means to an end. The fact that it is seems to always bring about this you-walking-away end.

…

It was all lies. I never wore powder blue. I might have worn navy or black or, when we first met, something red even, but powder blue ? I always knew there was a gap between the reality of us together and the twisted narrative playing in your head and presumably this was part of it. That I was all powder blue and perfect bottom and floor to ceiling legs and blow job lips. What the hell are blow job lips anyway ? Coming next month in Cosmo: 23 lipsticks that look great round his cock. So what did he tell you ? That it was all sex ? That he was dreadfully, charmingly, shallow and that I thought I was the one that would get him to dispense with the scuba diving and gear up with an air tank to fully explore our murky depths together ? He’d never use a diving analogy without some fucking gag about, you know, another kind of diving though. That part about him being shallow ? Give him some credit: that part, amongst all the lies, was true.

For the record then I wore navy. I remember it now. A straight, tailored skirt from Hobbs, cut just above the knee. There were no flashes of thigh or glimpses of suspender belt. No hint of what was underneath unless you were some kind of sex obsessed maniac that sees navy as powder; some permanent rendering of the world in soft focus. I guess that’s what too much porn will do to you. That and an endless compulsion to buy me “gifts” from Agent Provocateur. Yeah, sure I’ll wear those. Just as soon as you clamp your balls in a vice and shove a feathered butt plug up your arse. Also for the record my hips don’t sway or swing. I don’t casually sashay across the floor. I walk. Specifically I walk away from you and not so that you can watch me leave but so that I can get the fuck away as fast as I can without falling flat on my face in three inch heels. I’m amazed you didn’t mention those. Presumably you couldn’t drag your eyes away from my behind long enough to notice.

That stuff you forgot ? Honestly, you’re right to forget it. It was forgettable. You’re not the only one that phoned it in during those dates, during those meals, those films, those walks, as a prelude to getting to the mindless escape of fucking. You really think that was a one way street ? I’m not walking away because you didn’t listen or because ‘it wasn’t you it was me’. It was you. It really wasn’t me. I just got fed up finishing myself off every night after you rolled over asleep after another loud but short explosion. You’re lucky my name’s only got two syllables: I’m not sure you’d have ever managed to call it out before you came if it had been three. I was happy with shallow, I was feeling pretty shallow myself, but if we’re going to connect purely for sex then let’s at least do it properly. That too much to ask ? Sure, at the start, maybe I was looking for something more than that but not by the end, not when it became obvious that there was no more to you than that. And in the end you couldn’t even deliver against your shallow promise. You were a means to no end and that’s why I walked away. Remember me in powder blue if you like. It’s a lie but then all of it was.

……

This is story 36 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

This is not dissimilar to previous story, Moonshot, in that it was just an attempt at straight voice. I’m not sure the two protagonists ended up being distinct enough but you can be the judge. As usual there hasn’t been an edit.

Moonshot

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That was the high point, wasn’t it ? How’d we get from the low point – I use Hiroshima as my benchmark low point for the US but your mileage may vary – to the high point in less than twenty five years ? And don’t tell me it was JFK. I mean I get that he did the vision thing but really that guy was no completer finisher. It was the egg heads and boffins behind the scenes that should’ve got the glory, even more than Armstrong and Aldrin and the other one – who was the other one ? All of those “right stuff” guys. It wasn’t just them, it was the techies and scientists. Probably the same ones who carved out our low point, right ? Funny how they get the credit for that – Oppenheimer, Feynman, Fermi – but you never hear about the lab coat brigade at NASA that put a a man on the moon. It’s all astronaut suits and suspiciously horizontal flags and one small step. I know the flag was wires and shit. I don’t think Kubrick faked it all. I mean, have you seen “Eyes Wide Shut” ? He couldn’t even get Tom and Nicole to look convincing having sex and they were married.

Michael Collins. That was the other one. Floating round the moon, staring out into the abyss whilst his buddies got the kudos. Armstrong always gets the same questions – how did it feel being first, what was it like looking back at Earth yadda yadda ? And Aldrin doesn’t get off any easier – how does it feel being second ? Always asked with that same slight sense of “that must suck, you were *this* close buddy”. I mean, come on, he was the second guy on the fucking moon. It’s not like he was the runner up quarterback in the Superbowl. Second. Person. Ever. On. The. Fucking. Moon. He should just get a badge or something made up that says: I’ve been on the moon, unless you’re one of the other eleven people to share that privilege then shut the fuck up. Maybe something snappier than that but you get the idea. Anyway, where was I ? Collins. He never gets the same questions because everyone’s forgotten about him. Everyone’s forgotten about the guy that was first to orbit the moon and sit on his own, zero contact with Earth, and stare out into the void. I don’t know much about him – be honest, who does – but he must now either be the most Zen guy down here or out of his mind. This is me. That’s the endless reaches of nothingness. Fuck.

I don’t know. Maybe Collins and Armstrong and Aldrin went through all the same thoughts as the Enola Gay pilot. Maybe, up close, the low point and the high point didn’t feel so different ? He must have contemplated something as he pulled the big old lever to drop the bomb. Look, if you’re a World War 2 flight nerd then don’t bother to tell me that it wasn’t a lever, alright ? I know it wasn’t a lever. A button or something. Probably red with one of those little plastic flick up covers over it so you couldn’t accidentally lean on it too soon. What was that Tibbets ? Ah, shit, sorry guys but I just caught the nuke button with my elbow when I was drinking my coffee and… They didn’t get coffee on the Enola Gay, did they ? Anyway, the point is that surely being on top of something that momentous gives you pause. Why are we here ? What’s it all about ? What’s out there in that featureless expanse ? How can I justify killing thousands and thousands of people ?

Just ignore me if this is bugging you. I get like this sometimes. Especially when I see Trump on TV, you know ? How’d we get from 1969 and landing on the moon and the Stones and free love and LSD to 2016 and building a wall across our border and the Kardashians and no love and the NRA ? I can see the steps but I can’t see which one was the mis-step. If you could go back – McFly, McFly ! – then where would you undo it ? Maybe Armstrong’s not the hero. I know he never claimed to be but maybe that was the start of all this need to make someone emblematic of everything else. Is that even a word ? Emblematic ? I guess it is now. We made him the star. The greatest achievement, scientific or otherwise, of mankind and we made it about a man. That stuff belongs to all of us. We did that. All of us. I mean, not me obviously – and probably not actually you – but metaphorically we did that. Armstrong just got to wear the suit and fluff his lines leaving the lunar module. Aldrin probably gave him an impatient nudge and put him off.

Ah man I don’t even know what to make of it all. We came back from the moon and the best we found was Trump and Clinton. What the fuck ? We went with less computational power than you’ve got in your phone and all you use that for is watching videos of cats and playing Pokemon Go ? If I was Tibbets I’d dust Enola Gay off, take her up for one last flight and put us all out of our misery. Flick up the little plastic cover and give that big old red button a push. Another low point and maybe, just maybe, in twenty five years we can do something worthwhile again. Or better still what would I give to swap places with Collins ? Circling, circling the moon and watching the darkness for hours before getting to see the Earth reborn, shining in space, on each rotation.

 

……

This is story 35 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

Honestly I don’t really know what this is. It’s the anniversary of the first moon landing today and it came as a character led stream-of-consciousness splurge from that. It’s pretty much as it came so apologies for the lack of edit. I am not the narrator but I can see where he is coming from. Troubling times.

Poppy

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Poppy marked a cross.

They’d named her Poppy for their grandfather, her “great gramps”, a man she’d never met because he’d fallen at the Somme when he was just 23. They’d taken her a few years ago so they could all find his name on the Thiepval Memorial, etched in stone beneath unadorned red brick. She hadn’t expected to feel a connection, hadn’t expected to feel much at all if she was honest with herself. Paris was next on the itinerary and she’d been itching to idle away afternoons sipping café and watching people drift around the 6th arrondissement. She was young and France was art and intellectuals and Les Deux Magots and, yes, again if she was honest with herself, it was also going to be shopping. France was Sartre and De Beauvoir but it was Chanel and Dior and Louboutin and Lacroix as well.

She remembered the surprise when they’d arrived and the sheer size of the monument as it loomed over her, impressing on her the sense of the scale of the loss. She was one person looking up, humbled, in memory at the absence of seventy two thousand. As she picked her way around the base of the structure the names were overwhelming: Joseph Anstee, Charles Balding, Frank Bell, Arthur Boon, David Brannick… All from the Lincolnshire Regiment. She found him, nestled alphabetically alongside his brothers, and traced the letters of his name carved in the stone with her finger. They’d found her there a few minutes later kneeling in front of a wall of the dead and weeping for a man she’d never known.

She wore her name with a certain pride after that day. A pride she nurtured through journeys to the beaches in Normandy to see where her grandfather had landed less then thirty years after his father had died. She’d driven across the country in pursuit of the route he’d taken: Pont L’Eveque, Saint Maclou, Pavilly, Yerville, Motteville, Yvetot, Bermonville, and Valmont. They were small, sleepy farming villages where tourists wouldn’t ordinarily go but she’d always, generally been welcomed. Her faltering French delivered in a distinctly English accent seemed to open as many doors amongst the older residents as it closed them among the young. Wherever she went they delighted in her name, some even calling her coquelicot, wild poppy: she loved it.

When she’d met Dan he’d loved the coquelicot story too and had adopted it as they’d grown in intimacy, a kind of petits noms d’amour. She’d carried that name along with her birth name as the two of them had followed his family history back across a broader sweep of Europe. He’d been inspired by her desire to know her roots and so they’d ranged across Poland and Romania visiting run down old synagogues in forgotten corners of old city quarters, looking for the places his ancestors had fled from. Their travels took them, eventually, to the silence of the long liberated camp at Dachau where one of the trails they’d been following ran to the coldest stop. The other trails ran back home to England.

They had family marked with crosses across the continent. From France to Germany, from Poland to Romania. They both used to joke that they wished their grandparents and their great grandparents had managed to venture somewhere warmer as they’d traveled across northern Europe, as they’d looked to thread together their shared past. Your granddad wasn’t much for the sun, even if he could have gone, her parents had told her with a smile, your grandma could barely get him to Skegness every year.

She didn’t know what they would have wanted but she was certain they’d have wanted her to make her own choice. To choose for herself and not for them. She stood in the polling booth and thought about connections and about all the people she had met and about her future and her past. She had family marked with crosses across the continent.

Poppy marked a cross.

 

……

This is story 34 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

This was written on the 100th anniversary of the senseless Battle Of The Somme and I guess is my small tribute to lots of braver people than me. It’s also some attempt to capture my genuine sadness in the wake of the EU referendum vote last week and, in particular, the tone of the debate and the upturn in nationalism and xenophobia that’s been evident since. In or out there’s more that unites us than divides us.

You and me and the end

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It was cold out past the north ridge. We used to go up there sometimes, late at night, and watch the lights. Fragments of satellites falling from orbit, burning up in the atmosphere, sparking orange and red and gold. You’d pull out your battered old hip flask and we’d share whatever you’d managed to steal from your folks’ drinks cabinet. We still had folks and we still had cabinets. It seemed quaint when there was an ever revolving war being waged above our heads but I think we both kinda liked quaint. Like how you insisted on still rolling your own cigarettes and we’d sit exhaling into the darkness, the smoke punctuated by those descending flares of colour. Was that one of ours or one of theirs ?

“Did you think it’d end like this ?”

It’s a variation on a conversation we’ve been having for the past few weeks. When we’d first come up here it was to pick out the stars, far enough beyond the light of the city for the sky’s darkness to give up its secrets. As the war had gathered momentum the slashes of iridescence marking another weapon falling from above had increased in frequency until they became an unrelenting firework display.

“Who says it’s the end ?” I take a deep swig from the flask and let the alcohol warm my throat, feel it burn in my chest. “I think the end’ll be a lot warmer than this.”

You take the hint and shuffle in closer, wrapping your arm across my shoulders, pulling me in tight. I offer you the drink but you decline with a shake of the head before turning your face away to puff out a long stream of smoke. We both follow its line as it stretches out over the ridge, over the desert, up into the still, fragile night.

“It can’t stay in balance for ever,” you declare. “Maybe we tip the scales, maybe they tip the scales. Sooner or later someone’s going to win this thing and then…”

“…and then it’ll be a lot warmer, just like I said,” I interrupt.

“Only if we lose,” you whisper.

“I think that’s inevitable now,” I whisper back. “Even if we win.”

You squeeze my shoulder and we twist our heads to look at each other. It’s a fleeting moment, even then I knew you couldn’t just look at me, couldn’t just sit and stare, nothing but us. It was too intimate and too exposed. Don’t misunderstand, I know that you love me but I know that there was a part of you that you wanted to keep hidden. I guess it was the part that was as scared as I was and I could understand that. You furrow your brow and screw up your eyes and I lean in to rest my head against your chest. It’s a way to be closer but, breaking eye contact, somehow further away. I let you retreat to your fears and I retreat to mine.

It’s only been three months but we know that it’s close now. One side’s network will fail, the intricate defensive web of satellites will be breached and then hell will rain down from the heavens. Nobody thinks we’re winning. Tonight the city sleeps behind us,  sprawling across the valley, its own spread of lights enough to mute the noisy colours from the sky. I think they prefer it that way. Better to pretend none of it was happening than contemplate the possible outcome. I break the silence.

“I’d sooner it ends like this, if that’s what you were asking.”

“How so ?”

“Up here, facing out across the empty stretches of desert, a flask of the ‘Mart’s finest own label scotch, the smell of tobacco…”

“You make it sound so romantic.”

“There’s a war on, haven’t you heard ? This is no time for hearts and flowers.”

“Just ‘cos there’s a little trouble overhead ? We’ve gotta maintain some standards.” You flick away the last of your cigarette and stand up. “Bear with me a second. I’m sure I saw one on the way up.”

I watch as you scramble a little way back down the trail we picked our way up earlier. The glow from the city throws up the rocks on either side as dark silhouettes and you’re soon lost to sight. From the top of the ridge the desert unwinds to the horizon. It seems flat now that the sun’s gone down but I remember us hiking it earlier that summer, remember its jagged undulations, all toothy outcrops and sudden, hidden holes that might snare a foot. We’d escaped unscathed save for sunburned faces; the sky in the desert hadn’t been kind to us even then. That was all before it started. Before the escalation and the threats and the test firings. Before we’d launched that strike, the one that their defence grid knocked out of the sky before it found its mark. Had we really struck first ?

“For you.” You’re back and holding out a tiny, delicate flower, a milk white star with five petals. “I don’t know what it is,” you offer apologetically.

“It’s a miniature wool star,” I reply taking it from you. I clasp your hand in thanks whilst holding the flower up in front of me and it’s then that we both notice; both realise. One star in the foreground against a canopy of thousands in the night sky.

“It’s stopped,” you say and I nod my understanding. You sit in next to me again and we embrace. It felt like hours but maybe it was three, four, five minutes, neither of us speaking, neither of us moving, just sitting and letting the rhythm of our breathing fall quietly into line with each other. In. Out. In. Out. In…

Neither of us heard anything as the city in the valley behind us vanished. Neither of us looked at the cloud of dust mushrooming above our homes. We just saw the desert light up in a palette of oranges and pinks and bronze, like sitting on the edge of a volcano as it erupts. If there’d been anyone left in the city to look up they’d have seen us, two figures, arm in arm, silhouetted for an instant on the ridge. Like the flash of one of our folks’ old polaroids and then we were gone.

 

……

This is story 33 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

I wrote this whilst listening to some long ambient music that Moby gave away for free on his website recently. The jump off point was literally the mood that it invoked in me. That was the looking-out-over-the-desert-at-night stuff. The subsequent nuclear apocalypse was my fault. So don’t blame Moby.

Pi

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After the first time I’d nicknamed him Pi because the sex was over in 3.14 seconds. He improved but the name stuck. He became my constant. Whatever circles I moved in there was him. Me plus him, it should have been a simple equation. So why was I making it complex ?

Algorithms. Regression. Correlations. I close my eyes and the maddening march of numbers fill the darkness. I see structure in the noise and make connections. Form from the apparent chaos. I want it to stop. To trip an off switch and for the structure to dissolve, to shut down my highly prized mind. Algorithms to give way to baser rhythms.

I remember his touch on my skin and how those nights had been filled with a different darkness, absent of structure and analysis. Instinct and emotion and pleasure. I’d been afraid of it, of course, unable to break it down, to analyse it, to model what he might do next. He always did something thrilling next, something unexpected, something that made me lose the sense of who I was. I ached for him those nights. Ached in the pleasure of him and ached in the pain in not understanding him or, specifically, what he was able to provoke in me. No reason, no structure, no control.

So do I have to let him go because I can’t let myself go ? Must I regress to regression and models and statistics ? Me minus him, another simple equation. Would he be there tonight ? On the periphery of the room, marking out the radius of the latest circle I was moving in ? If he was could I calculate the probability that he’d end up back in my bed ? The odds had always been good. Constant.

There he is. I detach from a conversation about causal relationships and statistical significance and cross the room to him. Me plus him. Let’s keep it simple. I’m there in one, two, three… just a touch over three steps. Let’s call it 3.14.

 

……

This is story 32 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

There’s a whole untapped market where sex and maths collide. Isn’t there ?

Purple

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It came in a rush that you couldn’t stop.
An outpouring from every fibre, leeching out of your skin.
An out-poring.
A creative rainbow burst of words and sounds and shapes and rhythms…
…and they called you a genius. And you shrugged.
Is a genius just someone who comes to the world unfiltered, raw, unaltered, and pure ?
…and they called you a virtuoso. And you shrugged.
Is it virtuosity to breathe ? It came as naturally – as easily – as breath.
…and you stopped calling yourself anything at all. And I guess you shrugged.
Why wear a name when you’re in the business of transcendence. Right ?
When you live in the rush that you can’t stop.
When it’s pouring and pouring and pouring from every pore.
When there is no gap between the art and the life and the life and the art.
When you’re bursting with words and sounds and shapes and rhythms.
They’ll remember your name. Whatever it wasn’t. Whatever it was.

The cowgirl and the counsellor

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I was late for the appointment. It had helped to talk about him at first but not anymore. I felt like lately Claire didn’t want to talk about him; she wanted to talk about me and I wasn’t interested in that. Or didn’t want her interested in that at least. I was my own puzzle to solve.

Her room was bright, pastel painted walls, a large print of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” hung above a walnut coffee table atop which sat a box of tissues, a sketching book and a selection of pencils in a jam jar. Claire was sitting forwards in her chair, smiling, and beckoning me into the room. It always struck me as odd. This incongruous, boxed off oasis of peace in an otherwise sterile set of shared, serviced offices. Grief counselling and therapy alongside A-Z MiniCabs, LB Accounting, and Mitchell & Hobbs Solicitors: wills and inheritance a speciality. That always struck me as particularly unfortunate and Claire hadn’t found it funny in one of our early sessions when I’d asked if she picked up many referrals. I always felt like she was testing me and I was failing. Maybe I’d just wanted to test her for a change.

“Sorry I’m late” I offered. She just broadened her smile and shook her head, gesturing at me to sit down. I perched on the edge of the armchair that was reserved for the unwell, the soft chair to sink into and surrender. I could smell her herbal tea. The more the room screamed calm at me the more I felt on edge.

“How are you ?” asked Claire. “It’s been some time…”

“I’m fine,” I replied, too quickly. She pursed her lips and inclined her head, expecting more. “Really. I’m sorry I’ve missed a couple of sessions but I think that just shows that I’m doing well. I haven’t needed to talk to anyone. No offence.”

“None taken. I’m glad to hear that you feel you’re doing well.” She fell silent. I knew how this worked by now; early on I used to hate the silence and would desperately fill it. Stories of growing up, memories of Dad. I would tell her I felt sad if I thought that was what she wanted to hear and other days I’d tell her it was getting easier, that I thought I was getting better. I did feel sad. But not in the way that I could tell Claire even if I’d wanted to. I don’t really have words for how empty everything had felt after he died, how numb. When I was little I broke my arm, fell off a swing in the park, and the pain was so intense at first that I blacked out. When I woke up in the ambulance they must have given me something because everything was duller, I could still feel the sensation in my arm but it was like I’d been separated from it. They stopped me feeling it because I couldn’t cope with it. That’s what the sadness felt like now: if I try to really feel it then I can’t deal with it. There’s just too much of it and so I try to stay separate from it. Claire cracked first. “I’ve been reading back through my notes and it struck me that we never really talk about the reason you’re here.”

“I don’t understand what you mean ?” I replied. I started to fold my arms but forced myself to leave them open, any change in posture usually provoked a flurry of note taking from Claire as if my innermost thoughts were laid bare by the position of body parts. We had spent twenty minutes in a previous session debating my fingernails, bitten to the quick. She saw some conspiracy of anxiety whereas I was pretty sure it was just because I couldn’t play the guitar with nails. Eventually I’d confessed to a concocted feeling of restlessness as she’d become increasingly interested in how I felt when I played music. I think I’d made the mistake of saying that I needed my fingertips exposed to connect to the strings, that in a funny way I felt connected to myself when I played. It was too close to the truth and so I’d deflected her with a lie. The pain isn’t separate when I play.

“We never talk about how you feel about your dad’s death,” said Claire. I held her gaze, fighting the urge to look away, to twist and hide in my seat. This was unusually direct for her. Perhaps she was as tired as I was of dancing around each other. Perhaps she’d given up trying to coax me out and had settled on a full on assault. She broke eye contact. “I’m just trying to help you Emily. Grief is a complex thing, it can eat you up without you even realising. I’m worried that you’re not…”

“Not grieving ?” I interrupted.

“No,” she said. “I can see that you’re grieving. You’re hurting so much that I think you’ve shut yourself off from feeling anything much at all and that’s a part of grieving. But it’s not a part you can stay in forever if you want it to get better.” She was looking straight at me again now and this time I did look away. I knew she was right. Maybe that was why I kept coming back, despite my deflections and defensiveness she kept on trying and, at times, she seemed to find me even as I tried to keep myself hidden.

“I… I don’t know how to do it,” I whispered into my shoulder.

“There’s no right and wrong way. You don’t get an instruction book. They don’t even give me one and I’m supposed to be helping.” I looked back at her. She was leaning forwards in her chair looking intently at me with a worried, weary smile. I smiled back at her.

“So what do we do now ?”

“I think now we try and do this a different way. Write me a song. Forget about today, we can just have a cup of tea and chat about the weather.” She must have caught the look on my face. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to have the herbal stuff. Come back next week, bring your guitar, and write me a song. I’d love to hear you sing. Deal ?” I was scared but curious. I thought I knew what she was trying to do but the quickening in my pulse when she’d asked me to write a song was the most alive I’d felt in weeks. Perhaps it was time to stop hiding.

“Deal.”

 

……

This is story 31 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

This is probably the last we’ll hear from Emily’s story (as spread across the previous three posts, Concrete Cowgirl, Broken, and Heartbreaker) for a while. Largely because I haven’t written anymore of it… However, I think she’s okay in Claire’s capable hands for a while. This one’s for anyone that’s ever sat in a therapist or counseller’s room and wondered how the hell they try and explain how they feel. I was spectacularly bad at it !

Heartbreaker

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There was only one album I couldn’t bring myself to break. Ryan Adams: “Heartbreaker”. That’d be about right. It was his favourite and even though, right then, kneeling there amid splintered vinyl and ripped sleeves I hated him, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Hated him and still loved him. Heartbreaker.

I had stopped crying by the time Mum got in from work, heard the key in the lock and listened to her moving through the hallway into the kitchen. A tap running. The click of the kettle. The soft tear of her opening that day’s post, probably another reminder of how much we owed. How much things cost. I thought about cost as I looked down, again, at the letter in my hands. The one that had slipped silently out from between the rows and rows of records, undisturbed since he’d gone.

Dear Emily… please forgive me…

Fragments were all that stuck. I hope one day you’ll understand. Look after your mum. She loves you. I love you. Keep playing. Keep singing. He’d even made that stupid joke. Our stupid joke. Two kinds of music Emily: country and western. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forgive that. What was that other thing we used to say ? All those songs are about escape, that was it. This can’t be what he meant ? Can it ? We were supposed to escape from everyone else, not from each other. You and me and Mum. They were about hope.

Look after your mum.

“Emily ?” Mum was calling from the kitchen. The kettle had boiled and she must have made her tea. “You here love ?” I didn’t answer but her voice was enough to loosen the numbness, to bring me back to the room. I rolled onto my side and pulled my knees up to my chest, choking back the huge sobs that were rising up inside me. I didn’t want her to hear. “Emily ?”. More urgent now, footsteps approaching, padding up the stairs.

She loves you. I love you.

The door swung open and bumped against my feet. Someone was calling my name, pushing harder at the door. I felt my body slide slightly on the broken, shining, black records strewn around me and then there was someone next to me, arms around me, whispering my name over and over, pushing my hair back from my face. There was a moment then, just the briefest moment, when I felt like a child again; like someone else would make it alright and knew what to do. Knew. I pushed her away.

“You knew.”

She opened her mouth, covered it with her hands, tears tracing her cheeks and onto her fingers. She was shaking and simply opened her arms towards me, her face contorted with shock. She pleaded.

“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know.” Her arms were still outstretched. “Please Em. I didn’t know. I didn’t want you to find out this way.” It hurt too much to look at her. She didn’t move, didn’t try to stop me, as I pushed past her out on to the landing and down the stairs. I pulled on my coat and dug my feet into an old pair of trainers, laces still done up, before opening the front door. Escape. That’s what all those songs were about. Escape but not hope.

 

……

This is story 30 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

This is a bit more of Emily’s story (from previous two posts, Concrete Cowgirl and Broken). I am still undecided whether Emily gets to tell her story in the first person or whether it falls to me in the third. And I’m still not sure if she has a happy ending…

Broken

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Now you’re broken and you don’t understand…

Emily stopped flicking the CD cases forwards and looked up, inclining her head slightly to listen. She gripped the last album she’d reached in her idle browsing. It was that Fleet Foxes record she’d read about; another folk record about family and death. Like she needed another one of those. The song that was playing over the shop’s PA had just been part of the background noise until its chorus had cut through into her consciousness. She glanced up and down the aisles of the shop, the tips of her fingers whitening as she clenched harder on the CD. That chorus was so direct and she knew that voice. There was an honest simplicity to it, a yearning ache that spoke to her. Who was it ? What was this ?

Something’s mixed up and something’s gone…

She couldn’t catch all of the lyrics but some of the phrases stuck. Some of them were like salt water washing out an open wound. Into the second verse she realised that it must be the new Tift Merritt album, Dad had played the first two so often that her voice was like an old friend. Or a ghost. It wasn’t a voice she’d heard for a couple of years; it had been consigned to a small stack of his vinyl that she hadn’t been able to face yet. Her mum had wanted to clear them out but she’d begged her to keep them and now they gathered dust next to his old record player in the spare bedroom. Sometimes she’d thumbed through them and once she’d pulled one from its sleeve but the warm, rich smell of the wax had brought too many memories flooding back. There was nothing in that pile of records past 2006. Tift was still singing. He definitely would have bought this one.

And it’s these most loved losses are the hardest to carry…

The song was reaching its finish but Emily wouldn’t hear it. She felt a tightness in her chest and was suddenly short of breath. The strip lighting in the store was too bright and the D-E-F section in front of her blurred as she blinked back tears. The shelves and shelves of CDs that had initially welcomed her in now felt cold, all hard edges and smelling of cellophane wrapped plastic. Feeling sick Emily turned for the exit.

She stumbled out into the shopping centre and an alarm sounded behind her, red lights flashing on top of the tagging gates either side of the doors. She was still holding the Fleet Foxes album. Heart racing she ran back into the shop and replaced the CD on the first rack she came to. Her hands were shaking and she managed to disturb the fragile equilibrium of the display, four or five CDs and a piece of moulded plastic proclaiming ‘sale’ clattered to the floor. Emily fled not hearing either the continuing echo of the alarm nor the quietly optimistic final line of the song:

I think I will break but I mend

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This is story 29 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

This picks up Emily’s story (from previous post, Concrete Cowgirl) a bit further down the track. The lyrics are from Tift Merritt’s song “Broken” and no copyright infringement is intended: in the unlikely event that Tift or anyone from Fantasy Records a) reads this and b) objects then I’ll happily alter it. And I’ll double my total fundraising take for Mind. I am a massive fan and only borrowed the words because they help me tell fictional Emily’s story.

Concrete Cowgirl

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Emily lay perfectly still, flat on her back, and stared up. Straight up, unblinking, arms stretched wide, palms pricked by the blades beneath her hands. Soft when she was still, sharp if she moved. At the furthest reaches of her peripheral vision she could see the fuzzy green of the grass that was cushioning her head; otherwise nothing but a widescreen panorama of blue. A plane, too distant to be heard, crossed overhead and Emily watched it: a roughly doodled arrow sketched across the sky. She twisted her head to follow its trajectory but her view was broken by the cow, the sun reflecting back off its glossy, painted surface. It shone in a way that a cow shouldn’t. Emily became aware of the thrum of cars on the dual carriageway again.

“Moo,” she whispered, rolling onto her side and propping herself up on her elbow. The cow stared blankly at her, its mournful face forever frozen in concrete. Emily watched as a fly landed by its ear; there was no twitch of the head, no reflexive swish of its tail. She closed her eyes and heard a gentle buzz that receded to silence as the fly flew away before an angry exchange of car horns from the road broke the quiet. She opened her eyes and sat up, brushing grass from her arm and inspecting the dimpled imprint it had left on her elbow. As she pushed her way up to standing she caught sight of the cow’s feet, cemented into the ground, rooted and anchored in place. “You’re not going anywhere either,” she said.

A long chain of daisies snaked away from Emily’s foot, the result of a patient entwining as she had idled away the afternoon. She picked up the chain and held it draped around the cow’s neck, a cheery white and yellow garland to brighten up her bogus bovine companion. Dead wildflowers to decorate something that had never been alive. She tried to tie the two ends of the chain together but her fingers, usually so nimble, couldn’t work the delicate strands and the chain came apart in her hands. She was left clutching two or three daisies threaded together and a smattering of stray petals, like elongated white tears in her hands.

Emily stuffed the remnants of the daisy chain into her jacket pocket and patted the cow on its head; soaked in the afternoon sun it was warm beneath her hand. “I tried,” she said. Turning away she began to walk across the field, back towards the adjacent road, quickening her step as she saw a bus in the distance. She couldn’t make out the number but they all ended up in the same place. The impassive cow watched as she broke into a run. Had it been able to lift its head it would have seen a fading vapour trail high across the sky, the only sign of the plane that had slipped from view.

 

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This is story 28 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

I acknowledge this one is not quite a story but more a hint at one untold (which I know and will one day try to write) but I saw the old concrete cows in Milton Keynes again recently and dug this out. There is something distinctly odd about them. I wrote this piece a while ago as an exercise in a creative writing course I was taking. The tutor suggested I take the “like elongated white tears” simile out. I am bad at killing my darlings so it remains for now but let me know if it’s surplus to requirements !