The Letter (the secret) WIP

The Letter.

At his funeral I looked his wife right in the eye and told her how sorry I was. She blinked through her tears and gave me a half-hearted hug.

‘No-one knows why.’ She said before breaking down again. Her sister came and took her by the arm. No, of course, no-one knows why I thought.

I’d written the letter two months before. He had to know I knew. It wasn’t that hard to discover his little secret and it made me wonder why no-one else knew. A bit of long distance computer wizardry had confirmed what I’d suspected and then the fun began.

I called him up one night. Two AM. I listened as his ragged breathing grew sleepier. He told me he was going to hang up and I said ‘Wait. Lucy knows.’ I could feel the electricity buzzing down the phone line. He hung up before I could say anything else. She didn’t know. She couldn’t have known. I was her best friend, she would have said something to me, I would have told her to leave him and she would have done too. It was his secret and now I was going to destroy him with it.

Sunshine

Sunshine
Sun days
Ice cream
Fun days
Fun fair
Feet bare
Soft sun-
Kissed hair
Sweet breeze
Green trees
Blue skies
Bird flies
Sunshine
My time.

Everything stays the same when it changes

When I woke up everything was different. I was in the same house with the same bed, the same curtains hanging at the window and the same man snoring next to me.

I got up and peered out into the dawn light. I strained my eyes until I caught a glimpse of the same milkman bringing his breakfast necessities to the sleepy houses along this dreary street. The trees lining the avenue had shed their leaves leaving only their bare branches to reach twig fingers into the grey skies.

I opened the window just a crack. A blast of cold air hit my face making me catch my breath. I couldn’t work out why everything was different when everything was still the same.

I crept downstairs trying not to wake the sleeping walrus in the bedroom. I put the kettle on and stared down at my freezing toes. Later I dressed, tidied and left for work.

On the bus I watched as rain drops smeared tear tracks down grimy windows and old ladies sought shelter under plastic rain hoods. I glided my way through my day in semi consciousness. Walking home, the candyfloss clouds skimming the sky felt oppressive and heavy.

When I arrived I wondered if it would be worth the discussions that would follow to make an effort for dinner. Nice dress, make up candles, a takeaway maybe so that I wouldn’t have to cook. I looked at the photos on the mantelpiece. The dog. Cyprus from 1993, before he knew me. His table tennis trophies taking pride of place. I decided that no amount of dissecting could save us now. I changed into my tracksuit bottoms and warmest woolly cardigan and sat down in front of the television with a glass of wine and a salad straight from its’ Marks and Spencers packaging. The evening passed in a blur. I got into bed feeling like nothing was quite right and as I did so I realised that the only thing that was different was me.

The Man

He thinks he's a mod
Does he even know what that means?
He wears the parka
Rides the vespa
Listens to Paul Weller on repeat.
He thinks he's the best
In his wife-beater vest
His pointy toed shoes
And his skin tight jeans
Strumming guitar to the beat.
He thinks he's a singer
Gonna be a winner
Talks 'til he's blue in the face.
His children are leaving
His life is a mess
But he's got the girl so he's fine.
He's looking at me
But he's talking to you
He'll weasel his way
It's what they always do.

Dream a Little Dream of Me

She woke in the middle of the night with the sense that she was being watched. She tried so hard to maintain the breathing pattern of the sleeping but sensed that he wouldn't be fooled for long. She knew he must have dreamed that dream again and she braced herself for what would follow.
Yawning, she turned over and smiled at the stony face watching her. His steely grey eyes, colder than ever before, narrowed and he spoke in a slow and quiet voice. 'You'.
The first blow took her by surprise even though she thought she was expecting it and as she felt the warm blood leaking from her nose she lowered her head as if breaking eye contact would somehow break the spell. It didn't and she instinctively covered her head with her hands. Blows reigned down, each one sending her further inside herself. Feet and fists and fury flying, not crying, silently she held herself as if by wrapping her arms around herself she would hold all her parts together.
He slowed and tired and eventually she was aware of nothingness.
She cradled his sobbing head in her lap as she felt her bruised eyes already closing. She knew it would be another week of sunglasses whatever the weather. She stroked his arms with her swelling fingers and rocked him as though he were a baby. 'I'm sorry' she whispered and even as she was saying it she wondered what her dreamself had done this time.

Moonlit

The boy and his friend who was not his girlfriend walked hand in hand down the dark street. Their breath intermingled as they laughed and chatted. They were heading for nowhere in particular but they were going there quickly. She spotted a dark footpath and he dived into it before she could say another word. Twisty, steep and brambly, it promised surprises. They tumbled out of the other side into a moonlit field. Stumbling over tufts of grass they came to a sudden halt at the sight of a tree or a man or a something else in front of them. They whispered and giggled and then he ran waving his arms at the figure and shouting. The tree or the man or the something else whinnied and then cantered away.

The couple who weren’t a couple laughed at themselves and then walked on, admiring the bright full moon. They feasted on blackberries and moon blushed apples and stood still, more together than they ever should have been. A gentle whoosh of hot air on their backs brought them back to reality and they turned to face the whoosh. Finding themselves surrounded by twenty or thirty or forty horses they stared and held their breath.

Walking home later, he sighed and he shrugged as the world became more normal.

Walking home later, she sighed and she smiled and she swore she would never forget her midnight feast.

The Island

The island taught its inhabitants that it was not always friendly. Wind whistled through the rotting wooden window frames and reminded them that their island paradise was not all it seemed.

Escaping their miserable city existence, the young childless falling apart couple had sold everything they owned and run away to this tropical paradise only three moths before. A summer of sun, surf, sand and meditation had given way to an autumn of gales, torrential unpredictable rain and arguments over whose turn it was to lock the door at night. A spate of break ins along the row of beach houses in the previous month had made everyone in this friendly open ex-pat community a lot warier and a lot less smiley.

Now the tourists were going home, the work was becoming scarce and the young couple’s seams were slowly but methodically becoming unpicked. Where they were once entwined by love, by a promise of a shiny happy future, they were now entwined by fear and held together by only their rotting windowed shack.

The girl hatched a plan one cool clear evening. She was going to become disentwined. She didn’t want lonely, windy, rainy beach life anymore than she had wanted miserable city existence. She packed up her things and crept out into the comforting dark of the night. Unbeknownst to her, her man was hatching a very same plan. He too was packing and creeping only his dark was a little bit scary. As the two crept their separate ways towards the same boat each caught a glimpse of someone moving nearby. A glimmer of hope in each heart confirmed to them that somewhere along the way they had stopped falling apart and were now very much falling together.