A Snake At My Shoulder 3k5c4d

A Snake At My Shoulder Copyright © 2021 by Joan Kenny

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To Tom of the secret smiles

I would like to thank:

Lorrill of Love Laughter and Luck for her friendship, and the use of her flats in Victoria and Cairo.

Shaun Kenny and Katherine Cornthwaite for holding my hand through the whole writing process and encouraging me every step of the way.

Anna Heldring for her coffee, Triomimos And all that editing.

Alison Grant, the best cousin ever And a great synopsis writer.

Thursday September 24

Frank.

I saw you on the street today as I drove into town. The street has hardly changed in all these years. You were standing there on the steps in front of the Bank of Montreal, hands gesticulating wildly in anger. Your right hand chopped the air above the open palm of your left. I could see your crooked baby finger as plain as day. The other man I did not recognise. He seemed imive to your anger. A stranger to me, but this whole town is full of strangers - me included. I would not have been imive to your anger.

I guess with the rain and the windshield wipers going full blast and the fogged windscreen you couldn’t see me, but both of you turned and looked. I must have been driving a little erratically to interrupt such an intense conversation. Huge black Blazer veering across the street directly towards the steps of the bank. I had my sunglasses on and you didn’t recognise me; the very fact that I was wearing sunglasses in that torrent must have been the reason you both gawked.

Of course how could you recognise me after all these years. You, however, were easy to recognise; an exact copy of your father, standing there blond wet curls turned to a soggy brown mop visibly shot with grey; great burly size and that precise way all you Addison’s have of standing. Disted almost as if your size made it uncomfortable to be upright. One hip lowered, slightly bent knee, and a shoulder dropped; exactly like a renaissance sculpture. Oh yes along the way I did learn about things like that. The hundreds of museums and countless more statues over the years all reminded me of you. Gods, they were all gods to me, I gazed longingly up at the marble, I wanted to touch the cool flanks, the sinewy calves and the perfect statue feet. Feet just like yours. It took scarcely more than your feet to elevate you to the stature of god in my eyes. How I loved your feet, the smooth hairlessness, the solid shape.

I pulled over soon after that and on very shaky legs dragged myself into the Riverview Restaurant. I had not expected to see you but had secretly wished that I would. The surprise and excitement had gotten to me. I had a grilled cheese sandwich complete with thin slices of onion and a dot of Ketchup. The cheese oozed out the sides with every bite, done just right. New vinyl fabric covered the seats, same marbled red and silver melamine topped the tables. The waitress was chatty and cute, she couldn’t see my turmoil; my hands weren’t visibly shaking. I chatted right along with her.

Had I the courage I would have walked over to see if the chrome stools swivel the same as they used to, but my heart was still thumping too wildly. When I stood at the cashier I leaned over the counter and there through the small square window was the faint glimmer of silvery water, the river sliding beneath the trees.

I got a cup of coffee, steaming in its paper cup to take with me.

Turning off the main street I was not prepared to see the old bridge standing there, waiting for me to cross. A rusty sculpture of bolted metal looming before me. I drove over slowly, denying the temptation to open the window and touch it, flaking paint, spots showing bits of green blue colour as it had been painted so many times over the years. I had somehow imagined that a nice square concrete version would have taken its place: that bridge was never built to last.

The river was awfully high for this time of year but maybe it was just a freak thing with the rain and all. Its course looked relatively unchanged, maybe the huge willow leaned out a bit farther over the water. Our big rock as securely as ever set at its feet. I could almost taste the sweetness of the water despite its brown swirling from all of the mud caught up in it. All those years in London and when the Thames was brown and full and swirling, I would imagine

jumping off Battersea Bridge and swimming with delight, being transported back here to this river, this very spot.

The rain had stopped and looking up the steep hill the clouds were opening so that biblical rays of sun punctuated the trees. Flashes of sun reflected off our wet road. I felt for the first time an overwhelming sense of coming home.

My tires spun as I left the bridge, I drove up cautiously in four wheel drive. The rain had turned the tracks on the road into a mud slick but I made it to the top easily, I looked back and saw the bridge fit perfectly into the little rectangle of my rear view mirror, a filigree tunnel over the river.

Your lane curved off to the right and ours jagged directly to the left. I hesitated for a moment before cutting the wheel sharply and going along ours.

The house was in disrepair, boarded up, torn siding hanging, porch leering down. A solid lump of miserable grey.

I sat on the porch for a while and hugged my knees to myself, wishing I had worn socks and a sweater instead of clammy yellow rain gear over my summer things. The only splash of colour on an otherwise bleak landscape. The decay of the wood reaching up and brushing at my feet. I scalded my mouth on the coffee, but clutched the cup tighter anyway for the small warmth it offered. My flesh was alive with goose bumps.

When I finally got the nerve to look out across the orchard, I was surprised to see the trees laden with rosy apples despite being stunted and twisted from their cruel pruning.

I met you, Frank Addison, for the first time that day in October of 1968, the twelfth to be exact. I was eight years old and you were thirteen. James was eight as well, and Struan thirteen like you. He had arrived with Uncle Ian in the terrible days previous. You took no notice of me and James; you and Struan were too busy sizing each other up. His slick smarmy boarding school manner an obvious contrast to your country way.

“I’m here for the chainsaw,” you said, looking across the orchard. Eyes resting accusingly on each and every pile of smouldering limbs and leaves, before stopping on my father in the distance. Your hooded gaze lingered there, covering the true extent of your feelings. Scanning back across the orchard you glanced at me once again and I saw a glimmer of something that I now know was comion. The scent of the two stroke engine’s oil and gas, mingled with the sweetness of the burning apple wood, filled our nostrils. All the trees savagely cut to within a few feet of the muddy ground – the point at which a grown man could carelessly or violently lash out with a chainsaw. In the far corner the shrill whine of the chainsaw persisted as my father continued to lop off the head of every young tree. Each stroke spat out chewed bark and debris, barely a sound as the young branches hit the earth, bouncing on leafy green growth. Uncle Ian leaned calmly against the fence, watching, smoking casually; graceful and uncaring.

I didn’t have socks on that day either and my corduroy dress seemed little protection against the chill and the wet. Both James and I were smudged with ash and mud; our arms were scratched from the snapped off branches and our faces were streaked from tears. The only spot of colour was the yellow of the rubber boots my mother had given me and they too were splashed in ash and mud.

We followed you as you marched across our orchard as if it was your single minded purpose to stop the brutal slaughter of the apple trees. I carried a branch in my hands, dragging it along behind me, blindly following on your heels with a

sense of hope that maybe calm would return once that dreadful noisy thing was gone.

I did not know this man with the chainsaw; I recognised his clothing, his quick decisive movements, but his face was contorted with rage. I wondered if he would whirl around and turn it on you Frank but I cowered behind you anyway, James close at my side.

He stopped when he saw you. Not a flicker of recognition in his eye. He held the chainsaw lightly in one hand and stepped deliberately towards you and pushed past you, he came directly for me. His hand snaked out at the branch I clutched and whipped my hand away with it, he threw the tiny limb into one of the smouldering heaps.

“Audrey,” his voice familiar, commanding sharply. “Back to work. Now.”

I scurried away helpless with fear and continued dragging the broken apple trees to the fires. It seemed an endless mission with the fallen trees and branches strewn everywhere.

My father turned to you, istered all the great charm he possessed. His face softened to you, his eyes meeting yours directly, a slow easy smile. I stooped and carried, herding James with me as we watched the two of you standing together.

You put on a firm and thoughtful face and asked politely for your chainsaw.

The wind suddenly came up and rustled the maple trees; a large splat of water hit me directly on the nose. I realised I had spent the entire afternoon huddled on the porch, lost in the mire of that day. All those things suppressed flooding back almost overwhelming. The rain was falling again and it felt far too cold and dark to be staying there on that grim porch any longer.

I stretched my aching legs and stamped my feet for some warmth and wandered around the house. Lumpy burnt dead ground, grown over with clumps of grass in places where the shed had stood. Our barn the same monolithic grey, with boards loose in as many spots as ever. Burdock matted around the doors. Yet with the very same warm presence it always had. My refuge far enough away from the house, beyond shouting distance. Not visible from the main windows and a perfect place for hiding. Which is what I did there, countless hours, hidden in the barn, warm and snug amongst the bales of hay. Today there would be no hiding and I decided I must get back into town. I thought maybe I’ll come back and look inside the barn tomorrow or the next day if I am still in town.

As I trudged back to the truck the first thoughts of where my father might be now rushed into my head and I pushed them to the far recesses of my mind. I did not want to waste my energy on that old fool. It was a practised silence, a habit I had developed and had used successfully for over twenty years and even in this place fraught with such memory, I was not drawn in.

Before heading back to town I drove tentatively up the gentle curve of your lane, the great banks of hydrangeas with nodding heads turned rusty coloured with the season. Gourds tumbled and chasing over the manure pile by the barn, globes and crescents in every autumn colour. The grass was cut. Your house was empty. The spider’s webs stretched everywhere. As I walked around, my legs were threaded with them sticking to me as I nosed up to the windows peering in, the veranda boards creaked beneath my feet. The wood pile by the back door a long row of perfectly round logs graded according to size. I climbed up on this and saw that the big farmhouse kitchen was still the same. I ed it so clearly.

It all looked ready to be alive but no light was coming from within; as if it was waiting.

Someone has been here though sitting on the steps of the veranda, smoking, rather a lot. There was a paper match caught in a spider’s web, that is what caught my eye first. Must have been flung into the wind. Blackened head hanging down, balanced in the spider’s web, a perfect shadow on the wood as it vibrates in the wind. A pile of butts strewn on the stones at the foot of the stairs – what brand I did not know since the rain has rendered them yellowed stubs, still fresh. Probably yesterday. All smoked to the last. Smoking always was one of those things that drove James to strong silent disapproval. He had a fatalist’s view, said he would not make it to the next millennium – he was right, but he assured me that smoking would prevent me from making it too. I acquiesced and stopped. It was hard at first, took to carrying a pencil around in my teeth at work to stop myself.

Do you still smoke Frank? I need to know was it you who sat in this very spot yesterday?

The chill through my body and lack of light finally turned me away from your house back to my truck, the dusk was ing too with darkness sinking over both me and the landscape. I was both relieved and surprised to find your place empty much like ours. Two lonely houses perched on this hill watching out over the valley.

I stopped the truck at the crest of the hill and surveyed the town playing out below me beyond the river. It has grown and moved closer to the banks but not crossed to our side. Crooked streets mark the tributaries of the river, nothing but tiny creek beds except in this kind of weather. All the houses safe off the flood plain. Fine straight trails of light reaching out in lines off the concession roads in the distance where habitation has spread. We were the only ones to choose this side to live on.

I started slowly, feeling the tires grip in the slick mud, concentrating on the curve out of your driveway into the lane. The trees loomed overhead swallowing me in darkness except for the two beams from my headlights which shone brightly onto the muddy road ahead. I thought about the hot meal and warm bath that would be waiting when I got to the hotel.

Shining in my headlights yet mingled with shadow I saw someone step out into the road in front of me and my foot automatically jumped to the brake. It locked before I realised. I counter steered full crank and that locked too. The truck picked up speed, sliding down the steep hill sideways. I gritted my teeth and hung on to the steering wheel, holding the wheels full lock. The figure gone, a mere trick of the light and my imagination. It was simple; slow motion, dragged out to an eternity, bridge nearing, in that ever so slow frame by frame time.

As my head shot forward, milliseconds before hitting the steering wheel, my hair became a black sheet flung before me. My upturned thumb crashed into my nose, my fist clutched the wheel punched into my own eye socket. My mouth bit into the steering wheel through my lips. Then my seat belt caught, a thud on my chest. There was no sound – I had been prepared for that terrible crunch of the impact to mark the finality. But none came. Perhaps I was already gone by the time the sound came or maybe I simply couldn’t hear it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the small green bag coming like a bullet and hitting my right temple. I blacked out then.

The truck must have caught the bridge dead centre before crashing off the wrong side of the road, the weary and timeworn metal bending and ultimately giving as I plummeted off the side. Then the willow tree grabbed me, huge arms outstretched in the air, lowering me easily into the river before snapping off themselves, a final sacrifice by an old friend.

I have such a strange picture of things, the headlights dancing on the water reflected back, shining off the willow leaves and metal mixed so subtly together. The big sunning stone smooth and flat and glistening and so close I think I can almost touch it.

My feet are wet as the water rushes over them, one of my shoes is missing and I can feel the water smoothing over my toes. The other foot has kind of a gushy feeling within the shoe as I try to wiggle my toes.

I must be in shock now, all that I have said to you and thought seems to have ed in a blinding flash of light. A sort of examination of my life I guess. I had not thought of you Frank, quite so much as today, must have been seeing you that triggered it. Everything fragmented and distorted. My mind took over for a while not allowing the reality of this situation to surface. It worked, I do not feel the sense of terror I imagine, but boy am I in a bad state. I cannot move and despite the charm of this river I would rather not have it quite so close, with water swirling through the bottom of the truck.

I can feel ashes on my face, stinging my eyes, blurring my vision. It has been a day of ashes for me, that is the very reason I am here Frank.

You must know by now that James died last winter. It has taken me this long to return here and do what he requested and that is to put his ashes into our old swimming hole on this river. In fact it was the wooden box in the green velvet bag that conked me on the head, shattered now as it shot through the windshield, shreds of green still clinging to the glass, James’ ashes spread on the river not quite according to his wishes. But spread none the less.

The headlights have now gone out. I cannot see the lights of the town. Here it is very dark, a deep, deep, dark. But imagining you within such a close distance

seems to help because it will be a long and lonely night.

Friday September 25

Frozen bloody solid, a knife’s blade of ice straight down my spine. You know my stoic nature, Frank. So I won’t complain too much.

Every waking moment since dawn I have thought of hot baths. I am wet enough to never want a bath again but a hot one would do the trick nicely. The rain gear clammy and stuck to me all over. And food. I have listed off every single bit of food I would like to eat. I keep kicking myself for scalding my tongue on that coffee yesterday afternoon. It has left my mouth sore; sharp and prickly from the raised bumps and bitter, the blood from where I hit the steering wheel adding an acrid flavour.

It is much brighter now. The dawn took an eternity and I could see the pink sky reflecting on the river moving by. It is way down now; must have been quite a rainfall the last 24 hours. I can see weeds in the branches marking out how high it got last night. My feet are no longer in the water.

The view from here is limited but I am guessing from what I can see in the mirrors that the bridge has sheared off at our end – the town end a rusty hulk that seems to be sagging dangerously. A little too close to me trapped here in the truck below it. Pointing nose down at a steep angle.

I am hanging by my seat belt, chest balanced on the steering wheel. I don’t feel any pain but I can’t feel much anyway. Through the enger window I can see muggy heat rising from the river banks, steaming in spots.

What is so amazing here is that I am in an entirely impossible situation and I feel calm, such an overwhelming calm I cannot describe it, suffice to say that in the chaos and hurry of my life I have never felt like this. Almost as if time has stopped.

That autumn time stopped in those few days before the orchard was razed. It is something you and I never talked about, what happened that day, what happened to my mother. What happened did not exist with us, did it Frank? We only dealt with the here and now; then on into the future. So I suppose this is the time to talk about it.

From my bedroom window I could see the table on the hard-packed earth beside the shed; not the most romantic setting but I had seen them out there many nights, sheltered from the wind, one lantern on the clothes line, another hanging off the side of the shed throwing scattered shadows into the night. My parents seated at the table both talking and laughing until the insects got the better of them, driving them indoors.

On that last night I imagined seeing them but I didn’t, I only wished I had. A last fleeting glance of my mother. Her dress blowing in the breeze as she dances around in the moonlight.

The edges of the tablecloth fluttered in the morning breeze. A scattering of coloured leaves strewn across it, vibrant against the ivory of the cloth. Some were flat open palms of yellowy gold, others clutching claws of bright red. A crystal wine glass empty and sedately placed by the candlesticks dripping with wax, wax dotting the tablecloth too, mimicking the trail of the wind. The other glass on its side, a tell-tale path of red splashed across.

Such a hush came that day, the wind itself seemed to whisper by, barely ruffling

the leaves as it ed. It was James who found her dead on the bathroom floor, a pool of blood covering, the white tiles, flies already settling. He came to get me, “Audrey mum’s hurt.” Racing in front of him, my feet slapping the cold wooden floor of the hall. The bathroom door was hanging open and I could see her feet. Toes pointed lightly like a ballerina, graceful feet, delicate curve in her ankles. My mother was meant to be a dancer before my father, before us.

The flowery dress she was wearing yesterday played out around her floating on that dark pool.

I hesitated, looking behind me for James, who stood unmoving beside my bedroom door. As I went to her I could hear his tentative tiptoeing on the hall floor.

Heedless of the blood I leant over her. I cannot if I had words or if I was struck dumb by the simple beauty of the scene and the horror of it. Because it was very beautiful, peaceful. I crouched beside her, I know my lips were moving as I brushed her dark hair away from her pale cheek.

She was ice cold and she looked like an angel.

James stood in the doorway, his face written with anguish before he found the words, “Audrey do something.” I was mesmerised, caught in a soft cushioned uncertainty. His voice broke it, my head jolted towards him - this was real and not a strange dream. I panicked and together we ran screaming for our father.

Our feet left sticky bloody prints down the hall as we ran to find him. The bottom of my nightie tipped with her blood.

He was working in the shed. We just blurted it out. He listened blankly never turning from the axe he was sharpening, sliding the stone over and over across the head of the axe. His tool bench neat and tidy, everything resting in the correct notch on the wall in front of him. Testing the axe head with his finger, continuing sharpening before slipping on the leather sheath and snapping it shut in one deft motion. We knew not to push him, to hurry or demand his attention so we were quiet with him, waiting, our faces drawn anxiously, our bodies poised for flight. Then turning to us he said without a trace of emotion, “We will have to just go and see what this is all about.”

He placed the axe head down by the door and marched to the house. We scrambled beside him, trying to keep up and not get caught in his footsteps either.

When we got to the house he demanded that we get dressed and have some breakfast; he would look after our mother. We did so, never questioning his order, hearing him walk along the upstairs hall above our heads. Closing the bathroom door behind him.

That afternoon great thunderheads were darkening on the ridge above us, still a beautiful autumnal day in the valley below. The storms always developed here on the hill and then swooped down over the valley.

The weight of the covers that night was not enough to keep me safe with the storm outside. James came into bed with me and he was shivering; we held each other close trembling together for a while and then slowly getting warm before we stumbled and fought our way into a troubled sleep.

Frank, we were so little, only eight after all and we did not understand the events of that day.

This morning I realised I was looking at my watch every minute or so and time cannot be measured by a watch. Instead I will look at the ing day; still obviously early autumn. Yet the warm breeze of summer still lingers. Not an Indian summer mind you, for I am certain there has been no frost yet. The plants are all still standing, some still flowering, some will wilt to nothing when that first frost comes.

The willow tree is broken in half now, bent over ing the back end of the truck. Branches mingled with twisted metal from the bridge, holding me on the surface of the rushing water. Our big rock just visible under the branches. It fills me with warmth to think of the heat of that rock, all those days by the river.

I know the rock so well; the rough edge where you skinned your knees if you tried to climb out of the river there, slipping on the mossy stones; a little ledge where you could just stand up and walk out of the water onto the rock like stairs; a steep place to sit with a tiny ridge that held your feet perfectly if you hugged your knees to your chest - where you felt perched on the edge of the world. Mostly that the rock caught the afternoon sun. We would slip off the side and swim up to the deep hole where we could dive off the bank or swing into the water off the rope.

The rope, taken from your barn and daringly hung by James. With you and I watching.

If I make a circle with my thumbs together and forefingers touching I am sure that was the size of the rope. Soft and worn, hairy in places from so many years of use in the barn. Whatever would they have used such a huge rope for anyway?

To me it was only meant for swinging across the barn into the great banks of hay or even to swing from beam to beam. And of course into the river.

I was gripped with such excited terror when James shinnied up that tree, rope around his waist. The day started with a morning of chores, it was my turn to weed the green beans. Bologna and mustard sandwiches for lunch. We went to the river, racing along crazily, happily on our bikes cutting off the gravel lane onto the river path and chattering the whole way. Gravel spraying on the final steep lunge down. We threw our bikes onto the mossy grass at the foot of the old beech tree. As I stood by the trunk I could already feel the wind whooshing through my hair, longing to be the first one who swung from the rope and splashed into the river.

I thought it was you who should have climbed up Frank, but you said you were too big and James was a better size. Then he climbed out so far along the branch. The branch was sturdy enough, but with James struggling to get the rope from round his waist and barely able to reach his arms around the branch to get the rope, it seemed that just too many things were happening at once. Both you and I useless on the bank below. James way up there. End of the rope dangling.

He got the rope round the branch and a good firm knot in it before he fell, clinging to the rope, shrieking with terror then an almighty splash as he hit the water.

But James was the better size and we pulled him out of the water so easily, laughing from shock as much as fear. At least we knew the knot was good and secure by him swinging from it. His plunge proved the water was deep enough for any tricks we could play with that rope. It was so far out we had to rig up a pole to fetch it to the side. We tied a knot in the end that must have been the size of a coconut, perfect to sit on.

The beech tree with its rope should have been my favourite tree, linked with such laughing memories but funny it has always been the willow tree over at the rock with its quiet sunny moments.

I have a scrapbook in my head with great heaving covers and bulging sides and this is where I keep the memories of sunny afternoons. Oh that is terribly clichéd I know but that is how I see it, well-worn covers, bits of cut paper sticking out, paperclips. Of course it is only in my head but readily available when I need it, I need it now.

James kept scrapbooks and gave them to me. He wanted to keep me firmly attached to the real world, in particular his world. I left his last book sitting on my coffee table, it is too painful to look at yet, it was always something we did together the first time because he could fill in so many details that were not held within the covers. The last one - shiny green leather not yet looking worn and well-loved like his others; it is incomplete, the last third blank pages. He did two or three scrapbooks a year, filling them with his neat script, leaving spaces for pictures, tickets, interesting receipts and miscellaneous scraps of paper to be glued in. Every one with a story behind it. I have 33 of these books; the years indicated by the fading and wear from handling, I have read them all. He shared the scrapbooks with me when he wanted me to feel close to the things that touched his life. Even when I didn’t want to go to the same places as him, he forced me within those pages.

I’m sure his first one started here on the river: planned our travels, our escape.

The river was important to us, a place to get cool on those blazing hot summer days, a place to dream all those adolescent dreams. I seem to be drifting lazily between those days and now. Lack of food, exhaustion, cold: my mind is blurring.

Must have dozed off, the sun is now blinding me. A shining bright sheet of white, straight off the river into my eyes. Wish I could reach my sunglasses in the far corner of the dashboard.

A river has always featured prominently in our lives, this one, the Thames, the Nile, and many other little ones along the way. We had offices just off Wandsworth Bridge Road near the old gasworks. We both lived on the south side of the river and had to cross one bridge or another through the course of the day.

I always had a hard time ing the bridges of London and it wasn’t really important except the three; Chelsea, Albert and Battersea, they were always getting mixed up in my mind; I could never the directions to places because I was always taking the wrong bridge and I fixed that in the early days because CAB are my initials. My first name is Camille and that has always been a secret. Camille Audrey Bevan. Chelsea Albert Battersea. Nice coincidence?

The other mistake was making the Thames a nice straight line that divided London, north and south, that works in my mind but who ever heard of a straight river anyway? I soon got to know the twists and turns, bends and curves; never adjusted that map in my head mind you.

Flying countless thousands of times into Heathrow, looking down, often held in a flight pattern seeing the Thames twirl and trail through London. The Thames barrier huge chrome beads on a string threaded across the river. Occasionally a night flight with the bridges illuminated.

Sometimes James and I would play hooky from work and jump on our bikes and race over Putney Bridge where we would pick up the gravel tow path. We rode along the river for many an afternoon, at Kew we stopped, we knew where we would find a good pub, park up our bikes and then relax by the river. After all if

you are the boss you may as well play hooky when you want to. We called it part of the creative process because it always worked, we would come back to the office bubbling with a new idea and end up working on it half the night.

One of my favourite spots is by Hammersmith Bridge where the tow path narrows and Harrods Furniture Depository looms towards you. Bikes twisting on the track, ducking; the bridge would take your head off if you didn’t duck, then rushing down the incline. You could reach up and touch the metal hulk. And we would shout to each other as we ed underneath loud raucous voices and laughter across the river under the bridge, hollow metallic echoes back. That one too having been painted many colours over the years. Dare I compare these two bridges? The stately historic structure of Hammersmith Bridge compared to the country rustic of this one. I will. Just don’t tell anybody Frank.

This bridge talk has taken maybe fifteen minutes and I don’t know how long I will be stuck here suspended in time over the river. With my old bridge. Make sure it is a good engineer who does this little bridge Frank. It is important. To me.

I have tried to move, to get out, to break free and I have had no success - I can’t move. I have tried not to think about it; my medical knowledge is limited and leads to the bizarre. Any speculation on my part would be disheartening to say the least. The day has taken on a very strange time perspective.

Frank, I have been lonely over the years, not the same kind of lonely as now, more like feeling very alone in a group of people. I don’t mind the alone kind of lonely, although right now I could really use someone to talk to. Some voices to listen to, maybe a conversation to overhear or add to.

I hated the many times when I was with people and felt lonely.

A racoon is ambling down to the river. I thought they were nocturnal. His back is arched in that funny way racoons have, of fumbling along, two separate sections, a front and a back, sort of an articulated lorry. That’s the English in me coming out. Both ends moving together but separately. He sits for a while, dextrous in his washing of face and hands, ringed tail held out rigid behind him. It has to be a him, huge, furry and rounded, so soft and appealing, he looks up at me, makes eye then ambles off.

I suppose there should be fishermen around, it must be the height of the season although that particular stench of rotting fish is not in the air - maybe the season is later. I think it is salmon that run at this time of year and I one cold spring day when I boldly told you that I could catch a trout with my bare hands. Wouldn’t have attempted a salmon with its vicious hooked mouth, sharp teeth.

The buoyancy of the hip waders made it hard to stand but they filled quickly with cold water. Then the weight of them kept pulling me back with the current and like the fish I was fighting my way upriver against it.

I did it. I caught that trout. It took all day, I was wet and frozen, but I caught that slimy thing with its soft speckled sides and then you made me clean it right here on the bank. I did that too. We ate it later.

The racoon has reminded me of James’ cats, Biscuit and Cracker, Biscuit a longer haired tabby; each hair being layers of colour with a gold spot on the end and coarse because of that. Always laying at your feet and playing with your toes. Cracker being a huge orange thing with the whitest paws you have ever seen on a cat. A soft orange with darker orange stripes running round and circling all over him, soft fur too; the kind that your hand seems to melt in when you stroke him, creamy welcoming stomach.

With my bizarre sense of responsibility, they became my excuse for not travelling far, they could be ported around England but never abroad because of quarantine, that barbaric ritual. My sense of responsibility is bizarre because of the details, not trusting anyone to get them right and having to do all the tiny things myself, it is that attention to detail that got our films done right. So my trips to Egypt slowed and I moved the cats to my flat for the duration James’ ventures. They were always loyal to James though, perfectly friendly, affectionate, sometimes loving with me; Biscuit at my feet on top of the covers, Cracker sleeping under my arm, under the covers every night. But when James returned and took them home they only had eyes for him treating me with disdain when he was around, love the one you’re with I guess.

Sometimes I didn’t move the cats but moved myself to James’ flat and stayed there for a while - a mini holiday in my ordinary life.

Claire has the cats right now and I imagine them all sleeping together - Biscuit at her feet on top of the covers and Cracker under her arm under the covers. She won’t be worrying about me yet, I told her I would be staying here for as long as it takes and she knows not to intrude when I am like this. Having left the office with a mission, she knows I’ll be back when the job is done.

I can hear voices in the distance now, shrieking laughter of little boys echoing through the trees. There must be five or six of them. I can see flickers of clothing through the branches, can’t move my head much to see them properly. Am I imagining this? How often have I heard those sounds of delight and discovery on the banks of this river. Must be after school then. The day has been lost in my talking to you Frank.

I can see the boys on the narrow stretch of path that overlooks the deep swimming hole, the trunk of the beech tree visible behind. The broken willow

branches must be shielding me. I, however, have a keen interest in them and since staring at the same set of leaves and bank all day even the tiniest change in detail is big for me.

Baggy pants, pinched baseball caps and bags of school stuff dwarfing the boys. Their voices transcend time to when I was small.

“Cool look at the bridge!” excited voices as only little boys can muster. Stopping and pointing towards the bridge, towards me.

“Must have come down in that wicked storm last night,” offers another voice.

“Awesome,” squeaks another, the naked wonder apparent as he takes off his baseball cap, holding it in his hands then jamming it into his back pocket.

I missed the storm. One of the worst nights of my life comes complete with storm and I slept through it.

“No it’s the tree stupid.”

They all stand for a moment and look at the shattered willow tree. Suddenly, instantaneously, eagerly, start to climb on the branches closest, dragging them into the water in their haste. Scrambling over each other laughing. No apparent caution, no immediate sense of danger. Climbing haphazardly over the branches, wanting to be the first to examine the twisted hulk of bridge and perhaps hold up a piece as a trophy.

I am dangerously obscure to them and my heart thumps wildly as the truck sways lightly from their touch on the tips of the branches.

I try to shout out to them warning of my presence but my voice is only coming out thin and weak, barely a whisper. If they climb much harder the branch will buckle and they will have me, the truck and the remains of the bridge hurtling down upon them. I flick my wrist and the metal of my watch strap strikes the steering column, sharp ringing. Again quicker harder. I have caught their attention.

They are craning their necks and looking around twisting and turning until one finds the source of the sound.

“Shit look!” Finger pointing directly at me.

They have seen me now and have stopped dead in their tracks, wondering if they want this discovery. A stunned silence from the group as they take it all in and slowly cautiously make their way back to the bank as though the bridge has now become a lurking menace. One boy has made eye and that means they have seen me as well as the truck.

They are discussing the situation out of earshot, the water and rustle of leaves making it impossible for me to hear. Until they move forward again, a solid safe pack getting a closer look.

“Let’s just get help!” whines the one who had taken off his baseball cap, now

pulling it out of his pocket and replacing it firmly on his head.

The smallest boy, a wiry one, seems to have taken charge and is issuing instructions.

“Joey you go cause you’re the fastest and your house is closest.” His head seems to thrust forward with command, indicating to Joey the direction to his own home.

Joey seems reluctant to leave and I want to scream at him to hurry, to run like his life depends on it, to get help; his job is the most important one. He takes one more appraisal of the situation and turns on his heel, running down the path with amazing speed.

“Ok we’ve got to get her out.”

And the wiry one starts to claw his way through the branches none too gently, but I can see he is thinking now because he has chosen a less direct route and disappeared behind me. The others have not moved out of their cluster formation.

Like a little monkey he is poised in front of my door, gripping tree in one hand, the other balanced flat palm against the section of bridge still attached. Caution has kicked in; he is not touching the truck, he is leaning forward to talk through the smashed windshield.

“You ok there?” a tentative voice asks, not in the same tone commanding the troops into action earlier.

I nod slightly, only able to look at him with my left eye, my head too heavy to move much.

He stands triumphant and shouts to the others “The lady’s ok!” Hunkering down again for business he turns back to me, “We gotta get you out.”

My eyes wide with terror and nostrils flared I manage to turn my head far enough to use both eyes on him. “No!” a hollow whisper from my lips which I hope is enough to send him running from the scene.

He stands immediately and I see his hands splayed out to his sides, I imagine with the rest of his body he is giving a shrug to the other boys and I sigh with relief. It seems that everything is so close now. My eyes roll back in my head with exhaustion and I know I have just dozed off again.

The little monkey stayed with me the whole time, squatting down on his haunches and chattering away as monkeys do. I know more about the first month of grade eight than ever before. It helped because with all the waiting and thinking and fear he was a very pleasant distraction and managed to keep me awake, most of the time anyway.

I can hear the vehicles stopping and doors slamming, voices raised and lowered in discussion. Lots of tromping around too, heavy boots on wet ground. The group of boys have disappeared from my view and I can only think they are on the other side of the river now, where the men are, where the action is.

Monkey tells me rescue vehicles have arrived, all poised at the other side of the bridge, “How’re they gonna make it to our side” he says. “Ask the others you idiots, there’s a great set of steppingstones about half a mile back that would take you across,” he mumbles to me, knowing they won’t listen to him.

One ambulance, one fire truck and one tow truck. And a huge assortment of people parking their cars along the river. Monkey, who has yet to introduce himself, is keeping me informed of everything that is happening above. I do not have the strength to speak and wish I could ask him about the back way. At least one of the onlookers should know that there is a back lane, a tractor track that comes in from the highway. Rough and in rotten shape I’m sure, but a way for them to get to me. Eventually I see a man in fluorescent green, looking up from the big rock.

Monkey stands up “That way’s best!” He then pops down and gives me a thumbs up signal, “Catch you later.” And is gone. As quick as a flash, no time for me to attempt a thank you. I swear I can see a brown furry tail swing off the bridge.

“We’ll get you out in no time ma’am,” a kind and gentle voice practised at reassuring people in precarious situations.

“Can you understand me?” he asks, going through the checklist required for emergency situations.

“Ngeagh,” is what comes out of my mouth, it was meant to be a quick yeah. But even that is impossible.

“Okay don’t you worry, I’m just going to check a few things out.”

He manages to reach in through the windscreen and hold my wrist, gently taking my pulse. He must be another monkey, his arms are long enough. His chattering starts too, an endless list of questions. I can only provide thick grunts and hisses as answers. He has thrown a blanket over my back and is looking closely at my door.

“I’m not going to try the door,” he says to me, and repeats it again to the other set of legs clad in rescue gear that has appeared. Carefully he removes the last traces of glass from around the windshield, it crumbles at his touch and he brushes it away with his leather glove.

“Are you well enough balanced there for me to cut your shoulder strap?”

“Ngeagh.”

“Ok, we’ll do that, once we get some bracing for the front of the truck.”

Two jacks and some pieces of steel shore up the front of the truck and in a flash I am free of the shoulder strap, tremendous relief as the belt around my hips loosens too.

A pair of firm hands grip under my armpits and slide me out face over the dash, over the windshield, laid out flat on the hood, feet still dangling in the cab. They slip a cushioned basket over me then gently flip me over, just like being in a

cradle. My eyes staring straight up drinking in the beauty of sky. Only my eyes seem to work. Drinking in my surroundings while my body should be screaming in pain. I can’t feel anything much at all.

As I am carried to our side of the river to where a four wheel drive splashed with mud awaits, I survey the rescue scene. Very high tech, lots of interesting equipment, all of it sitting unused on the other side of the river. No rope mind you, I saw chains and steel cables off the tow truck glistening in the sun but no rope. It would have been be a perfect end to all of this if they had used great lengths of old barn rope to haul me out.

They slide me into the back of the four wheel drive. “Sorry no fancy sirens for you,” says the rescuer and pats my shoulder as he gets in beside me.

We drive up the lane very slowly, no spinning wheels on the mud. My view from the vehicle is straight down and I look at the mangled mess of bridge all twisted with the branches of the willow tree. The shiny black blazer suspended amongst it all. The collection of cars, the crowds on the other bank. A late afternoon diversion.

I am taken up the hill past our two lanes, our two lonely houses and out to the highway through the back lane.

I am in the hospital now. Bright lights and warm flannel blankets. I never liked flannelette sheets much but they are a true comfort now as if warm arms are embracing me.

Safe warm hmmm goodnight Frank.

Saturday September 26

I am in the hospital bed now, staring at the ceiling. I feel a little strange the noise and clutter of routine going on around me so familiar to the nurses but so new to me. They bustle by me, I can hear the fabric of the curtains rustling I imagine billowing in their wake. I am in a ward with other women, I can hear their voices, the curtains are pulled around my bed and I am treating this as a sanctuary.

I don’t know but maybe I should be here, there is nowhere else I want to be and it is safe warm and comfortable in this bed, this room, this hospital. I still have the overwhelming calm that hit me yesterday, it must be my body’s defences kicking in and preventing me from leaping, from this bed and plunging into the unknown for that is the feeling I get when I imagine being outside of these walls. Yes, it is safe and warm here.

Saturdays I treasure the most. It is the one day I do not want to stay in bed or return to it and I don’t read any papers on Saturday either. I jump on my bike and ride over to Portobello Road, if James is around he comes with me, he used to anyway. I lock my bike to the railings across from the Sun In Splendour Pub.

My bike is a mountain bike, looking appropriately scruffy so no one takes an interest in stealing it. I’ve had too many fancy all aluminium bikes stolen; one even returned after being gone for over a year. The police apologised about the state it was in and really the only thing left was the metallic purple frame, pretty scratched though, it had been stripped back all the gearing mechanisms, cantilever brakes, kevlar tires gone; to some less deserving bike I’m sure. This bike I have now has all the fancy stuff but camouflaged, roughed metal, scratched paint, mismatched tyres with gouged rubber and the crossbar wrapped in an old inner tube.

In London you really do need a mountain bike, the roads can be pretty rough with potholes and deep drains; the frame needs to be sturdy because of that. Short cuts over the pavement when the traffic is too jammed. I can jump down the curb but I don’t like to jump up. I can only jump up a curb of less than six inches or I panic and go head over wheels, I can’t seem to get the timing right for pulling the handlebars back and lifting the wheel up. I still try though.

I get a tremendous sense of freedom riding in London. Once coming through Knightsbridge this really beautiful black Porsche was changing lanes and my calf brushed along the side of the car, I have to it I was a little too close. The really beautiful black man driving was not impressed but smiled anyway. We ed each other about five times through Hyde Park Corner down to Victoria and on through to Chelsea Bridge. Every time I ed him I grinned and brushed along his car. He never had the nerve to brush me when he ed. He was laughing too the last time I went by. I lost him after that, he was bogged down in the traffic. Nice car just a shame it can’t travel faster than a bike!

I would head down Portobello Road after parking up, walking at a good pace past all the houses still early enough to beat much of the jostling crowd of tourists. And then through the touristical section with its dubious antiques, through to the fruits and vegetables, then head down past Ladbroke Grove to the junk section. I love the junk section the most but still I do not linger because Claire will be sitting at our café waiting for me. We give each other a big hug like it’s been months since we last saw each other not yesterday afternoon and then we drink coffee and chat and drink more coffee. I am not a coffee drinker really this is a Saturday ritual and I am pretty wired after that and then we walk slowly through the junk section of the market some junk on tables they are the organised ones, others with the junk simply spread across the pavement or better yet still in boxes to paw through.

I have an eagle eye for junk and have got some really good stuff, James looks at everything and paws through most of it trailing far behind until Claire and I have

to stop and wait for him.

Crouching beside an array of kitchen stuff on the pavement I shriek with delight and turned to Claire “look at this we had one just like it when we were little!”

In my hands was a square tray with rounded corners, fake and flaking gilt with a black plastic surface. On it were horse drawn carriages set in squares half black with gold carriages the other half in reverse. “Oh god James’ll love it” I said excitedly clutching it to my chest, eyes combing the street behind me for him.

Claire looked at me a few moments while I scanned furtively. And then she rubbed my shoulder affectionately “Aud, he’s not coming.”

I found myself kneeling there amongst the junk, tray on the ground in front of me and I was crying, crying my heart out, eyes burning with tears, face contorting with despair. I dropped my sunglasses onto the tray burrowing the heels of my hands into my eyes, rubbing them, curled fingers over my eyebrows. I felt so small, so alone kneeling there, elbows scrunched into my waist, eyes streaming, nose running.

“I want him to be here,” I said in a tiny voice to Claire. “I want him to come back.” Almost choking the words out begging her to do something. To produce James for me. To make it all better.

“I know, I know,” She said quietly.

I knelt there sobbing, face in my hands. I loved him so much I wanted him back, I wanted him to come waltzing down the street grinning.

“Aud” the hand on my shoulder gripping me.

I stood up and brushed the dirt off my knees scooped my sunglasses up and jammed them quickly on my face. Not too many people had stopped to look and I glared fiercely at those who did. I used the back of my fist to wipe my nose. And then a big snotty sniff.

“Come we’ll go and eat,” Claire put her arm around me and squeezed me.

We walked down the street awhile I didn’t see anything my eyes unfocussed still filled with tears, we stopped at one of our regular spots by the big lime trees, where James would have looked for us. We waited there five minutes or so I looked up at multicoloured bark the outline of the tree against the sky the jagged rooftops high above us. Then Claire and I looked at each other and we laughed and cried.

That was the first time and there have been a few since. I had not shown any emotion over James, certainly not a public display like that. But even inside, I had kept it all neat, all in place and kept it not real somehow, like really he was just away on a long trip. Maybe if I kept busy or took some aspirin for the pain it wouldn’t be real at all. I was very very busy those few months and I have been very very busy since. I have taken rather a lot of aspirin too.

I think I have it. Saturday is an outside day, a day when you can let your hair blow in the wind and not go indoors at all. Today however, I am trapped inside

with a strong wish to go outside for just a moment and breath the air, feel the wind. I only have the strength to think it and have a feeling of nothingness surging outside the hospital walls.

In the turmoil of yesterday Frank, I didn’t tell you about James.

It was all very mixed up, crazy, when I found out that James had died, the phone rang and I answered it with the same flurry I always use “Bevan Bedroom Productions.” A deep voice asked if he was speaking to Audrey Bevan, it was the Home Office asking did I need any help with the arrangements for having the body repatriated. I glanced casually around the office to see if anybody was on the phone grinning at me, but there were no takers. Everyone was in their usual stance of drinking coffee, chatting, posing, some even working. I will it that sitting at my desk pencil in my teeth while scribbling away with a nice fine tip felt pen, there was a surreal quality to the call. By chance, a small act of foreboding I dropped the pen on the floor and took the pencil from my teeth instead. So that later I could easily erase any message given to me now.

“I’m sorry but I’m not sure where this conversation is going” I explained, hunching over my desk on my elbows.

Mr Worth, the man on the phone, fumbled for a second. “haven’t you been notified by the Austrian authorities?” He inquired lightly.

“I’m afraid I haven’t,” professional calm, I waited holding my breath.

A rustle of papers over the line “I’m sorry to inform you that James Edward Bevan was killed in a skiing accident on Wednesday the 18th February 1998 at

approximately three o’clock in the afternoon, St Johann in Pognau, just outside of Salzburg.” Decisive correct sentence. He paused and waited, the silence growing. “I don’t have all the details but I will get them to you, I am merely trying to facilitate matters. That is what I am here for.”

Quick calculation, two days ago, what was I doing at that moment. Did I feel anything different? Closing my eyes breathing deeply, I spoke while the calm still held. “I can’t quite take all this in at the moment could I call you back in a little while?” Still calm, still professional, still breathing.

I took the number down for Mr. Worth and sat back in my chair, I can’t tell you what I thought, I was numb. The home office was merely trying to help. ‘Facilitate matters’. James dead? It could not be possible he had only phoned from Cairo to check in last week before heading off skiing. He is a good skier, graceful, elegant, not a risk taker, this could not be true.

We knew the resort like the backs of our hands, thousands of kilometres of well groomed slopes, easy access to countless lifts, nothing dangerous, nothing threatening. I imagined James dead in the snow and wondered if there had been any blood spilt. Maybe just one single spot of red blood in the vast whiteness of the snow. I hoped there was a tiny splash for James’ sake. For my sake, I would have like there to have been a mark even a fleeting one, lasting until the next snow.

The delicate valleys to ski through, curving wooded trails, broad open slopes to race upon. Always snow, deep pockets of fine powder to float through, mushy stuff on the sunny side to slow you down.

Gorgeous little town with so many warm cosy spots for hot chocolate and cakes, drinks and dinner how could anything so terrible happen there? Were the

fireplaces still crackling or had a hush fallen over the town. Once we saw the helicopter come in to take away a casualty and then never heard a thing about it, even after inquiring around the town.

Sitting at my desk that afternoon, the fact that James was dead far from my mind. Instead I was drifting back to Austria, it seemed to me that James still was there. Doing alone any number of things we might have done together.

In our ski town there is a lovely cemetery at the top of the hill, James and I went there often in the early evening when it was just dark. It invited you in as you went up the hill, hundreds of tiny lights flickering, almost every ornate gravestone with a nook where a candle burnt, tiny night lights in yellow orange or red glass giant flakes of snow falling in the darkness. I never found out who lit the candles and sometimes it was done before the snow fell because the candles had little banks of snow in front of them, no human hand could have reached past. I imagine a tiny hunched woman all dressed in black lighting them, using a separate wooden match for every single one, slowly methodically lighting the cemetery every night. A stone wall with tall narrow wrought iron gates marked the entrance, a tiny Catholic church in the centre, the same stone as the walls. We never went into the church, it was too serene for our intrusion.

In the churches and cathedrals around Europe I lit a candle for my mother. The reason behind this I do not know, I am not religious but always felt that the flame I presented on those occasions might be noticed – by God. Surely God sees the flames? My coin clinked in the tin as I took a candle, lighting it off others already lit. Some flickering, others strong and true as if perhaps the flames were the very souls themselves.

In Italy a kind, elderly gentleman saw my tears and inquired after them. He smiled and cherished the thought that a young girl can still carry the burden of love and pain for her lost mother. He added, “you have put the candle in the wrong spot, this place is for a prayer to be answered, over here is for the soul

gone on.” Indicating another alcove with a sweep of his hand and discreetly wiping a tear from his own cheek as he brought his hand back to his side.

I thanked him through my tears, picked up the lit candle and carried it gently, hand cupped shielding the flame over to the correct spot. A soul gone on.

Now I think of those flickering candles on the hill, the ones waiting to be lit in all the churches. In my mind they will be for James too.

Mr. Worth was significantly more helpful when I phoned back. I took charge of the whole thing looking at it almost as research for my next documentary, taking his advice and listening to the options, casket type, handling company, airline, destination. A process that I could really do without on this personal basis, but the public always had a morbid interest. I had notes scribbled all over a foolscap sheet and in pencil of course. Then I had him fax all the details to me, more paper, I opened an orange file for New Projects and marked it Body Shipping, later it would go into a green Work in Progress and then finally a blue Completed Job. Navy blue, maybe I should start using black? Black is the final colour isn’t it?

So you can see now Frank why it was so easy for me to deal with the immediate details of James’ death. Treat it just like another documentary. That is what we did so well, wonderful documentaries, filled with minute details of obscure yet real topics. Body Shipping.

Enough of that.

We won’t talk of my injuries now, I myself am unsure of what is working, what

is not. There is no pain. They have spoken to me but I can’t seem to understand, it is all blurred together with James. I couldn’t understand what happened to him, they gave me all the medical jargon in heavily accented English. I have the papers somewhere. It didn’t really matter - he was dead, gone. Me, I am alive and that seems to be all that matters. The doctor here talks in heavily accented English too. Perhaps at the end there will papers for me too.

A fuzzy blur really I very simply didn’t want to know what happened to him or what has happened to me.

I have been x-rayed from head to toe, none too gently either. Yanked about pummelled and prodded, all the while laying on that icy sheet of metal. “Don’t move. Breathe in,” over the speaker, strange background sounds “ok, breathe out.”

“Don’t worry about the instructions Joyce, she can’t hear you,” said the nurse who was placing the rubber wedges around to hold me in position, folding my arm over my chest.

“No it seems that she does breathe in when I say,” insisted Joyce.

“Oh I don’t have time for this nonsense, look” – she pinched my forearm sharply I knew she did it but I didn’t really feel anything and I gave no response.

“Ok” said Joyce pressing the button and not bothering to instruct me on breathing or staying still. “Are you going to the Stag and Doe tonight?”

Pinchy answered with a firm yes “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” They proceeded to go through the intimate details of the couple getting married and their prospects, sounded to me like there are some sour grapes hanging in the air over this. But given the facts I’d just heard I gave the marriage maybe a year at best.

Then they ventured into plans for the weekend ahead as if I wasn’t even there.

Gossiped about little events around the town, my ears wide open for mention of you or your family. Frank do you know I am in the hospital in your town? Probably just down the road from you?

Sunday 27 September

Frank.

Sunday is a good day to talk about my mother. Her clear true voice ringing out in the sunny church.

Our church is on the south eastern corner of the block at the far end of the main street built of yellow brick, classic to this area. Inside it is painted white, both startling and sparkling. It has stained glass windows, all of them golden, and most Sundays the church is bathed in a soft amber glow. I cannot going to church in the summer and therefore the warmth of the church was even more important with our fierce cold winters. Somehow sitting there you were transported to a warmer place, a safer place maybe it was something other than beautiful yellow light. I don’t really much of what was said but some things have stuck with me, I am sure I can recite the call to worship. And I know the Lords Prayer.

My mother was in the choir and we children were usually in church for the first two hymns and a few words in between before being swept down to the basement for Sunday school. I always hated that and wished to stay in the warmth of the church. Had I known that there would be so few memories of my mother I might have insisted in the way any eight year old can. A tantrum. But I knew that my mother would be disappointed if I exhibited such behaviour so I didn’t. I went down to Sunday school to that deep basement with all the corridors. It was not because of the almighty father or my own real father that I went down but for my mother. Three different sets of narrow steep stairs down with sharp corners. I never explored the basement of the church I never left James’ side; it gave me the creeps down there. I never even went to the bathroom and for me James didn’t either.

Sometimes, though not often we didn’t go to Sunday school at all; we sat through the whole service with barely a squirm or fidget. James taking in the words. Me listening to the choir.

James liked Sunday school, he learnt all the stories, only for the sake of them being good stories I’m sure and could recount them to me later in life when I required a biblical reference. It was me though who developed a strong sense of faith, that carried me through.

What about Sodom and Gomorrah? James would then regale me with the story, the plot, the characters but never the meaning. That was something I had to figure out for myself.

My father never set foot in the church.

Church was something the three of us always did together then an afternoon of outdoor chores and a big roast beef dinner to finish the day. Roast beef rubbed with garlic, roast potatoes and onions, mashed turnip, brussels sprouts, Yorkshire pudding and thick dark gravy. It was always delicious.

After our mother died we went to church on our bikes for most of the year; dropped off in the winter by my father and still he never set foot in the place. It is the memories of her that I want right now not the absences or inadequacies of him.

They are such tiny memories really, grasped out of such a tiny girl’s head,

fleeting glimpses and sounds. My mother used to sing back in Wales and dance too. We set up a bar in the dining room with its polished maple floor and moved the table aside. Classical ballet, I can her taking me through the positions; first heels together toes out, fingers touching in front of your stomach, second sliding sideways with your right toe one hand outstretched finger pointing and on through to fifth.

She never managed to get me past fifth because we would both laugh and end up dancing our own dance sweeping circles around the dining room through the kitchen and down the hall, with Tigger skittering across the floor ahead of us, his nails sliding on the wood as he escaped. Little leaps and twirls the names of the movements long forgotten. I love going to the ballet just to hear the little slapping sound of the leather on the beautiful wooden stage the thud thud thud of wooden point shoes. I am always transported to my own little dance studio in my mind.

I cannot my mother speaking. Yet I know we must have chattered away for hours in the kitchen, but I always comes back to her singing. Her voice is an angel’s song to me now. James and I went to hear Holst’s The Planets at the Royal Albert Hall a few years ago. That beautiful domed building with all the tiers ri and circling almost the whole way around. Such a tiny stage and orchestra space. When the angels’ song broke in, the singers were positioned in the top tier well above the orchestra and for a second it did seem as if there were angels singing to us. Everyone looked around and up to see where the voices were coming from. It was heavenly. Real angels singing. My mother among them.

I can hear the songs of birds right now, I know there is a window beside my bed only because a nurse spoke of it. “I don’t think a crack open would hurt, would it?” She is a very nice nurse and talks to me as if I am here the others are treating me as in a coma, not a word. What they don’t realise is I am here listening to them, in my mind watching understanding the footfalls and their motions. Little flicks and clicks of the machine, new bags of saline and drugs on my drip.

Sometimes they move me and change the sheets.

The nice nurse is Candy, I her clearly from growing up and imagine that she is exactly the same as she was thirty years ago, stocky but muscular not fat, with short wiry brown hair and a warm smile. When she talks to me at the bedside I know she is smiling. I know she is Candy because the others in the room talk to her, she is the only member of staff that gets greeted in such a friendly way. But she is interested in all of us.

This room is comfortable too, the ladies are all very interesting and colourful in their own right. A nurse came in this morning and said to the lady next to me “yure so yellah yure orrnge!” I cringed for her and knew that my feelings would be so hurt if someone spoke to me that way considering we are sick and in the hospital and no doubt jaundice being the reason for her yellow condition. I wondered what she would say to me my face I am sure is a spectacular colour after being mashed on that steering wheel only a few days ago. But she looks at me last takes my temperature blood pressure and whisks out of the room without a word to me.

Having people in the room makes me feel less alone.

When Struan visited, we went to our separate rooms. I was usurped by that boy thing. I always felt left out when he came because no matter how long we spent together every day outside in the barn the fields or down at the river even around the house I was not allowed to enter their room, James’ room. If it rained I was left out all day. My father’s edict and Struan’s echoed decree.

I could hear them talking and whispering late into the night, not from my room but from the hall where I would sit waiting for an invitation. It was never offered. They would not accept the invitation to enter mine.

My father and uncle Ian could be heard talking downstairs my mother rattling in the kitchen. She always rattled when Uncle Ian was around. I think my father liked him more than she did despite him being her brother. Somehow she seemed edgy during his visits, yes she was always rattled when he was around. After that terrible day it was only Uncle Ian and my father that I heard talking well into the night they rattled in the mornings trying to hide the evidence of their long evenings. Unable to hide the dark ringed eyes accompanied with short tempers and gruff voices.

Uncle Ian called us Irish twins, always with a sneer. I did not understand “Irish twins” at the time but to me it meant that James and I were of that very special club called twins. We were always very proud of that because I felt that James and I should have been twins and Uncle Ian proved that we were. I liked him for that.

The sneer was a common expression on Uncle Ian’s face, so I did not realise it was put on to make a point, I thought it was a genetic one, a configuration of his tissue, Struan bore it too. My mother did not carry this genetic material, for her face never showed that sneer. Me I’m afraid I have a bit of it, my face sneering almost as if I can’t help it at times. James never had it though, his face so easy to read.

Do you my mother Frank? You must have seen or met her in the first year we shared that hill with you. And your being thirteen would have given you so much more to and observe. I have so very little to go on and I cling desperately to what memories I have. I long for someone to tell me more but there is no one to do so. She is lost and I’m afraid she lives on only in me. Please have a memory of her Frank even just a fleeting one.

I have so many memories of yours.

We got to know your family that autumn, casseroles sent over on foot, yours or the feet of one of your many curly blonde brothers. Your mother was always generous, I liked her advice delivered in that flat voice quiet wisdom while the cookies cooled. Usually peanut butter ones, rolled in sugar before baking to keep them from sticking to the tray. A single fork mark pressed on the top with sugar glistening. And always sitting on the counter where the sun hit them, making them even more enticing. My own mother had never gotten around to peanut butter cookies, we were too new to Canada and peanut butter sandwiches for school were bad enough. Baking with the stuff would have been too much. She always held her nose when she handled peanut butter. Not that we didn’t have cookies; we had English ones and cakes too. Nice little rounds of pastry with a slick of raspberry jam and yellow cake on top and then a tiny circle of thin white icing. When we moved to England, we realised these were mini bakewell tarts.

Sometimes your mother had us over for supper. My father would eat in town those nights. We had squash for the first time and I loved it, so orange sweet buttery it just melted in your mouth. And cooked beets too! I was shocked to see them, to me beets are little round red cold things that have a sweet sharp bite. Of course I didn’t know then that they came any other way than pickled. I suppose the striking thing about your house was that everything seemed to be colourful even the food. There was a rocking chair in the corner of your kitchen with an afghan made of woolly squares every colour in the rainbow almost screaming for attention, warm too. I don’t know what your mother thought of the hours I spent silently wrapped in that afghan. Not rocking the chair perched carefully so it didn’t move, watching her cook. But I learnt how to cook from your mother, in fact you’d be very surprised at how I can mimic her recipes, yet I never stood beside her and helped. I watched silently from the rocking chair wrapped in the afghan not moving.

Since I am talking to you Frank, I don’t know what to call your mother except your mother when in fact I mentioned her to many people over the years but I always called her Mrs. Addison to them. They get such clear pictures of your kitchen and your family. They always wonder about mine. Your mother made a

huge impression on me although I am sure she does not know it. Instead she must have thought I was some quiet changeling brought into her houseful of boys.

It was the one time that I felt safe without James being at my side I was happy to see him off with you and your brothers, me safe and warm in the kitchen with your mother. Often I went and played with you all but I didn’t mind the quiet of the kitchen and the words your mother would across the room to me. I sat there for years: it became Audrey’s Rocking Chair that didn’t rock and Audrey’s Afghan. I liked that, a little place for me in your house.

How are Benjamin, Michael and Zachary? Of course they are all grown up now too. Funny I always think of them as little boys yet both Benjamin and Michael are older than me. I suppose when I met them I was well on my way to growing up without really knowing it.

They all had names that could be shortened but Zachary was the only who did so - Zach. That year you were thirteen, Benjamin eleven, Michael nine and Zach seven. James and I at eight straddled your years and therefore were never in the same class as any of your brothers either.

We all shared a love of books that’s you, me, James and your brothers, your mother too really. There was always a big book to look at filled with pictures of rocks or trees and then maps. How we loved maps, the huge atlas that always sat on the kitchen table with us clustered around kneeling on our chairs leaning over it on our elbows because it was too cumbersome for us to carry.

Struan went to Egypt with Uncle Ian and ranted and raved about it. We went there with National Geographic, that article about moving the temple for the dam in Aswan. How we loved that article James for the engineering tactics, the

culture and me for the very idea of it. Nothing too impossible to dream up and achieve. We poured over that issue almost wearing the ink off the pages but always careful to never to make a crease or tear.

At night driving by Nun’s Aggregates on the highway there were these domes: three floodlit pyramids right on our doorstep. Lined up along the yard in two neat rows facing each other, eighteen cement mixers nine on each side. James and I imagined this to be the corridor of lions leading to the temple in Luxor.

My father told them that as we drove by.

Struan laughed great peals of laughter hands slapping his thighs an exact copy of his father, “that doesn’t look anything like a pyramid to me, it’s tiny for a start.”

James and I couldn’t look at each other with Struan between us and wished the ground would open up beneath our feet, however, we were trapped in the back of the car. I studied the back of Uncle Ian’s head, neat red curls seemingly sculpted around his ears. Why had our father mentioned this - to Struan of all people. Uncle Ian in the front a cigarette glowing in the dark trails of smoke lingering out of his nostrils as he snorted, a smirk on his face. He needn’t say anything Struan could do it well enough.

“And the Sphinx is in front of the pyramids not the rows of lions” he paused and looked at each of us in turn waiting for our nods to continue and they came quickly. We are and always have been Struan’s captive audience. “The lions are in Luxor which is along the Nile half way down the country.” His voice maintaining a perfect cadence an air of importance. We drove by Egypt Road and for a change didn’t open our mouths to say anything. “And there are long rows of rams too!” he added for final emphasis.

But somehow Struan didn’t destroy the magic of the place for us and every time we drove by in the dark two rows of illuminated and shadowed cement trucks leading to our own three pyramids. We always whispered to ourselves about it, never letting our father be privy to our dreams again.

We were aggregates, never much of a whole in our family but I could see us as rough lumps of hard stone forced together. Angular and not fitting right, just sitting beside each other out of deference. A handful of sharp gravel.

I did not know what aggregates meant I had to look it up in the dictionary and had a very hard time saying aggregates. But I liked the word much the same as I like the word pelagic. That too I had to look up in the dictionary.

Pelagic that’s me of the open seas I had no experience of it but imagined myself soaring in the wind nothing below me but a vast expanse of water.

We spent a great deal of time with The Birds of Canada and imagined being a gull out at sea. We don’t get them often here but if the weather is really bad they will come inland and settle on a freshly ploughed field.

A flock of Canada geese has just flown by, I can hear the great honking through that crack of window. How I would love to be standing outside looking at the V they carve in the sky and counting them. From the sound of it, there must have been at least a hundred. The cowbirds and blackbirds used to sit in the trees on the hill by the house and call for an hour before dusk a cacophony of voices all topping one another, making conversation almost impossible over their noise. Then as quick as they came they would all take flight and go and roost farther down the river. Silence followed. This was usually about the time we sat down to

eat our silent meals.

Afterwards we would go to my room and do homework or read our books. But often we just looked at our atlas and dreamed together.

In real life James and I ended up covering a lot of those places in the atlas Frank, some of them we never even knew about then. I wanted to send you postcards but it was James who stopped me, a hand on my forearm “don’t Audrey he doesn’t want us.” He didn’t want me to get hurt any more than I already was. I guess he was pretty hurt too but never really showed it or told me. He simply refused to talk about you. When I spoke of your family to other people they would turn to him and ask for more because we always spoke together. He said he didn’t really know the Addisons they were Audrey’s friends. He never said your name once not ever.

Now that’s a sad note for the end of such a warm sunny day so I will tell you Frank that I whispered your name across my lips countless millions of times more than enough for both James and I. I brought you with me to every new place we went often revisiting them with you too.

It has been a sunny warm day in its own surreal way because I am not really here am I? But then I am not really worried about that either. I have to say it again Frank I have never felt such calm.

I will end this day with another book. Someone is reading to the lady in the bed kitty-cornered to me, I know nothing about her because she has been fairly quiet all day and no one has made any comments on her condition. But the voice reading is so calm so quiet and funny – so well, Canadian! In a strange way I recognise that voice but it must be the Canadian accent I am warming to. The words I can barely hear. I hope to fall asleep to that.

Monday September 28

Frank.

We spent the morning in the orchard with wheelbarrow and rakes slipping and sliding on the leaves as we gathered them to be thrown over the bank.

It was a pleasant job, the ambulance had been taken my mother away and we carried on as if she would be coming home later. Although wet, the leaves had yet to decay or become infested with worms and insects. They scooped nicely and didn’t move with the slight breaths of wind.

I can’t now it must be the drugs I am still unsteady I guess and that feels distinctly like a fabrication of the morning. Almost as if we’d all sat around the table for a while and eaten pancakes with maple syrup and sausages afterwards laughing and talking. I don’t think we ate that day.

Lying in this hospital bed I have noticed distinct changes two silent nurses came and altered my medication. It must have been about breakfast time because I could hear trays rattling down the hall. The medication has made a hot rush through my veins and left a terrible taste in my mouth. It is so very strange, motion seemed to be the thing that always kept me going forever in motion. Always busy. Yet now I am not moving and I am washed over with calm. I enjoy listening to all the little things happening around me, it occupies my day and fires my memories. All the while thinking of you and sharing my stories with you.

Sometimes when I visited James after work I would get there first, open the door and plop myself down on the big white leather couch and wait for his arrival. My cycling route being just a tiny bit more efficient than his. Biscuit and Cracker would be all over me happy for human company. Purring and meowing the eager stories of their day as they entwined themselves around me. Biscuit rubbing at my feet and Cracker smack in my face. Then they would stop suddenly and run for the window jumping up onto the sill, staring out, purrs becoming a great rumblings of delight and I knew that in the next few minutes Jams would put the key in the door. Much as the cats recognised his footfall I now recognise the different nurses some of the doctors and the regular visitors to this room.

I have always been good with sound. I have acute hearing and often hear things well before anyone else does. A certain measure of self-preservation I’m sure, no one is able to take me by surprise except when there is too much background noise. I hate noise it is almost as if a clutter fills my head and I can’t sort out the sounds I need to hear and the coffee machine and printers become the only sounds around and then I can’t concentrate on voices or even talk on the phone. Here now with the calm the background noise is reassuring.

I the background noise that October day the crunching of gravel as the cars rolled in and out car doors creaking open banging shut boots on the gravel our own side door opening and closing with a sharp snap it was not at all reassuring. I spent the afternoon in my room deep in my bed the covers thrown over my head and tucked all safely around me.

That October the leaves changed colour so quickly and in some ways everything happened so quickly until that day when time was marked by how very very slowly it could move. Because it was our childhood and that is very quick isn’t it? In fact it was as if a great gust of wind had come overnight and all but the most hardy leaves fell, blowing and spreading with the wind across our yard. Glistening from the rain the previous night the golds and reds of autumn.

I must have slept that afternoon in and out of a murky dark sleep. And James curled up with me that night.

The next day was such a cool clear autumn day I can feel the air now just crisp not so cold to be uncomfortable we were unsure about what was happening and we wandered to the far corner of the top field and watched the walnuts drop hard green tennis balls. The orchard looking so neat and tidy where we had picked up the leaves the previous morning only a scattering of leaves from the overnight wind.

We saw the black and white police car pull up, two uniformed officers striding across the gravel to the house. They went to the front door instead of the side door where everyone else went in so we couldn’t see any more after that and didn’t really think about it either.

We watched the squirrels chasing each other crazily. Lazy flowing black bushy tails following their movement. There seemed to be a boom in the squirrel population or they were just very busy with the time of year. Some tried to pick up the walnuts bigger than their own heads hopping along lopsided with their luggage.

Uncle Ian and Struan arrived and we returned to the house to greet them but it wasn’t the same. There was no excited feeling of the summer ahead it seemed out of place to have them here. Their arrival surprised me.

I was still waiting for the ambulance to return bringing my mother home warm and alive. I expected her to come back not realising she never would.

Later in my room I could hear voices downstairs in the kitchen coming through the heat . It was somehow comforting; I did not understand the confusion that surrounded us, our whole house. Ladies voices. The church ladies had heard of our situation and were rallying round to help keep things right. Keeping an eye on us kids since our father had left with the police and Uncle Ian with him. And I could hear the pots on the stove and the oven door opening and closing.

James was in his room with Struan and I wasn’t allowed to go in there because they were no doubt doing some boy thing and for a change I felt like being alone anyway.

Eventually I was found by one of the ladies who came upstairs looking for me and brought me down to the kitchen and set me at the table, cheese grater, strong white cheese and a big bowl to grate into. I hate grating cheese although I was grateful for the task that day, the warmth of the kitchen, being included in things. “We are going to make macaroni and cheese,” she announced cheerily “and we’ll make enough to freeze some too.”

I nodded my assent and grated into the big blue bowl, cobalt blue on the outside white on the inside. My fingers were so cold they barely made a mark in the cheese. Yet I held it so tight my knuckles were white. I was so cold that day.

“Do you put onions in yours?” she asked. She hadn’t put on my mothers apron but left it hanging on the back of the door instead she’d tucked a clean drying cloth into the waistband of her skirt.

“We always have bacon and fried onions in it, my mother makes it that way.” I offered, wanting the meal to be perfect.

The lady was so kind. She took bacon out of the fridge and cut it all in little cubes and fried it with thin wedges of onion while the macaroni was boiling. With her back to me at the stove she did not stop talking once not for a second she discussed the fall fair with me at great length and although that had been only last Saturday the excitement of it seemed so distant to me now. But strangely fresh to her. How good the parade had been. The beautiful floats, the pony club, the marching band, the pipe band. Of course the big halls filled to the brim with cakes and jams vegetables quilts and crafts all judged and ribbons sitting beside the winners. With the horse show and cattle judging going on in the rings outside. And the noise of the midway.

“That little puppet of yours won first prize in the eight-and-under craft section didn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes.” I smiled it was sitting on my bureau now with the red ribbon proudly beside it. Just as my mother had arranged it the skirts in a neat swirl with a pop bottle underneath ing it.

“It seemed strange that you could portray a ballet dancer in a puppet with no legs but I really did like it,” she said smiling turning to me wiping her hands on the drying cloth.

My mother and I had spent hours on that puppet layers of pink chiffon from an old scarf had made the long delicate skirts and then a tight fitting glove for the upper body we stained it with tea and that looked flesh coloured enough for us for the judges too. Paper maché head cupid lips. Corrugated paper painted bright pink as a headband with a few tiny white feather tips for decoration set against the black wool hair caught in a neat bun at the back. We had laughed with the puppet and thought we should have made two so we could have danced them together but the other glove was lost.

“Now I didn’t see what James entered.” She said stirring the big pot of white sauce.

“A map of Canada.” I had watched him draw it out for weeks on the kitchen table and then colour it on the floor of his room. “I think he got third,” I said, “Hudson’s Bay was a bit too big for the judges. But I thought the colours were beautiful.” I added for James’ benefit. They were too, he had done all the edges of the water with a dark line of blue then shaded a half inch with a paler blue, all land that bordered water was done the same way in green and then the provinces and territories each had their own colour marking the borders. “It was in the schoolwork section,” I offered. And despite his hands always seeming dirty he never got a smudge on the snowy whiteness of the rest of the Bristol board. It was my mother who pencilled in the ‘Canada’ across the centre of the prairies for him and then each of the provinces too, she had checked a real map first to get the names right because she was only new to Canada herself. He copied over them neatly in black.

People ed through the kitchen over the next few hours and some patted my shoulder, others a hand on my head but no one really spoke to me. They had a few words with Mrs. Renfrew though, quietly shoulder to shoulder at the stove or sink, their backs to me. I wondered when my father and Uncle Ian would return but the house seemed happier without them.

“Does that look about right Audrey?” She held the cast iron frying pan down so I could get a good look at the onions and bacon. Of course she knew my name she was one of the ladies who taught Sunday school.

“Yes I think that’s the way it looked.”

A huge volume of macaroni steaming in the colander in the sink.

She took the cheese from my bowl and dumped it all into the white sauce with the bacon and onions.

“Wait you didn’t save any for the topping!” I cried reaching out panic rising in my voice as if suddenly things were going wrong again now it wouldn’t be perfect for my mother when she came home.

She opened the fridge and took out another block of cheese ing it to me to be grated, “you’ll have to show me how the topping is made Audrey.”

She never once became flustered or bossy with me just let me show her how it was done and we had enough for four meals put one in the oven to bake for that night and the others in the freezer.

We ate it three Sundays in a row. No one knew how to make roast beef.

I am sure at some point that afternoon in the kitchen she sat down beside me at the table and told me that my mother would not be coming back. But with the macaroni in the making I was sure she was wrong about that. I kept grating the cheese. I just never told her. I listened and didn’t say anything at all.

Later I had to spend half an hour in the fresh air outside. James and Struan ed me but we couldn’t summon up any sense of fun. We watched the squirrels who had not stopped all day. Struan devised some trap to catch one but we had little interest and were soon back in the house.

When the taxi pulled up and my father and Uncle Ian got out I was told I could return to my room if I liked. Had it been an order I may have not left so quickly but I scurried away to my bed. We went to our separate rooms. I watched the taxi slowly driving down our lane.

My bedroom had two windows a dormer to the side where I could see the shed and driveway and right across to the barn and in the distance the orchard; the other to the front where I could see down towards the river and across into the town. I could not actually see the river for the bank was too steep and the trees too high. My bed was right below the dormer and I sometimes sat looking out with my head leaning on the slant of the wall. The other window was in a flat wall.

Curling up again wishing for Tigger our big mop of a cat to curl up with me for company and keep me warm. But he had sauntered down the hill towards the river that day I watched him pick his route carefully at the far point of the bank. I never saw him again. We didn’t look for him that day and after a week or so it seemed pointless. At least that is what my father told us.

In the night the quiet absence of my mother finally took hold. I wished that Uncle Ian and Struan were not here then James would have come and crept into my to keep me company.

It was before dawn when the chainsaw started and I chose not to hear it, it seemed too distant to have anything to do with me. I stirred and then curled into a tight ball the world outside not going to get me yet.

The drugs are making me feel a little funny right now but I can tell that I am able

to keep a train of thought going for much longer than in the past few days. I will take it as a good sign.

Frank if I could breathe a drop of life into James for you I would. You would have liked the man he became exuberant exciting and so full of life those scrapbooks of his so like him maybe one day you will trace your fingers over those pages and I will narrate for you the same as James did for me. Instead I fear I am presenting him as flat.

James brought some small joy to everyone he met whether it was just a glancing smile so quick that the recipient had to respond in like. He was good at things. He took any task and made it seem effortless. Now Frank you might be thinking I am a little biased and that the dead can become larger than life but that is not the case with James, you must how he was all those summers we had together. He made things happen so easily we just fed him an idea and he was away with it and we went along too.

He was a great quartermaster. Although our productions were short anything from twenty to fifty minutes it was no indication of the time and work that went into it. James organised everyone to do their jobs lists upon lists. Mostly we used a fixed set for interviewing that our stylist dressed accordingly but we moved farther afield shooting at locations that were usually wild and windswept for that became our trademark. Our team would move in and organise according to James’s lists everyone seemed to work happily for him he had such a way with people getting the best out of them and often encouraging them to give more than they knew they had. And they listened when the freelancers moved onto other companies they took with them a bit of what he had shown.

I suppose it became that you didn’t really listen to what we had to say anymore. I sometimes wonder why I am burning this torch for you Frank but I know that during our last summer it wasn’t really you it was a little stage of your growing up too. It took me a long time to figure that out I felt like you had drawn out a

knife carved your initials into my flesh. F.A. now that is interesting isn’t it? It took me years to get my sense of self value set above Fuck All.

Struan with his mop of red hair falling over his deep chocolate brown eyes melting eyes I haven’t really talked of him yet either have I? You never took to him did you? I wonder does my voice change when I mention his name? I know that this is thinking but I have to wonder, I think that my voice sounds like Lucy from Charlie Brown. Demanding grating. My accent has not changed despite being away from Canada for twenty odd years.

Struan with his honeyed tones. His big words.

A few weeks ago I stepped out of the office for half an hour and dashed to the corner store. I saw a girl coming along the street with a group of kids laughing and jostling, her red hair parted in the middle hanging loosely on either side of her freckled face. Big doe brown eyes looked directly at me, she stopped whistling as she neared and gave me a pleasant smile before picking up the tune and whistling away with the others.

I could easily have been slapped in the face and steeled myself not to stop dead in my tracks and turn and watch the group disappear down the street.

I sat at my desk my hands shaking so badly I could barely eat the pear I had gone out to get, it may as well have been a live fish for all the slipping and sliding it did. Pear juice down my chin, bits of flesh falling onto my keyboard. It was delicious but had somehow lost its appeal its pleasure. I thought about Struan.

I didn’t do that often but it was the shock of the red hair and doe brown eyes. In

the years since I last saw him I knew only one thing for certain and that was never to trust the combination of red hair and brown eyes I was resolute in my conviction despite it being built upon the shaky ground of adolescent ardour.

I didn’t notify Struan of James’ death he would have read it in the Telegraph. I knew he read it. The piece in the Telegraph was good too but James was good and that was reflected in what people thought of him, how they spoke of him. So my responsibility to Struan ended there. I sometimes wondered how he was doing, what he was doing but not so much as to try and find him. We hadn’t seen him in years and there seemed to be no reason to start again now. That We again.

Struan didn’t come to the funeral.

Frank I haven’t made a single Monday reference! I need to do this in order to feel alive that I am still in touch with time and can recognise each ing day each ing night. I’ll tell you I loved Mondays going back to school going to work to be surrounded by living breathing people. That is why I like London so much there are always people. Even on my bike at five in the morning I could find someone about.

The milkman. Or in Hyde park the Household Cavalry changing their horses a long trail of riders each leading two horses their shod hooves ringing on the road. If it was later like maybe seven you could see them practising for the trooping of the colour and all the other things they do. The rider on the big walleyed piebald, the drum horse huge looking ungainly and sheepish being ridiculed and teased by the riders on the fleeter footed horses but you knew on the day with the shining big kettle drums strapped on either side, the wall-eyed piebald and his rider would steal the show.

I always was an early bird still am and it seems that five is the magic time for me

to sit bolt upright in bed and race out of the house. I always tucked the covers neatly over the bed to preserve some heat because I generally returned to it a few hours later.

It was that first spring after our mother died that James and I had The Birds of Canada out again, this time to see what the black bird was that came in all noisy and cheeky looking for all the shiny things in the house. This was our stepmother. The first stepmother. The second bird in the house. My mother was the first and she was a delightful colourful songbird.

This woman came into the house with a jaunty step a sense of purpose and all in black.

I imagine she fancied herself something more a black panther slinking prowling into our lives but we read the description carefully and labelled her the common crow.

She was not unpleasant nor was she pleasant. We shared our house with her and she took care of our father something we could not possibly do. And she systematically erased all traces of our mother but didn’t go as far as trying to get rid of us. She didn’t need to; we were perceptive and stayed out of her way. A new set of curtains hanging in the kitchen when we came home from school, a table outside being sanded and then painted. We were good too and that made it so easy for her. It happened so smoothly, quickly, I didn’t realise that we had nothing left of our mother except what was in our hearts and I still have my puppet. It is in a trunk in my flat in London.

That first summer with the arrival of Uncle Ian and Struan for their summer holidays the air almost had a festive feel everyone so happy and artificially high on life. Well not everyone James and I were still wary of her and the way Uncle

Ian and Struan reacted to her. The changes in the order of things had caught us off guard. While we welcomed the change from the silence of the winter, the new air just didn’t sit right. Not the way she warmed to them it was as if she was more important than we were. They hung on her every word ired the changes to the house. It was superficial gaiety. Superficial decoration to the house, the classic beauty of my mother’s things painted over with mock wood grain and brash colours.

Struan was really taken with her and he wondered why we weren’t but he had never had the presence of a woman in his life except my mother and somehow the common crow was easier to work with. Simple. He worked with her; they manipulated each other with such ease. We watched from a cautious distance not recognising what was happening.

She sat back in her chair - my mother’s chair - black plumage glistening and puffed in the evening light and laughed lightly at what Uncle Ian had said. Hanging on his words flattering him with her imitations of his accent. She had already found the shiny things in the house my mother’s diamonds sparkled in her ears. So quickly she became comfortable familiar with him “Oh Ian surely you must know that all women are whores!”

She said the word hooers and I didn’t know what it meant but it stuck in my mind because the glassy way she said it. And since she said hooers I couldn’t find the word in the dictionary.

I did find hooey and branded her as talking nonsense.

Funny but I too wear black always black, black everything. My sheets are white though. So doing wash is easy it is almost always a black load and I never have to worry about colours running. It must have been those last years in high school

black jeans black t-shirts and before I knew it even my underwear was black. How I hated that common crow for bringing all that black into the house and how she tarred me with it. Permanently I guess because if I wear a colour or heavens no, white, I feel like I’m sticking out like a sore thumb and everybody is looking at me. So I stick to black. Safe.

I am not feeling quite the same sense of peace that I have had these past few days and it is a little disturbing for me. I feel like I am about to leap out of my skin, edgy I suppose, a little bit disted. Perhaps it is thinking about all the terrible changes that autumn and now this past winter. Thinking about Struan really.

The smoke rising from the orchard the mist rising from the river and the glum penetrating cold. Late that afternoon Frank you had the chainsaw in one hand and my icy fingers gripped tightly in the other. You took us to your house for the first time. Marching down our lane then across the old road looking down at the bridge then up the gentle sweep of you lane. The black of the autumn sky closing in behind us. Bewildered. Cold feet in my yellow boots too.

Tuesday September 29

“James!”

“Frank!”

That was what I was screaming over and over when I woke up this morning as if by screaming your names you both would come back to me. Maybe you needed rescuing from some peril. And I was the only one able to find you and rescue you yet I couldn’t find either if you so I screamed more for you both. My voice wailing in despair and terror.

“James!”

“Frank!”

I screamed like the end of the world was coming. I thrashed and writhed ripping out some of the lines too.

I put such fear into the nurses that I half expected a parade of all the James’s and Frank’s in town to come trooping through the room by noon. As if by some miracle one of them would be the right one and able to calm me. I realize now that they would not really have understood me with my broken jaw, wired shut, I must have just sounded like an animal screaming.

The room is strangely subdued today, even the visitors speaking in hushed tones, no movement against my curtains as they adjust their chairs.

With the mixed cables and lines I don’t know what is attached and what isn’t. Some of them lead to me visibly, while others are just there disappearing under the covers. There are grey ones, black ones and worst of all the clear plastic ones. I have been restrained now, soft bands holding me firmly flat to the bed. If I had an itch I could not scratch it. Now that my body is free of its imprisonment in coma, it is now bound down by a more simple earthly force. My right arm rests on a pillow in a huge splint, they have done this so even when I am freed of the restraints, I won’t be able to rip the IV line out by flexing my hand or wrist.

“You’ll be more comfortable soon,” the nurse promises with heat packs and pummelling before finding a new vein for the IV.

You see I am awake now and suddenly wish for the tranquil simplicity of coma. It was so safe there I didn’t wish to be brought back into the real world.

Of the lines, the clear plastic hollow ones frighten me the most. I see bubbles in them as the machine beside me faithfully ticks away and every few seconds something like the sound of a slide projector; click click kuchunk, that is medication being delivered at a steady rate. I am used to this sound, I find it quite reassuring. Once many years ago I did an introductory course on the Renaissance, some of the lectures were pretty boring and I found myself concentrating on the slide projector click click kuchunk and before I knew it I was asleep.

Sometimes the machine almost does lull me to sleep. This is to reassure you and myself that I am having no trouble sleeping. Which in fact is a bold and baldfaced lie. I am gripped with such terror of sleeping the afternoon nap looms, yet

I know I have drifted into that panic of sleep many times today, waking seconds later before the giant cavern of sleep yawning wide swallows me whole. I fear I will be lost again and wake screaming my heart out for both you and James. Worse, the injection that goes into the little plastic hooked t on my IV line forcing me deep into that unwanted realm. Where the terrible visitors and visions in my head torment me.

Was the Renaissance not a reawakening after the dark ages? Why would I be thinking of that now when I seem plunged into the dark ages? I have had terrible dreams since childhood I always shared them with James in the morning. Of course I have no one to share them with now. If I absorb myself into the hospital scene I will not think of my nightmares or my loss.

The cables that lead away from my body seem safer, the ones merely for monitoring purposes are the best. But those clear plastic ones delivering the poison to my body are pretty bad Frank. The doctor has spoken to me but again a wall has come up and I very simply don’t understand what he is saying.

“You have a broken jaw nose broken in two places and your left eye socket has quite a number of hairline fractures.” He does not take his eyes off the chart. “It seems your orbital plate is not injured, you should be very thankful for that and of course you have a severe concussion.”

I nod a tiny response.

“Your coma was caused by an overproduction of glutamate but we stopped it before there was a full brain cascade.”

Not a word understood. Feeling wild eyed and sweating up another frenzy.

“I am unsure of the nature of the infection causing your fever but we are keeping that monitored and you are on antibiotics as a precautionary measure.”

A brief smile and he puts the chart back on the clip at the foot of my bed.

He moves past my curtain to the next bed the nurse giving my covers a final tuck before hurrying after him.

I hear him starting on the next patient, “it looks like your condition has improved remarkably since yesterday.” I imagine him looking studiously at the notes and not making eye with the poor yellow jaundiced lady, possibly less colourful than yesterday.

The room drifts into idle conversation about the town and its inhabitants and I turn back to you Frank.

I guess you know a lot of it already and I’m sure that there is huge speculation around the town too, maybe I have an over inflated sense of self importance and no one has said a peep about me being here or anything at all about James.

I had a notice put in the local paper, he committed suicide and that I am sure was not in the paper but I may as well blurt it out now early in the piece. I had a very hard time accepting that but put it all together in my head this summer.

The suicide was just months ago, a little blip of time really but to me it has taken on the appearance of a whole lifetime, one that I too would be very happy to end. No I am not going to commit suicide as well but just getting out of here and getting home would be a fair start. It has been eighteen years since I was last in this town, nice comparison of numbers. Maybe I will be out of the hospital in eighteen days that would certainly cheer me. Maybe they will come and give me more of those poisonous and noxious drugs in eighteen minutes. The latter is most likely. I will make it through the next eighteen hours though.

I am in a black mood.

Black is the colour of my chair shiny hard saddle leather well-worn and comfortable. Big enough for two maybe three of me but I like it that way and despite its size it doesn’t make me feel small or lost. Around the office it is known as the Captain’s Chair and I am sure that when I am not in everyone comes and takes a turn sitting in it for that chair means power. They all want a taste of that power.

Bevan Bedroom Productions was created from our many ideas that were born in the bedroom, sitting on the beds cigarettes waved in the air, vodka drunk straight from the bottle when we had that tiny bedsit in Earl’s Court those first few years in London. As children we did our greatest scheming from under the covers so it only seemed natural to follow on as adults. Later more civilised, croissants and coffee with the Sunday papers strewn about. It was always my bedroom though. My bed. Even after we moved to separate flats it was always my bedroom. My bed.

Bed is a safe place to retreat from the world and when you want it you can invite the world into it with newspapers and books. Later we had a television, video of course some of our greatest editing sessions happened there, in bed. It is also the greatest place to dream not the regressive dreams of sleep but the search for utopia in the half waking daydreams where that hazy reality becomes a little

softer a little better and anything is possible. My ideal bedroom has a huge window that is one third trees and two-thirds sky. That is what my childhood bedroom had two of them.

In fact the first documentary we produced was about childhood bedrooms. Twenty minutes long five people interviewed each with vivid descriptions of what their rooms were like and what they meant to them. Some had scraps of the wallpaper snippets of fabric others simply the old pillowcases. One woman described a room with orange walls deep green floor and more orange in the matching curtains and covers too. Just like sleeping in a giant pumpkin she said. Maybe a Cinderella fantasy happening there. Our documentary was a huge success it seemed everyone in London was talking about their own childhood bedrooms for the months that followed. We dined out on childhood bedrooms.

The name for childhood bedrooms didn’t come easy we tossed it around in our heads for a long time it was so sensitive to us. It was an unnamed work in progress for a long time, it being the first project it didn’t matter quite as much. Then it came to us. To dream, perchance to sleep.

Later it was always easy the title coming to us almost simultaneously with the idea. Or maybe not so easy we wanted to avoid the trouble of trying to name after the event.

With the huge success of To dream, perchance to sleep we had it made and moved very quickly into the controversial All Women are Whores. We were talked about again but that was the whole point.

Frank, if you could imagine our productions as an olive. Smooth black whale skin dotted with herbs shiny with oil good firm texture to bite into excellent flavour then a pit to be spat out ringing against the porcelain dish. Quick, simple

and effective. Satisfying. After all what’s an olive anyway?

We had very different roles in the company I would race ahead with ideas and the visual logic the lists then James would get the wheels and cogs into motion and make it all take form, meanwhile I would have raced headlong towards the next project. It was so very perfect. We always did things together they separated us at school so we would do our own work but we always did everything together anyway learning twice as much. Our minds worked in harmony both so very different but good results from the duet.

Now our own offices just off Wandsworth Bridge Road, little production studio behind. Ours. We delighted in it, having moved from rented in Battersea to owning our own. Everything our own from the airy offices to a few small sets for interviewing through to the vast array of filming and editing equipment the neatly organised worktops the rubbish bins. All of it belonging to James and I.

Claire is running the show while I am away.

Claire Greene is our right hand man. Well mine now.

We met her in that bedsit in Earls Court where we lived for that first year or so; she lived upstairs and stayed friends over the years despite all the twists and turns our lives took.

It was in the queue for the bathroom that we spoke for the first time, both of us putting our hand to the door at the same moment groggy punch drunk with sleep. Looking at each other with half open eyes.

Claire, a golden round goddess in brilliant jewel coloured robe, tangled yellow mass of hair, standing at least a head taller than me in my black sweat shirt, nearly shaven head.

“Ok so who’ll be the quickest?”

She sized me up and laughed a deep rolling laugh, “you with that five o’clock shadow a poor excuse for hair if you ask me I think it’ll be you.”

I offered her a thin straight line smile never at my best upon awakening and never much good at casual conversation with strangers either. “I’m fast.” The thought of an unheated English bathroom in November and a cold cast iron tub with a miserable dribble of water. Yes I’m fast I thought.

“You should be fast, you look like a whippet shivering at the starting gate, nice to see that you don’t bite.” She laughed again and trotted up the half landing to her room, rump swaying.

I was fast and didn’t see her again for some time.

It was James who met Claire next. One day when I came home I found the two of them sitting on the beds in our room. Giggling and laughing like old friends. Drinking coffee out of our mugs. I felt a little left out seeing them so comfortable in each other’s company.

Claire on my bed, cross legged, forest green velvet leggings, daring with her rounded thighs, and a bulky wool sweater of every colour in the book. The sweater looked itchy and made my flesh crawl.

“This is my sister Audrey,” announced James as I discarded my coat and flopped down behind him on his bed. Partially shielding myself from the colourful presence in our room.

Claire smiled a cocky smile “I believe we met in our sleep a few weeks back. You were so fast in the bathroom that someone got in before me, next time I’ll get you to knock on my door when you’re done.”

I took that as a reprimand and didn’t say a thing I hate being reprimanded. I like to know the rules first and then I play by them.

“This is my big sister,” he laughed “but really we are Irish twins.” He elbowed me in the ribs and I rolled my eyeballs. Did this person really need to know all our personal details or want to know for that matter?

“Irish twins?” quizzed Claire.

“We were both born within a year,” announced James happily elbowing me again and I couldn’t help but smile and shake my head at him.

“Oh you can smile.”

James dug his elbow into my ribs one more time.

“Yes I can speak too, slap too.” I slapped James on the back of the head “stop it” that seemed to break the uneasy feelings I had and we chatted about the hows wheres and why we ended up here in London.

After that we always got together for those long talks curled up on our beds. Hands warmed on mugs of coffee, smoke swirling in the air along with ideas. And as the winter ed we became fast friends, me understanding Claire’s sense of humour and that she almost always had some cocky response.

Claire listened to our ideas and cheered us on never interfering just cheering. She was always very silent about her job, her man. But we had so much to gallop forward with it hardly mattered to us at all. The life she talked of was always the past and we always returned with the future.

It took many years before we could coax Claire into ing us at BBP and we always laughed at that since she left a good job at the BBC. We told her that she needn’t get new business cards she could merely ink over the C and make a P.

Claire now organises after James and I, ok after me now. I produce the lists and she makes them happen.

Claire helped, she all but took over Bevan Bedroom Productions and then looked after me too. Well she taught me how to look after myself in the most basic ways. I seemed to lose touch for things like eating, I would simply forget to eat. Because I might have thought about breakfast and thought about it right down to spreading the butter on the toast, I thought I had done it but I would forget to do

it. She got me a tiny notebook and I wrote down what I ate as I was eating it then I could look and see if I had eaten or not. She gave me a huge pad of purple postit-notes and told me to put eight aspirin in a piece every morning and carry it around in the change pocket of my jeans that way I had some way of knowing how many I took in a day. As I said before I was in a lot of pain and the aspirin did help to numb it.

Maybe we could make this like a game of snakes and ladders and go sliding back and forth up and down, for that is really the way I feel at the moment. I am having trouble focusing on things and they assure me it is the drugs and the lingering result of the head injury. Why are they giving me these drugs?

James always said we would never see forty or the new millennium. And I hated that because I believed we would live for a very very long time, it was one of the few things we ever argued over. Longevity runs in the family. Mishap aside. I didn’t expect that James would take matters into his own hands nor did I expect that I would. Perhaps my own accident was driven by fate, James’ version of fate. He still guides me in his own way almost as if his voice is dictating my actions istering ghosts and shadows in the opportune spots. I can recall a few of these, now that I think about it. Close calls on my bike this summer and a near miss with a cab this spring. I put it all down to my complete distraction and grief.

In the cold clammy fugue I shall tell you about the documentary All Women are Whores, it was the only serious piece of work that James and I ever did.

I heard those words and learned those lines at my very own kitchen table, Struan echoed them and every other man in my life did so too, with the exception of you and James of course.

I don’t know why I wanted to do that project so badly, I think really that I wanted to be taken seriously and that was serious. Raised a lot of questions and a lot of eyebrows.

I also wanted to get my silent jab in at that common crow who sat at our kitchen table so quickly after our mother died. The common crow all dressed in black and always after something shiny, she wore my mother’s jewellery far too quickly. Took great pleasure in it. It was not only her words but also her actions that indicated to me all women are whores. I didn’t even understand what she said or know what a whore was at the time. But she behaved in a way that gave me good reason to believe she was in fact a whore. And so was I.

We had been so good so quiet and obedient for such a long time and the pleasure of doing that documentary was wonderful. I felt empowered by our own treachery knowing full well that it was too topical to be ever shown in Canada. James never really understood my drive to do this piece although as with any other project he put his whole heart into it. Maybe had he been a woman he would have understood. In some ways you could never get really close to James and understand what he was thinking or what drove him. He was always just very good, true to people and unpretentious. It was me who always thought our happy life was an illusion.

Although after the final version was in my hands I wanted to pinch it between my forefinger and thumb and hold it arms length away from my body. It filled me with disgust, I never let on though I stood by it always. Proudly.

They have come and released me from my restraints since I appear calm and lucid. The rushing torment through my head not apparent.

I can hardly wait for them to start looking at my head. My head according to

them is not the problem; I would add, at the moment. It is the obvious breaks bruises and temperature spikes that interest them most. I think my head is a much bigger problem than they realise considering I have been in a coma. It was the headache that woke me, all that endless crashing like a machete into the left side of my skull. I swear that part of my brain is loose now and maybe there is a huge scab between it and my scull. That is how it feels sort of itchy inside and sore not like any headache I have ever had before. More like an old wound that will bleed slowly then profusely once the scab is picked off.

Ok I’m going to try and get some sleep and not think about anything at all but maybe beat the demons by choosing sleep myself.

I’m not really sleeping. I have very simply lain here on my side in the crossover mummy position. That is, on my right side facing the window, right hand against my left shoulder and my left hand on my right shoulder. It is my right hand that is connected at the moment, encased in its hefty splint and it is convenient to sleep with it on top this way. James named this way of sleeping when we were quite young, I think he saw a mummy in the National Geographic and took to sleeping with his hands like this and announcing that he was in fact a mummy, clutching an ankh in his hand. The crossover mummy position. I could do with this symbol of life, although I should probably have the scimitar for power and foreign conquest. It couldn’t be the royal flail, what good would that do me either? No one to beat any sense into. God am I grim tonight.

It doesn’t seem like this on TV, ER. The sense of overwhelming loneliness, desolation and fear is just not conveyed through that little square box. And I hope this simple sentence conveys it to you Frank.

I lie here now and tell you this is not how I imagined it would be done. Eyes glazed and glassy teeth seemingly set in unyielding plastic. A malarial fever sweeping over my body sometimes, a cold sweat, like fear across my upper lip. I imagined this to be a joyous explosion of excitement bubbling forth all I had to

tell you. I have so much to tell you. Instead like the steady drip of blood from an unclotted wound, this story is coming out. I did not mean to tell you of the blood. I started to, I wanted to but I held it all in control. Complete control. Smooth luxurious cool control. Now frustrated my mouth wanting to open and let loose a bloodcurdling scream. Yet my mouth will not open and it is the silence, blood dripping silence. I know the palm of my right hand is cut from the frustration of clenched fist, perhaps this is the source of the slow drip. Did I say grim earlier? Well grim suddenly seems to be such a pretty word compared to the horror, the hell I have now. Do I let loose and have my demons flow freely as perhaps my life drains from my body? I lie here so benign so helpless seemingly ive, the twirling whirling storm in my brain impossible to reveal.

They will come in a little while and inject just one more shot into my line and they will think that I have calmed once again. I will have disappeared to them when really it is just one more surge into the darkness and terror. Alone. I cannot make them stop, I have no words for them, they see me as sick. Seriously ill with some mysterious ailment, they cannot see the workings within my head killing me.

I do not know if it is me or if it is this strange virus that is talking to you now. The warm drowsiness is taking over my body functions, I feel rigid then relaxed. Eyes opened unseeing. Expression on my face I know not what.

This evening I was calmed for a while, a nurse came and brushed my hair, slowly, carefully working from the bottom up the knots of being untouched for so long. Heavy with grease it hasn’t been washed in so long. She must have horses or girls because not many could brush hair that way. Gentle firm strokes reassuring words as she worked. Would you ever brush my hair for me I wonder? When she was done she braided it long and neat, good firm tension as she worked, it hangs over my shoulder just like a snake. A neat black snake. With all of my malarial ravings it seems fitting to have a snake at my shoulder.

Closing my eyes I relax, imagining a bright white light. And if I breathe deeply my body will start to rest and I will get over this dark patch. If only I could stop the blood, the delicious red blood spilling over the sheets as if hitting freshly fallen snow and melting deeply in because of its heat. I am so tired, so very tired. If I could let go for five minutes maybe I would be ok. Five minutes of deep and sinking peace like being encased in a flurry of snowy white soft velvet, soft silky white velvet so welcoming. The casket was lined with white velvet, it set off his tan.

James always had a nice tan.

His first casket was stainless steel, smooth flat grey, rounded edges and modern handles and tags, this was for shipping. He arrived back in England in the hold with his luggage all neatly packed by some thoughtful person in Austria. I imagine he came home in his ski clothes, creamy sweater and his tight black ski pants, gloves tucked in his pocket, sunglasses on a cord around his neck.

The second casket was bleached ash, the same as the floors in his flat. A soft white, the grain coming out silvery grey. He was wearing ivory linen, a little cold for winter but I thought he would have liked that. It was an open casket because I, as well as the many others around, had to be sure it was him. The right James not a big mistake. At the church the flowers were all huge white lilies, enormous heads with overpowering scent.

He had left instructions of course, again those lists and sub-lists. I never told anyone that it was suicide. I only told you in a weak moment and wish I could retract it now. It seems to tarnish his life to let on that such a thing has happened, raises questions, too many questions and I couldn’t begin to answer them. There was no note you see, it was all done carefully and it was meant to look like an accident. The coroner was not sure and finally wrote accidental death on the certificate.

Our family has its fair share of accidental deaths. There was an inquest after my mother died, they wondered if it had been an accident or suicide or something. We were shielded from all that and it was never spoken about in our house. James and I over the years speculated on it though. How could we not? Why did our father not go to the bathroom that morning, surely he would have upon wakening then he would have found our mother, hours earlier and saved her or at least found her and spared us that discovery. We never considered hers a suicide but pondered over whether or not the hands of my father were involved.

If either of us had the courage, had confronted our father it would have made things easier. But James and I never did make things easy. Not easy for ourselves that is. So we never asked him and when I think about it we never really talked to him either, we just ed each other in the hall or at the table through our childhood. He was busy with the common crow and all the little details that dictated his life and we were simply of no consequence to him. Possessions really. We were good and obedient, that seemed to be enough and we were left alone knowing that requirement.

Claire is sitting in the captain’s chair at this moment I am sure. The chair is the right size for her ample backside but I bet she is not enjoying it. She enjoyed the job but not the power and decision making, she left that up to James and me. I have absolute confidence that things are getting done and that she could probably continue for the next two years from our huge archives of ideas and then she need only use the good ones. Oh I smiled, it is the first smile I have had since the accident it hurt my face but helped my soul. Lifted my spirits, amazing what a crooked painful little smile can do.

I smiled because all of the really good ideas are mine of course!

How we loved our work. We entertained as well as informed, minuscule details

brought to people who then reflected on their own lives. We managed around the office without James because he was still there in his own way. The beautiful noisy expresso machine which was polished faithfully every day. He knew the cleaning lady and she loved him. She was important to him. Everyone was important to him. She keeps the place perfect and talks of him every time I see her in ing.

She likes Claire too. And I can hear her cockney accent now, “James would like it just so,” as she placed things in regimented order after dusting.

I wish Claire was here now.

Claire would say that “Aud it’s a funny old life,” then laugh sitting back and wondering at it all in her own particular way of viewing life. Her eyes gazing upwards and around as if she could actually see life in the air around her.

She always called me “Aud.” Adding thoughtfully “Odder than most really.” And James. She called him Jay.

I have slept, it is late, the nurses have all the lights out and they have done their rounds with flashlights shining on the floor. One does it with her flashlight pointed at the ceiling, I don’t like her much. She seems to lack comion, her actions brusque, voice sharp and the light shining across her face gives me the creeps. I can hear quiet footsteps in the hall, quiet creaking floor. At night their footsteps are quiet. But at least I am back to being myself for the moment. Lying here, yes still the crossover mummy position, it gives me strength, maybe it is having my own arms clasped at my shoulders that keeps me safe, a long hug. Or perhaps no point at which anything can attack me.

Frank, I have frightened myself today with all those dark thoughts. I have always kept them at bay. I hope I haven’t frightened you. The combination of fever and drugs has weakened me. Now I am pretending to be asleep when the nurses come by and maybe it’ll stop them from giving me any more. Although I know I am drifting in and out and sometimes I am in the office too with Claire because I have been thinking about her. Other times in my flat. It is a surprise to open my eyes and find myself here. But not that bad now.

Now that it is so dark out and quiet I am feeling just a little better. Safe in the mummy crossover position, almost as if it is James’ arms around me. Or possibly yours. As usual I will end here about to drift off to sleep with the certainty that sleep will come with warm pleasure now. For there is one thing about me, I have been down before but never stayed down long.

So I’m going to sleep now.

But first I will say, Frank, I am sorry I left without saying goodbye.

Wednesday September 30

Frank, today I want to be in Egypt, the heat and smells assaulting you the second you’re off the airplane. I wish you could just raise you head now Frank and have a whiff of the air, you too would have liked the smell. A sense of expectation fills me when I get into the cab, perhaps the first thing is - will I make it to the flat alive! That maddeningly terrifying trip through Cairo in a cab, no seat belts, gripping the seat in front tightly with both hands. Traffic zooming back and forth on roads crowded with buses, cars and donkey carts . Wild curving overes with shaky guard rails. Pedestrians hopping in and out with no heed for peril.

And then the wonder and excitement that Egypt is for me, what will this trip bring? Every time it is unique. A series of events to pursue each time but always very different.

Mostly I want to be standing in the desert, eyes closed to the sand with my face straight into the wind almost blowing me over backwards. The wind is as hot as an oven door opening and the heat bursts out in waves. I get so hot the hair on my arms stands on end and that seems to cool me just a little, maybe it is the excitement that causes the hair to leap up, I simply love the desert.

The place in the desert I am talking about is just behind Giza where the great pyramids are, easy access for me living in Manial Roda, only one bridge away. When you take a cab you get to the central circle on Manial Roda and say ye mean wah ye mean. That means left right left. But imagine some cowboy in a bar drawling ‘you mean what you mean’. And I laugh to myself with that picture every time I give directions.

The sand is not soft and fine as I imagined a desert to be as a child, like the

exotic white sands of beaches used in advertising. It is a fine sand almost like ground dirt with coarser sand and small stones. There is a lot of litter too but mostly lumps of rusting metal. I ignore these things and enjoy the desert for what it is, a vast empty place, hostile and hot. I feel at home there, maybe it is because I am a survivor and there are people who do survive in this desert.

The Bedouins regard this as life. I have a huge respect for them. The bleak desert is often a reflection of my life at times, me being a survivor. James never camped in the desert I guess he like the Bedouins lived. He didn’t have to camp his own life a nomad existence similar to theirs.

I have been camping and exploring, good guides once found are so eager to show you their desert for they love it as I do. More I suppose. I am the outsider looking into their lives. I never tire of doing it though. Curling up in a scooped out bed in the sand, between the ground sheets, some heat remaining from the day. Before the icy chill of the desert night sets in brushing over you and forcing you deep into your sleeping bag.

You wouldn’t expect to wear sweaters in Cairo, but when the sun goes down in the winter it really does get cold. There is just enough heat in the day to keep the flat bearable and one electric heater that always goes in my room. I like to go at the end of February after skiing. A quick stop in London first then the stark contrast of Cairo.

In Cairo every morning around six, I get a horse and ride for an hour or two, having been up since five as usual. I am allowed to take the horse out alone now but they always send a second rider to trail me at a distance, just in case. I know the stables well and they know me so I get the owner’s horse. Of all things a grey Arabian stallion! I have proven over the years that I can handle myself and the horse well. It is a scrawny horse they all are here but then again if you looked closely at the owner and stable hands they are all fairly scrawny too.

We set out at a trot around the side of the Giza strip and looking out over the pyramids between the Sphinx and the Muslim burial ground then cantering into the desert. The size of the pyramids amazing me every time and I forget my unused muscles. The only way to see the pyramids for the first time is to come round that corner on the back of a camel. I can see you on a camel Frank.

Avoiding the busier routes (for there are always tourists) riding and taking a smaller trail I have come to know so well. In the first few days of every trip Iron Maiden, the horse, treats me with disdain, like any other tourist. Frank – I know but the band is well-known here and the word maiden is generally not understood as feminine. So it is now a male name. For a very nice male horse.

Anyway Iron Maiden is reluctant to break away from the regular paths and it is a battle of wits to see where we are going for he is as likely to charge off to the west as I am heading east. We have an easy tussle and I win, except the time he caught me unawares and I ended up on my backside at the peak of a dune and he cantered off. Happily. Looking behind at me, I’m sure I could hear him laughing if you can imagine a horse laughing! My pride was hurt more than anything but it humanised me to my shadow rider for he caught Iron Maiden and brought him back for me. Giving me a hand to get back on.

I always ache during those first few days in Egypt, I don’t ride in England nowhere but Egypt actually and the muscles take a bit of time to get back into it.

But after we have had our tussle, our gallop, I get off and walk for a while leading Iron Maiden behind me. Then I feel at home in that isolated place.

I am not at home here. My curtains are drawn back now and I feel a little

exposed. There are people who come in and out of the ward and I am sure I recognise some of them and I know others recognise me. They stop by look into the room in particular at me, then go on. From time to time I forget that my face is a mess and that they may be looking curiously at the bruises more than anything else.

The lady across from my feet is quite ancient and deaf. I hear every single thing said over there, all of us in the room do, it is all done at a bellow. If we were supposed to be getting some rest there is certainly no possibility for resting here.

I have a strange and uneasy feeling, like this is where my roots are and perhaps the people who look in are not really so bad. I have not had the wherewithal to speak to any of them or even to acknowledge them. Nothing. No eye . Again it must be the outsider part of me wishing to remain so, to be standing alone in the desert with my hair blowing in the wind.

After that big drugs scare yesterday I must say things in this room are still very quiet as if this stranger needs to be treated with a bit of reverence. Claire pops into my mind and I can hear her saying “stranger than most really.” I laugh quietly to myself, no indication on my face of course. Yes they have improved my medication.

I have been able to tell them that I was in Egypt only a few weeks ago and that maybe I caught something there, that is causing the fever now. The doctor has sent some blood away to a tropical disease specialist.

New and improved drugs. I am wondering how I look. I considered asking a nurse for a mirror but decided I was not quite ready yet.

I said the day starts early in Cairo, it does here too with the nurses doing all the last minute checks and drugs around six so they can be ready to go off duty. They work 12-hour shifts here and it seems so inhuman to me, how can they be expected to perform for such a very long time and to attempt to be cheerful about it too. Some manage, others don’t and I understand that. It is the ones who have a complete personality transformation by the end of the shift that frighten me the most. It terrifies me to have to ask for anything within the last two hours before the shift change. I have heard their response in the past few days when others have done so. How can they live their lives with half their time turned upside down?

I was meant to live on the equator. Perfect balance of hours day to night every day all year. Up at dawn every day would suit me perfectly.

In Luxor the day starts at five. It seems the farther south you go the earlier the day begins. It also means the cool seclusion of the hotel at eleven. By noon the heat is perishing.

I have got into trouble in Luxor, from Mustafa, our driver who James adores and I dislike. It is because James and I are essentially Cairenes. Mustafa and I are always at battle because I know he is constantly ripping us off and he knows I know. And he smiles. James says Audrey don’t worry about it. But I do. Anyway when vendors are too persistent a polite la (which means no) should do the trick but Mustafa is marked as having easily ripped off customers, many more like us I’m sure and we are still pestered after saying a polite la. So I use the Cairene laa going up to a high ‘a’ at the end and it is much sharper and means a definite no! Mustafa took me aside and wailing with angst and scolded me, insisting I not say it because some of the vendors think he has taught me that and he is hurt that I could be so rude. So very Cairene when we really are foreigners after all.

I have only been to Luxor three times while James goes every trip. I am happy enough in Cairo or Alexandria. That is probably why James gets along better

with Mustafa. More chances to get ripped off and more time to get used to it.

Mustafa is big and round and jolly and if the truth be told we do like each other despite the uneasiness between us. Quibbling over each and every Egyptian pound. I smile and think of him whistling and saying hum de la lilla, which is spelt differently in Arabic but that’s a good phonetic way to say it and I’m not going to get into the whole meaning of that!

Mustafa is also impolite and he gives me a very hard time about not being married, while it is perfectly acceptable for James to remain single because he is after all, a man. “Is he not?” inquires Mustafa whose English is excellent when it comes to teasing me. That is his pastime when we are driving the long dusty roads between the various sites around Luxor and Thebes. Although he would never behave in an improper manner I would love to get a piece of tape and stick it over his mouth sometimes.

I never met a satisfactory man nor James a woman. They could never measure up to the standard we expected. We were too close really, a perfect marriage, without sex children or extended family to mix things up. Sex we both happily had our little affairs and cried on each others shoulders when they were lying in ruin. And often it was much easier to do without sex altogether.

Of course I would never discuss this with Mustafa, who would no doubt turn it into something lewd. Within the constraints of his religion of course, but you can see everything he thinks written all over his face. Sometimes I don’t like the look of what he is thinking.

He too has brothers and sisters, how many I’m not quite sure and in a way it reminds me of your family. Although I hasten to add Mustafa is not in the least bit like you! Sometimes he brings a cousin as a guide “you don’t mind for a

small fee his expert services.” His father a tiny wizened old thing drives a caleche around Luxor with a very dusty chestnut mare pulling. Another cousin sold James a beautiful stone cat that sits regal and proud. Mustafa pounded his head with his fists for five minutes over that “my brother carved that you should have asked me and I would have gotten you a truly fair price. You should have told me.” I try not to say anything about how fair the price would be since I would prefer if he drove with his hands on the steering wheel. We move back to my husbandless state, a relatively frequent topic.

“If I you need to save face you could always become my second wife,” he says grinning. “I would be willing to suffer your small inadequacies.”

I give him a thin smile which he notes in the rear view mirror. “Of course you could afford many more wives than two, you do so well at ripping off tourists.” My face in the rear view mirror looks alarmingly like Uncle Ian’s, Struan’s.

Mustafa takes both hands off the wheel, palms up and waves them in despair. “What can I do Audrey I only want the best for you.”

We have a nice photo of the three of us leaning on his cab, waiting for the ferry to take us back to Luxor from the Valley of the Kings. James is in the middle, relaxed, smiling, and Mustafa and I are on either side, arms folded across our chests, ankles crossed, looking smug. That is why I said earlier we do like each other, it is very simply impossible for us to get along, that is all.

James has this photo framed and on the wall in his hall amongst thousands of other photos but that is the one that always catches my eye. Despite being in colour the harsh sunlight has it almost bleached down to black and white, with a silvery shimmer off the Nile behind us.

James’ flat in England is an old terraced house partitioned into three flats now and he has the ground and first floors. I spend a lot of time there although I like my flat better. he doesn’t, with the exception of my bedroom though. And I’m sure that is only because it mimics his decorating style. Now that I think about it I did my bedroom before he did his flat. So he must have mimicked my decorating style. Brothers and sisters can be a little funny about that from time to time. Needing credit where it’s due.

James’ flat is all white with beautiful bleached ash floors. Before he moved the furniture in I imagined that it was ice, a smooth polished skating rink for me to glide round on. And I did for hours in my socks and begged him not to get any furniture at all. James thought this a little unreasonable since I could go and skate at Queensway any time I wanted. My bedroom floor is the same but I moved the bed in too quickly and never had the opportunity to skate through my room.

I suppose when I say white I mean that wonderful creamy white that gets warmer with light. His flat is warm.

All of the photos in the hall are gifts from people, all black and white with the exception of the Luxor photo. I gave him the one from Luxor – Mustafa’s nephew took the picture for a small fee. The other favourite of mine is of a cow looking out over an ancient stable door that has been repaired many times and is held shut with a perfect hairy bow of binder twine. There is a small window with six square panes behind the cow and you can see a barbed wire fence and a clump of trees in the background. The cow looks happy enough eyeballing the photographer, the wisdom of the world seemingly reflected in it’s eyes.

There is a strange photo taken from behind of an old woman waiting in a shop, her vending cart parked outside. She is wearing a long black coat and dress like

something from the thirties and the sharp contrast of her black clothing through the misty window to the grey cold is breathtaking. A man bristles by on the street hunched against the cold the wind. It is strange because I think of photos as looking in not out.

James’ place is where we have our dinner parties, I never got used to entertaining colleagues in my flat. I don’t very often call my flat home. In a strange way I think that I am homeless and always have been. That person looking in again.

So many people have spent far too long looking at those photos and then they come back later with an offering of their own. That is why I like the cow so much; it looks anyone straight in the eye and I think maybe our colleagues are all a herd of cattle moving in and out for feeding. Mooing at all the right moments chewing their cuds later. Yes that cow makes me smile.

Everything is pristine in his flat and I overheard James explaining once at a dinner party that if you got rust on anything, wet it and put a little mound of baking soda on it and it could be removed very easily after that. He was always very handy with household matters his and mine.

He was asked if the baking soda bleached out colours.

James looked genuinely surprised and replied “everything I own is white.”

That was James, anything found in tasteful whites, creams or ivories. It was usually his. Or he bought it.

James would like the hospital clean bright white, bits of chrome shining with the sun streaming in the window. And of course warm. I was cold earlier but they have shut the window for me now and I am very cosy. All the warm thoughts have helped too.

I miss James in a way so few will ever know. He was the centre of my life. I had a very hard time after the funeral and locked myself in James’ flat for a while. Biscuit and Cracker were with Claire and I moped around alone. About the second day there was a fly and flies are really quite rare in London. In fact we don’t have screens on our windows or doors at all Frank. Can you imagine no screens with our own farmhouses always crawling with flies anyway. But this fly almost became a friend I felt so desolate, lonely, inconsolable. I had unplugged the phone and Claire knew to give me some distance, some privacy for my feelings. It was ok to have the fly near me and I spent hours watching it fly about, walk here and there. It was always close to me but if it landed on me I chased it away. I watched that fly for three days, it felt like a friend and then I went a little mad I guess and it became my sole mission to kill it. I rolled up a magazine and spent hours shouting at it, chasing it, swatting the air, slapping down hard with the magazine. The first burst of energy since the funeral. I killed that fly when it landed on James’ big mason jar of almonds. I broke the lid of the jar, shards of glass everywhere and then I cut my hands picking it up. The burst of anger helped and then I wept for my poor cut hands. I wept for my despair and then I wept for my complete and utter loneliness. I wept for the dead fly.

I plugged the phone in and called Claire, she came to rescue me. She knew that I would not share my grief and had been waiting for me to call. She had Biscuit and Cracker in their basket in the car and she brought us all back to my flat. She washed my hands for me, bandaged them and made tea. She put me on the couch with a mug, then she just sat quietly drinking her tea stroking Biscuit with her toes while Cracker rumbled away in my ear.

Frank have I given you a clear picture of Claire? She too, is so important to me. I want in a way for her to be important to you too. That bright burst of colour that

seems to surround her and encase those with her is a wonderful thing to experience.

My flat is a stark contrast to James’ and I will surprise you yet again. It is alive with colour. All the colours of autumn. Rich golds, yellows, purples, wines every imaginable colour. And that is why James didn’t like it. The colours seemed to close in on him and he couldn’t stand it. It made him restless to be there. It was as if he kept all of his colour in his personality and didn’t need any more. That says a lot about me but I really am not the bleak black sullen thing that I am imbued in.

So when I sit on my couch with its riotous twirling pattern tracing my fingers along the fabric or over a velvet pillow of varying softness and colour according to mood, I feel content. And all the rich textures mixed with the colour give me a sense of being whole. Maybe that the colour in my personality can’t be seen but those who I choose to enter my flat are able to suddenly see it.

It is to my bedroom with its bleached ash floor, ivory watered silk drapes, creamy damask linen and walnut bed that James is drawn. He could sit on the bed and relax and talk there. Originally I had the floor matt black which looked spectacular but I couldn’t get out of bed, it was like a vast sea of emptiness surrounding me. No light was reflected back and if I looked down it seemed like nothingness. I had a new floor laid after nine days.

My bedroom is so calm and soft, but when I want colour all I have to do is open the drapes and my terrace is revealed again a riot of extravagant colour. This time in all the plants which are crowded and overflowing all brilliant colours for every season. I am sure if James had a garden it would have been all white and cream plants.

In a sneaky way I think I decorated with you in mind too, Frank. Knowing how you love the bright colours and rich textures. Autumn is my favourite season with a touch of cold in the air and a feeling of excited anticipation. That is why the autumn colours are favourites of mine. Maybe that is why I am so comfortable at home in London, you would be comfortable there too.

My jaw is aching and even with that I am finding fond warm memories to smile about.

Every Guy Fawkes night we would get a huge group together and stand in Battersea Park among the sea of people and usually a sea of mud and watch the fireworks. I would bring a big bag of toffee and we would all stare up through the trees and marvel at the brilliant colours lighting the sky. Oohing and ahhing through teeth stuck together by toffee. Later we would walk back to a restaurant over by James’ and have a huge Italian feast. Bringing in the mud with us, leaving huge streaks on the white marble floors, but it was only once a year.

Toffee – that is how my mouth feels at this moment, I have stuffed it full and my jaws are clamped firmly together and if I salivate long enough it will all melt and I will be free. That is not the case and I can feel the desperate urge to take the wire cutters from the side of my bed and cut myself free. They have provided these in case I am choking but I really can’t see myself cutting away as I choke! They are handy for a nurse to do it I suppose, providing of course it doesn’t happen in the last two hours of the shift.

I must be really tired because every time I see a flicker of shadow or a slight movement in my peripheral vision I keep thinking it’s a fly. Shouldn’t have talked about that fly earlier I guess.

I’ll just close my eyes now so I won’t have to think about flies and let the

colours of all the sights I have seen wash over me.

You know Frank, I really have thought about you over the years and all of the places I went to, I wanted to go with you. I went anyway to bring back a small piece that one day I would share with you. The small piece was in the form of one memory or another. I want so terribly to share them with you now.

Thursday October 1

Frank I should just pick up the phone from the table beside me and talk to you. I could do that so easily; pick up the phone I mean. Dial your number. I know your number still even after all these years. Speak your name. To you. Frank? I test it in my mind. Frank? To speak it out loud would certainly be another matter.

I have an excuse though. All through the night and still now there has been an amazing electrical storm. The sky is dark and threatening. I can see cobalt blue sky over the fields, huge black thunderheads riding low over them and endless sharp jagged forks striking out randomly. It is still dry though and any time the rain should come. The air seems almost charged with an electric sense of anticipation.

I could do it though. I wonder if you have the same phone number, I guess not if the house is empty. I know that number off by heart. Or would I end up being routed through to your parents. Do they me? Every time I saw a sequence of numbers with the last four digits of yours; in a licence plate, a costing, a bank statement or simply another phone number I thought of phoning you.

I think I am doing ok at the moment, still a little woozy from not moving not eating but I’m doing ok. If I look back on it now I will say there were a few moments this week Frank that I was pretty scared. It is still strange being here in the hospital in this town. In some ways it turns me back into a helpless child, a frustrated teenager. The events themselves are hazy enough in my head, the actual feelings I thought long forgotten are so clear to me now.

For my own sense of safety, of home, I retreated into my head and knew that

everything I required was available there. Now I am not so sure but again it must be the mixture of emotions stemming from when I was young and didn’t know how to protect myself.

The violation by the doctor this morning bringing back floods of memory. After much poking and prodding on my stomach one hand flat, two fingers leaning in hard, resulting in yelps of pain when the pressure was released. That is called rebound and apparently it is not a good thing. They rolled me onto my side, foetal position and did a thorough examination of my insides. I did not cry out when the doctor slid his latex covered finger inside of me. I wept silently. The nurse did not show a glimmer of comion while the doctor, whose strange accent I am getting used to put a hand on my shoulder, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be hurting you.”

I sniffed an “it’s ok really” through my tears and felt huge relief when it was all over.

They rolled me onto my back and I managed to get onto my other side and stare out at the dark windy day. I am becoming quite adept at moving despite all of the cables and tubes. I barely notice the thing sticking out of the veins in my hand.

Struan got me when I was thirteen. One sunny summer day in the back field by the split rail fence. For hours we had been sitting by the river laughing talking letting the sun warm our bodies. Then both raced up the hill towards the house. While we were running, Struan caught me by the wrist and twisted my arm into a half nelson. Standing behind me I could feel his hot gusting breath on my ear. There was a strange air of anticipation. We were both breathless from running but there seemed to be something else too. Despite standing like that for a few moments, neither of us seemed able to catch our breath.

He slid his hand under my t-shirt and his fingers played over my flesh and onto my nipple. Which made me squirm with feelings I had never felt before.

“Your breasts are so small you could be a boy,” his voice ragged in my ear.

“I’m a girl!” I giggled indignantly.

“I can imagine you as a boy though.” He whispered in my ear letting go of the half nelson and reaching under my shirt with his other hand too, rubbing me across my stomach and ribs all the while fingering my nipples. Which seemed to become prickly hot and hard under his fingers.

“Struan what are you doing?” my voice soft, my body seeming to sway involuntarily with his touch. It was as though he was reaching something deep inside of me and I was answering without knowing why.

“Shh”

I pressed my body hard back against him wanting this unexpected sense of pleasure to continue and an overwhelming urge for something. I started to turn to face him but he kept me pinned to the fence in front of him, his hands searching over my body with gentle soothing strokes mixed with rough pinches. I had a strange heavy warm feeling between my legs and I let my head fall back against his shoulder. A giant warm presence towering behind me.

He used both hands and slowly undid my jeans and I squirmed some more as he

did it, but with both his arms around me like that the squirming had little effect on what might have been an escape. He pulled my jeans down to my ankles but wouldn’t let me step out of them. I was quivering with excitement. He kissed my bottom and stroked the back of my thighs, one hand pressing me farther over the rail of the fence.

He stepped back a fraction. Then he was undoing his jeans too. He was very quick, efficient almost.

I could feel his pubic hair against my buttocks and hot hard flesh resting in between. I struggled against him. I could scarcely breathe. This didn’t feel right, yet I relaxed against him once again. He stroked me and whispered “you really are a perfect little boy.’

As he continued to stroke, I could feel my mouth fall open. I closed my eyes in turmoil. This was not right but Struan seemed so sure of what he was doing and I thought we wouldn’t do anything really wrong. Sure we were cousins but this felt right too. I could feel myself shaking my head, involuntarily, fighting the battle. I allowed myself to be swept away with the pleasure of his touch.

The sharp jagged pain was terrible and I screamed in agony, he slid his hand over my mouth “Audrey be quiet” twisting his other hand in my hair and holding it tightly.

Thrusting into me, forcing my hips against the fence rail. I had to put my hands on the rail to brace myself against his pushing. I wanted to cry out again in pain but stopped myself with his fierce grip on my hair keeping me in check.

I had enjoyed the fondling, the kisses and tender words but not this. It felt like a hot knife had been shoved into my backside so savage and raw. I could not understand why people enjoyed it so much, this was just not nice.

Then his body seemed to buck wildly and he stopped the pumping into me. And fell onto my shoulder, his breath heaving and he held me so much tighter.

We rested there together. He stroked me a bit more my flesh so hot against his cooled fingertips. I relaxed and tried to forget the searing pain.

He slid his hands into my hair and whipped me round, his mouth inches from mine. I looked directly into his big brown melting chocolate eyes. We had not yet kissed and I expected it then, instead a sharp hiss “you are not to tell anyone.”

“Of course” I whispered.

“You’re my little whore.” He laughed and gave my hair a sharp jerk pulling my head upwards to his.

I must have looked puzzled and he ran his fingers through my hair, softly this time, caressing my neck and shoulders smiling.

He was so tender helping me back into my jeans, zipping them carefully shut, kneeling directly in front of me. I wanted to reach out and run my fingers through his thick red curls but something stopped me. I hadn’t touched him; he

seemed to be untouchable in a strange way. I watched him instead. He kissed my belly button as he stood up.

Then he slid a neatly folded ten dollar bill out of his pocket slipping it into mine.

“I don’t need your money Struan.” I whispered to him barely able to find my voice. He kept changing between two different people and I did not know which I was speaking to.

“Yes Audrey you do because you’re my little whore,” that sneering smile was on his lips again.

“No Struan.”

“Yes Audrey this is the way it is.”

“No” I pleaded and he silenced me with his finger to my lips.

“No.” I tried again.

He pinched my lips tightly and I winced.

“Now tell me that you are my little whore” he released his grip on my lips and

waited.

I looked up at him and whispered “I’m your little whore.”

He wagged his finger at me “no Audrey you’ve got to get this right,” smiling “you have one more chance to say it properly.”

“I’m your little whore” I repeated in a clear voice unwavering.

“Yes my little whore,” adding a soft “good girl” as he walked away across the field.

Appropriately the skies have opened and it is hail, not rain. Icy solid grey pellets the size of the tip of my thumb. I jumped in alarm when the first one hit the window without warning and they have been hailing down hard since, the ground outside is littered with them.

Now I feel exhausted like I have been talking all day but it’s not even lunchtime yet. I was so entranced by the storm outside, it seemed to make time change again and I really was unaware of the ing morning, the memories I had just lived through. Possibly one of the most terrible days of my life although I did not know that at the time. But of course that day, like this one, was not over yet.

After Struan left me, I ran across the field and into the barn. I was safe there; no one would see me. I cried for a little while then I hid the ten dollars in a bushel basket, the bottom one in the pile. No one would find it there. How would I

explain having ten dollars? Ten dollars I did not want.

I wandered down to the river and washed the tears from my face, the water cooling my hands. And sat on the big rock, my heels tucked into the ridge so I would not slide in. My mind was a jagged horrible place full of things that I just didn’t understand. Feeling sore.

I sat there for a very long time. I watched James and Struan animated in discussion cross the bridge into town without so much as a glance down at the river. They didn’t know I was there. It didn’t seem to matter.

I watched the surface of the water, the moving twirling ceaseless motion. For hours the warmth of the sun on my shoulders kept me calm. Then plop a something broke the movement on the surface of the water. I looked up at the bridge and there you were Frank all lit up in the sun shining golden like a god. You didn’t rush but crossed slowly, throwing a few more stones into the water directly in front of me. A hollow echo of your steps on the bridge. We didn’t need to greet each other; we were used to each other enough by then to know that you would be coming down to say hello.

I could hear you making your way down the bank, the sliding of gravel on the path and the sharp whoosh of the willow as you pushed a branch aside, letting it whip back into place behind you.

“Hi Audrey” in your usual cheerful style. You threw yourself down on the rock, long legs splayed out towards the river. You seemed so sure of yourself, never fearing slipping into the ing water.

I clutched my legs tighter and kept my heels firmly in the groove, wondering if I looked any different to you. “Hi Frank.”

You regaled me with stories of your week, that dreadful summer job you had at the grocery store. And all the people you had to deal with. The fussy old ladies who required their bags packed just so. Young mothers handing you the baby as they searched their handbags for car keys. The melting heat of the cars as you loaded them up. Ice cream in the bags to last maybe five minutes! And the endless stacking of shelves. Mainly the cans. I you dreamt of cans most of that summer. I thought: how beautifully simple to dream of cans. Nothing but cans, shiny coloured labels as they rolled by. Most things weren’t that simple to me.

I couldn’t look at you, my eyes fixed on a point of rock sitting above the moving water. I watched the sun change on the rippling surface through the willow branches. I watched your feet move as you talked. Your feet again. You had taken your shoes off. Those nice solid statue feet.

I was the perfect study of stillness. The river soothed me consoled me. And slowly things began to feel right again. You were a friendly giant beside me, so solid and so firm. So uncomplicated. You completely unaware of what had happened. That I had changed.

That night when I brushed my hair my scalp hurt, with every stroke I winced. Struan almost pulled the hair from my head when he whipped me around to have his mouth meet mine, to repeat after him those terrible lines. I looked in the mirror on my bureau, standing on tiptoes, my body unchanged except the bruises. I felt as though I had changed and it should have been more obvious on my body.

I had thumbprints on the small of my back, fingerprints across my hip bones on the front. The span of Struan’s hands so very large, marked out with little plum coloured drops on my white skin. Today I felt as if the doctor saw the mark of his hands on me.

The hail has melted and the ground is glistening with the street lights. I must have slept for the afternoon because it is evening now. Funny that I should find sleep so easily with all the business going on round me, all that business in my head. I didn’t dream not of cans not of anything.

I looked around the room to see that all was the same as I had left it earlier. They have a way of moving people in and out without you really knowing it has happened and suddenly there is an empty bed or a new face.

I saw a curly red-haired sprite make her way towards my bed, we had made eye and I couldn’t feign sleep. I gave a half-hearted smile.

“I know you,” she smiled warmly at me. “I barely recognised you though.”

I smiled as much as my face would allow. I recognised her. “Beth Cherrey” I murmured to her.

“Yes, I’m Libby now.” She sat herself down on the chair at the foot of my bed where I could see her easily. “I decided that I’d had enough of being plain old Beth and decided on Libby, still Cherrey mind you.”

“Libby, sounds good.” I liked her short red curls bobbing as she spoke and her satisfyingly bright blue eyes to go with them.

“I’ll tell you, if your name weren’t on that card above your bed I would have had a hard time recognising you,” she smiled and looked a little sheepish.

“A bit of a mess huh?” My voice having a hard time finding its true course almost slurring through the broken and wired jaw.

“It is a bit, you look like a hockey player,” she smiled and looked exactly the same as she had all those years through public school and high school.

I laughed, my face gripped in pain. The only time I had ever even been to a hockey game, I got hit by the puck smack in the eye and didn’t even get it black then. Libby had probably heard about that.

I had always wanted a black eye when I was growing up, a colourful outside example of the pain I felt inside. And now just when I didn’t want it, here it was. I was supposed to look wonderful for my return to this town. Cool calm collected. Successful.

“It is a pretty good shiner, a few days ago both eyes were sealed shut with the swelling I stopped by but you were pretty out of it.”

“Was it you reading a few nights ago?” I asked.

“My aunt is in for a little while. It is a nice quiet time to come here and sit and read out loud.” She looked across the room to her sleeping aunt as she spoke, “I think I enjoy it as much as my aunt does, it makes the reading that much slower, easier to digest.”

“I enjoyed it too.”

“I thought you were in a coma?” She said, surprise on her face.

“I guess I was but it seemed that I was here most of the time anyway.” I must have begun to look tired because she started to pick up her things from beside the chair, the motions of getting up to leave. “No” I implored, “keep me company – tell me about yourself.”

“There’s not too much to tell really, I finished high school, went to Toronto got my teacher’s diploma and came back and here I am.”

I snorted.

“Now that is a typical Audrey Bevan thing if there ever was one!” She laughed sitting back comfortable in the chair. “These little towns, we all knew each other so well didn’t we?”

My second snort, “if I sneezed out of place someone would have known about it! And someone else would have talked about it.”

She laughed her easy familiar laugh, “too true.”

We had never been close or very good friends but our lockers had been almost next to each other in high school and her surname being Cherrey put us close together in a lot of classes. The time tested system of alphabetical order. We had shared a desk in biology in grade ten I think. We both plugged our noses to the smell of formaldehyde but dissected that frog anyway. We did a lot of giggling at that desk as I recall.

“I teach at the high school now and you’d be surprised but a few of our old teachers are still there, actually Mr Blythe do you him? He taught math. He was asking about you yesterday.”

I looked at her quizzically.

“The whole town is talking well not really talking. Wondering more but the bridge is ruined and your truck hanging there looked pretty amazing.” She tossed her head to the side indicating where the truck had been as she spoke, curls bouncing with the motion.

“I’ll bring the paper in tomorrow, there is a picture in there. They don’t say much about you though.”

“Mr Blythe asked about you, not because of the crash or anything else but because he re how well both you and James did in math.

“Oh Audrey, James!” she paused and looked solemn for a second “Audrey I am so sorry.’

I nodded this was the first person to mention him here and I knew it would be hard. We had always been a pair and here I was alone. No James. It was as if part of me had been removed, torn away and I was exposed to this town now without him. I was the one here to do all the explaining. To answer all the questions.

With Beth – Libby I mean sitting there it didn’t seem to be so bad. I kept my face calm giving nothing away about James. At this moment I really didn’t want to talk about it.

None of it seemed so bad while she was talking to me. A nice friendly face honestly welcoming me back to this town. All the while you were in my mind Frank, never leaving it for a second. Your name on the tip of my tongue. But I couldn’t ask not with you so close. You somewhere out there.

Friday October 2

Frank I have lived in many places and found my life distributed between quite a few. How many is a few I wonder? We all have such a different perspective of that. For me now I will stick with a few as being three. I will not count being here.

The three at the moment are our flats in London. Mine and James’s. Of course Cairo is the third.

It seems that with my belongings scattered around I have no centre. No collection point. And I have been thinking about consolidating them getting everything in one place, being able to touch anything I own without racing across Battersea Park or getting on a plane. Just to sit and survey it all. I wouldn’t even mind if it was all in boxes, just having everything in one place. All my memories and life collected together.

“I’m going to sell James’s flat” I announced to Claire only a month or so ago, as she leaned over my desk almost laying on top of it trying to read the paper I was working on.

“Ok” her quick response as she snatched at the report.

I slapped my hand down on the paper and stopped her from taking it. “Did you hear what I said?” I moved my hand and she whisked the paper away.

“Quite, but I’m sure you won’t sell it just yet.” Her confident knowing voice. “This is not going to work Audrey we need to get a few more people placed around the – ”

“Claire you’re not listening to me!” I interrupted her which is a dangerous thing with Claire. We have generally kept work and personal things separate; while I can interrupt with personal stuff, work is rather more serious. This was unusual for me my work persona did not allow for this.

Claire never mixes the two. I suppose that is what makes her so good.

She put the paper down and leaned on her elbows, looking at me calmly. “Audrey you can do whatever you want with the flat but I don’t think you are emotionally prepared to sell it, this is the first I’ve heard of it. I’ll listen to you when you’re making some sense, when you’ve thought it over.” She rifled through the papers on my desk. “And when there are no pressing issues like keeping this project rolling.”

“I am just trying to let go of some things,” I replied indignantly, wishing for once my office had a door and I would shut it and get this sorted out with Claire. I was agitated and ready to bounce off the walls not wanting to be working or talking but taking some direct action. “If I do it now, they can be in before Christmas.” My matter of fact voice. It was the end of August and it takes at least that long for the paperwork to go through in England, I was sure I could find a buyer right away. Encouragement from Claire was what I was looking for.

“Audrey it seems as if you want rid of it before Christmas, a little schedule in your mind.” She didn’t look up at me, studying the papers in front of her, eyebrows knotted. “It doesn’t really work that way does it?”

“I don’t have a schedule – I just want things moving.” I replied indignantly.

“Well what are you trying to achieve?” she said looking up from the papers and slowly meeting my eye.

“I don’t know, I feel so divided at the moment.”

“Of course you are it hasn’t been that long. Besides that, you’ve always been pretty divided between James and yourself.”

“I always thought of us as one.” I leaned back in my captain’s chair. Blinking with surprise, I didn’t think anyone had seen that we were not a complete unit, we had presented ourselves that way and it seemed to work.

“Yes you were always a one of sorts, but divided in many ways too.”

She was absolutely right and I let her read through the papers while I thought about it.

“Selling the flat seemed to be a good first step,” I mused. “Then I can get everything in one place. Consolidated.”

“It seems just a bit big for the first step, Audrey.”

We eyeballed each other over the desk for a few moments, willing the other to speak first.

“Ok what about the ashes? The flat in Cairo?” she finally asked. She knew all the details. Had wondered at the time the will was read if the instructions to the river, the bridge, the rock and finally the swimming hole had been for her.

“Hmm, maybe you have a point there.” My turn to look at the papers on the desk. “But selling the flat seems a bit easier to face than all that.”

“I know Audrey and in some ways it would be.” She glanced up at me, “I think you should leave the London flat ‘til last and get all of the other things sorted out first. Why don’t you bring his things from Egypt first, assemble things here and go through all his stuff first before you sell up.”

I suddenly imagined me sitting on the floor in James’ flat with all his things around me and slowly sorting through it. Much better than filling my place with all his stuff.

“I’ll phone Xena and get her to sort out tickets for Cairo. How’s that?”

“Audrey don’t rush yourself things will happen in their own time.” Claire shook her head at the papers and me.

“I can do Cairo and maybe the ashes after that,” I replied snottily, handing her all

the papers. “I’ll leave Bevan Bedroom Productions in your capable hands.”

Claire had observed our entire adult lives and never judged, never questioned, although I’m sure she formed some strong opinions which she kept largely to herself or certainly didn’t share them with me. Maybe with James. They often had their time together without me. Much as I had my time alone with Claire and then we spent it laughing and watching men and talking about them.

I hadn’t felt a rush about changing things and felt so much closer to him when I am at his place. But I honestly didn’t know what to do. Maybe in some ways being rid of it would make things much easier. Bring everything into one place, my place. But by getting rid of James’s flat now I would have to go through all of his belongings. Make some sense of that. Yes Cairo was the logical first step.

It was all so senseless, why had he committed suicide? Why would he have done it without talking it over with me? And now all I have is the stuff, the flats, the empty shells. Because they were empty shells without his spirit laughter and smiles. Frank maybe you could say something here. Almost anything. I would cherish some words from you. Words that would make it all seem less of an empty shell. I wish you would know I’m here and pick up the phone. The fucking phone. I have it here beside my bed for what? A reminder that no one is calling. No one cares.

James is gone.

I am wallowing.

Maybe we had drifted apart those last few years. Taken different directions, but

we were so very close when we were together. It was just so easy. And now we were truly separated.

In the last five years, I had decided to limit travelling to two trips of two weeks each but James kept going full blast, months here, months there. Always so much to do and see. He could do his work almost anywhere. I needed the office. The office needed me or so I thought.

James loved to travel, he packed so neatly and then when he got to his destination, immediately set about making it his little home away from home. Unpacking his clothes and pulling out a framed picture of the three of us. Me, him and our mother, squinting against the sun with us perched on a stone wall on either side of her, so our faces were all at the same level. It was taken just before we moved to Canada. And another of a different three of us; me, him and Claire huddled around my desk, working, having just looked up and been caught surprised on film. There were always three of us now that I think about it. It was the third who changed from time to time. Almost as if the third was the missing element between the two of us. Now Frank I have never thought about that before, a missing element so maybe I’ll try it again in my head later.

James also brought an ivory quilt with him and covered his bed or threw it on a chair. A carefully placed sweater, even the lovely leather cases he travelled with. Little things that he could make any space home with.

His backpack with his pens and green hard-bound book, travelling documents and other smaller note-books. And of course reference books. How he managed to carry his backpack I’ll never know, I would have buckled under the weight. I suppose that is why I kept my sense of home and safety in my head. Nothing to carry, nothing to lose or leave behind. That is another big difference between us but again I see those differences as complementary.

In all the travelling James and I did, I never needed anything English to give me a sense of being home, of security; the way some travellers do. Like the Englishman who requires his pint of beer, or the Australians who carry a jar of Vegamite around in their packs with them.

Except in Cairo. There every other afternoon I went to the Nile Hilton and had tea on the big terrace outside. Proper English tea. Made in a pot with a little jug of real-ish milk beside. Never real milk in Egypt, not like the cool icy stuff we have here or the creamy milky stuff in England. More of a sourish sort of milk but in times of need you soon got used to it. We had been places that assaulted our senses much more than Egypt, and I could never understand why I wanted tea so badly there. It infuriated James, who would have been much happier at the souk or some small coffee house. On the terrace of the Nile Hilton I conceded to sharing one big shisha of apple tobacco with him every visit to make it a more authentic experience, while I sipped my tea. I spent heaps of time happily with James in all the places he wanted but I had to have my tea. If only every other day. It was so gentile, sitting there, the street busy out front which seemed miles away with the garden and water fountains tumbling beyond the terrace. Sipping tea puffing on the shisha. James carefully moving the coals around with the tongs. And across the street is the British Museum in Cairo and to this day I make that mistake every time I go to say it. Of course I mean the Cairo Museum. It is just that they are so similar in content.

We met Guillaume for the first time on the terrace. There were always students from the American University in Cairo there. And that is why I make the mistake, if there is an American University in Cairo, why not a British Museum in Cairo?

These students were generally boisterous and loud and we often ed in. I imagine half of them were there for the huge breakfast buffet that can be found in any large hotel throughout the world. Because after months in Cairo, they wanted one of two things. Bacon or sausage. There was sausage but not pork sausage, and bacon - forget it!

Bacon. That is the one weak point for every vegetarian I know. It must be the delicious smell of it cooking. Ok I am ravenous. I can’t eat because of my jaws being wired and come to think of it, you would have had a hard time understanding me on the phone yesterday. I also have some weird stomach pain and they won’t give me anything because of that. Not even a sip of water.

Egypt was James’s dream, he wanted to live there and be an archaeologist.

I only went because of James. But discovered I loved it as much as he did. Egypt is special. Tantalising.

We had found our flat through the American University in Cairo; we got one of their housing lists and went from there. Guillaume interpreted for us, and eventually ended up staying with us too. We were happy to have someone to look after the place during the many months we weren’t there. Our third in Cairo.

Every morning Guillaume would bring me coffee in bed. Special coffee. What I would come to call Egyptian coffee; which is instant coffee made in a glass with condensed milk and a generous helping of plain brown sugar. He always put the milk sugar and coffee in first, in that order and then poured the hot water on top and then had to stir frantically to get it all to dissolve. I can distinctly the clanking spoon on the glass. Now, I would have been up and gone hours before. Riding in the desert with a big glass of fresh mango juice bought from a street vendor and a banana to keep me going. But when I got home I dove back into bed!

I would always pretend to be just woken by the sound of the spoon on the glass

and of course James really would be just woken. Then Guillaume would clatter through my French doors and deliver the glass of coffee to my bedside. I would smile sleepily at him and murmur my thanks. He always gave me a lopsided grin because he knew it was all an act for him. I smile now as I think of that we had such lazy hazy days in Cairo.

I think over the years I became pretty good at pretending things Frank. And then you forget when you are pretending and when you’re not because it all becomes so real. Sounds so real because you repeated it over so many times in your head.

Our flat was kind of a U shape and we were on the third floor with one more above us. Each room had a balcony that ran almost right round ing with the next. Except the one off my room which was a tiny private rectangle. There was a huge fig tree that I could nearly reach from it. If you stood on the corner of the balcony by James’s room and leaned out looking down the Nile you can see the pyramids at Saqquara rising faintly in the distance.

There was never much privacy in Egypt. I would not have dreamt of going onto my balcony in a bathing suit to soak up the sun because we lived in a traditional Egyptian area and there were rules.

I can waking to the Call to Prayer from the mosque. From the many mosques really, since they all seemed to be within shouting distance of each other. I can’t begin to mimic that sound for you but it is haunting and beautiful. The sort of sound that fills your soul and lingers in haunting tones long after it has ended. Then you look forward to the next call to prayer to hear the muezzin go through the chant again.

I always shut my shutters but leave the window open for the sounds and the smells. Ok. Sounds, smells and dust - rising from the street to coat everything.

The balconies across the street all seem to have little song birds in their cages. All of them covered faithfully every night and opened to the world again in the morning, after the Call to Prayer, after the praying had been done.

And when it is time for laundry you can lower a basket and they take it away and a few hours later it all comes back starched and perfect. Guillaume says that they spit on the clothes to get the steam up for pressing but I don’t mind since everything is done so beautifully. And here it is not such a bad thing to be wearing black, it is rather a popular colour amongst the women. Who are not all in full veil or burka but never bare arms showing.

Later you can send the basket down again for the ing fruit and vegetable vendor. Loose tomatoes and cucumber and then the cheese seller would come, pale white cheese neatly wrapped in brown paper.

The sprite has brought me underwear in neat little packages and lip balm. And the local paper. I think of Libby as a sprite - the way she just pops up unexpectedly, almost as if she was part of the background and you don’t see her ‘til she moves. Maybe she thought I was asleep. I have been lying here so still, I was shopping in Cairo, in my head. So she came over to my bed when I moved and gave me the things and put some of the lip balm on for me. Strange lip balm, I could swear it is sausage-flavoured. Fancy sausages with a bit of sage in them.

We always had a big breakfast in your kitchen where rashers of bacon were not counted out but lavished upon you. Always crispy and golden. And the sausages were rolled out in heaps. Then afterwards we were sent outside to play or do chores. I enjoyed chores at your place, especially hay in the summer. Those would be the times when the breakfast would be huge and then we would all go to the fields. I must have been really small the first time I did it, because I think James and I mostly got in the way. But your father didn’t seem to mind as he

drove the tractor, and we helped move bales into position for the elevator with you standing on the trailer stacking. Your brothers all taking turns, tossing the bales in place. Then the whole process repeated, this time getting it into the loft. Your father standing at the top, taking the bales first off one elevator and placing them onto the next so you could stack them to the roof.

It really was a huge hayloft. That was the next good thing about hay, watching it fill the hayloft up. Layer after layer of bales, so very huge reaching right up to those beams. Enjoying the fresh cut smell. Knowing by spring it would be nearly empty and we would swing on the rope between the beams or into the hay itself.

We always wore long sleeved shirts and leather gloves but we ended up with scratches covering our arms anyway. Now of course the bales are those giant round things that need a forklift to move. I saw them in the fields as I drove up here. They somehow didn’t look quite right, sitting there on the landscape.

Then those winter days when we had to clean the stalls and spent more time laughing, throwing more manure over the partitions than into the wheelbarrows. We always stank and were dirty, changing out of our coveralls in the cold porch then being welcomed into your warm kitchen. I don’t playing as such but then we always had fun in whatever we did. Your kitchen, your barn, our barn; warm refuges from the real world.

We always had a big sausage feast in the autumn. Going to the speciality store in Westminster and getting them made on the spot. I like wild boar the best and James pork and plum. We get spinach ones for Claire who is a vegetarian! Then I would make a big batch of braised red cabbage and do squash. Either James or Claire would sit at the table and grate cheese; you see I still hate grating cheese, while I sliced potatoes and onions into fine slivers for a huge casserole of cheesy scalloped potatoes. It really was a feast and a feast to the eye, all the wonderful colours and all the flavours. Brilliant jewelled purple of the cabbage, soft creamy gold of the squash, shining orange of the melted cheese on the potatoes, crispy

brown coats on the sausages and of course the splat of bright yellow English mustard.

For a few moments I was carried away and forgot I was here. It seems to happening more often talking to you and then sleeping and then awake and surprised to find myself here. I am always hungry now, but hours can go by without thinking about food. And bang I am screaming with starvation. I would like to make a deal with the doctor for something simple like a glass of water and a baked potato, white fluffy nutty delicious. I can’t imagine I’d go too far wrong with that. I’d even risk sweet milky tea, even through a straw.

I saw the paper today and the picture of the truck in it, taken before anything was moved. Sort of dangling there with the branches and shards of bridge surrounding it. The view is not the same as the one I saw for all those hours but it is a pretty clear reminder. Not much in the story really, barely a mention of me. More interested in the bridge I guess. The little monkey, he gets a good mention though. I’m glad for that, he deserves it. Rick Morgan is his name. Standing there for the camera grinning. Funny but he could be you Frank, as a little boy.

Is that really your house up for sale? I saw it only for a second as Libby held the paper up for me. I will quiz her on that later, I just couldn’t face it today. I don’t want her to start thinking about you and me yet.

I feel so lonely right now the visitors have all gone home and we are all here tucked silently into our beds. I may have slept too much today and now will have the whole night to think. It seems when it is dark I think the worst. I know I do; I rarely ever think to you after dark.

Something safe. The cats. Even if they are named after food. Once when we needed a cat-sitter, a Chinese girl from work looked after them, she always

laughed and called them Stir Fry and Spring Roll!

Cracker has an almighty purr, rumbling and roaring, I could use that in my ear right now. When I get back to London I am going to scoop him up and hold him tight and listen. I am also going to change his name. Crackers crumble Cracker rumbles so I think Crumbler should be his new name. I’ll think about that anyway besides who would want crackers in bed anyway? I’ll keep thinking of the cats, they are safe and not edible I smile to myself. Biscuit well I’ll think of a new name for him. That should take a while.

It is the warmth and friendship that those two cats offered that was so important to me, it meant that when James was away there were voices and feet in the house even if it was all done in meows and soft padding.

Tonight Frank I am lonely and on the verge of tears. Cracker and Biscuit would have helped me through this. All the wires are making me feel trapped and the tube in my hand is itchy. I can understand why people go a little mad and pull them all out because I feel like that right now. I have laid flat on my back for pretty well a week. Sometimes on my side but that hardly counts. I don’t know how much more I can take. If they knew what was wrong that would make things a bit easier but I have been tested for everything and there seems to be no answer.

There is no moon tonight and that it is so dark doesn’t help. A few nights ago I could see the moon shining in. I know it was the moon, the odd angle of the light gave it away there are no streetlights in that direction. I longed to get out of bed and stand at the window and howl at it. But tonight even the moon escapes me and I lay here. No comfort in the crossover mummy position either.

I will however pretend to be asleep when they come. I can’t face any more of

their drugs.

Saturday October 3

I didn’t cry last night Frank, I staved it off. Stared out at the night. And slept a bit too. Things are only really bad when it is dark.

Now Frank, you have your slew of brothers and only about a thousand cousins. James my only brother. You know that I only have one cousin. Struan. And you never thought much of him.

I dreamt of Struan, his thick red hair so shiny and bright like copper, a shining penny just asking to be picked up by anyone who finds him. I can laugh and tell you my great aunt in Wales called him a bad penny, “Bad pennies always turn up,” she said. It took a long time for me to understand that phrase but I finally did. He always turned up.

Although I know now and knew then that our love was wrong, I imagined standing on my tiptoes and sinking my fingers deep into the lush red hair behind his ears and kissing him resoundly, solidly on the lips, our mouths opening together and colliding, no crashing. Gazing fondly into those melted chocolate eyes. And that is what I imagined because he never let me touch him and no, I never kissed him. I imagined that for years, all those long months when he was away at school, waiting for him to come back for the summer. Every year I hoped it would be different but it never was.

The bond we had was so savage that I barely recognise it as love now, yet something still stirs inside of me when I think of him. I had no concept of love, with my mother gone there was no love in our house. The common crow was never loving to us or her own child who we later found out about. With Struan, I knew he wanted me and to be wanted seemed enough to be called love. Not the

sex, I didn’t understand that part just the desire to have his arms around me. The warmth I imagined feeling from that.

The common crow departed the winter before Struan got me the first time and she was quickly replaced with a blue jay. James and I didn’t even have to get the Birds of Canada out. We laughed when we saw her, which gave us a warm start. She wasn’t blue but definitely crested, with that mid-seventies way of doing hair; a bouncy way of walking that did look like hopping. Noisy too. We double checked anyway and were surprised to find that the blue jay and common crow are of the same family. Would a magpie be next? We were a little nervous when we read the part about blue jays sometimes eating the offspring of others. But we were thirteen by then and had no real worries about it. It was more of a joke between James and I.

Blue jay was noisy and mischievous and I wonder if that was what got to Struan. Because she always outmanoeuvred him. He outmanoeuvred me.

There are magpies in London and I love them. I don’t know the whole rhyme: one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy. While James is the historical biblical reference book, Claire is the one who stores all this cultural information for me, and she laughs because I often have her repeat these things, time after time. If she was here now she would finish the rhyme for me. And laugh again. In the grand scheme of things, I had the mythological references, the magical ones, the ideas.

I always see two magpies because I always look for joy. If I can’t find joy I find something in every day that is good or beautiful. And I that.

When we arrived in England we looked Struan up right away. I expected him to be rich. With all his airs and graces, good school, well connected and all that. We

didn’t expect a free ride or anything but the odd meal wouldn’t hurt, meet some of his interesting high profile friends and colleagues. In our heads we already knew so many of them, from the stories he filled our heads with.

When he left the summer we were eighteen, we followed on his footsteps in only a matter of weeks. He had no warning of our arrival. He would have disappeared had he known we were coming, I’m sure of that. He would have kept us at arm’s length and given us carefully measured amounts of Struan, poise, charm. Instead we caught him off guard.

I looked him up in the phone book and he very quickly made his way to our little bedsit in Earl’s Court, where he even stayed the night once. He never offered to have us over to his place. Commenting on the cramped quarters and shared bathroom, down the stairs of our place. He was quite above it all.

But he was never really at his own flat, I phoned so many times and it was by pure chance that I even caught him at home because the bad penny Struan is, meant that he was always turning up at somebody else’s house. He had a knack for planting himself on somebody then staying for months. We knew that he travelled around ceaselessly; we didn’t know what he did for living. We could only guess. He was particularly vague when asked and ushered the conversation on to what other people did, animated as he did so and in great detail.

After the first few weeks in London I knew I had to see Struan alone.

I waited outside the big old house on one of those lush tree lined streets at Notting Hill Gate and slipped inside when someone else entered, waiting in the hall, rifling through the mail so as not to be caught following. The house would have been beautiful in its day but now the exterior needed paint and the sheer number of doorbells gave me my doubts. Although the address was better than

ours, it looked in worse condition.

I made my way up the huge staircase with worn carpets narrowing to the top floor where number 5B was, and then knocked on the door. I waited there a long time before he answered, a sleepy rumpled mess. I was taken aback to see Struan looking dishevelled. In the summers he came to breakfast neat and tidy, in a robe, looked starched and perfect all the time.

I came with a plan to talk to him, to finalise the actions I had put into place before leaving Canada. I was no longer going to be Struan’s little whore. I wanted to tell him that he would never touch me again and I would never say those words again out loud to anyone. I couldn’t do that with James around and that was why I was here now, alone. This new version of Struan made me fumble my words instead.

“Struan uh hello,” I took a step back from the door.

He stood in the doorway. Behind him I could see the tiny flat was scruffy. Belongings in disarray. Unmade bed. Newspapers on the floor.

“ I wanted to talk to you,” I tried again smiling a thin tight smile.

Stepping forward with a gust of smoky stale air following him, he offered me that sneering smile and before I realised it, he grabbed me by the hair and whipped me around against the banister of the stairs. I looked down all those flights falling below me, the banister creaking with our combined weight. He held me tight as he spoke but I could not make out the words, it seemed a hissing sound in my ear, his chin digging into my shoulder, with the stairs looming ever

closer. I had not come this far to meet my end in much the same way he destroyed me every summer. I gave him such a sharp jab in the ribs that he fell back against his door and gasped. It was the first time I had ever resisted him – fought back. Complete and utter shock on his face as he lay there. I watched that change quickly into rage and I jumped away from the stairs and against the door of the flat beside his.

“I will scream if you touch me,” my face set with determination. That split second, it entered my mind, I would not scream if he touched me. I would very simply kill him.

“Audrey,” smooth honeyed tones, voice a mask of calm replacing the anger, despite his sleepy look he could still act. He reached for me and I wrenched away from him. He was not going to overpower me again.

“How were you going to pay me today Struan, in sterling or do you have a few Canadian dollars left?” I spat the words at him.

“Don’t be like this Audrey.”

“No Struan, it’s over. You are not part of my life.” My well-rehearsed lines gone, murder racing through my head. I blurted out, “Stay away from me and James.”

“Audrey come inside we’ll talk.”

“No Struan this is over.” I pushed past him and flew down the stairs, my hair

sailing behind me.

I shouted back up the stairs, “I’m not your little whore. I never was and never will be.”

I could hear doors opening behind me.

I raced out the front door and stopped, my chest heaving from the run and relief. I walked for hours around Kensington Gardens to High Street Kensington on to Holland Park and back again, not knowing where I was going, knowing only to keep going. Put one foot in front of the other. Furious that I had blundered my lines, hoping I had made myself understood. And finally I felt calm again. Ready to go on.

That afternoon I stopped at a barber and had him shave my head. He didn’t really want to do it but I reassured him it was what I wanted. “But lass you have such a fine head of hair.” He picked up a length of it and let it fall. “It’s too beautiful to cut.” The lights in the shop caught it and it glimmered a medley of dark nutty browns. I convinced him and he took exactly half off first and we laughed together over it, turning one way for a skinhead look, the other way for normal me. Then he did the other side, sweeping the hair up gently off the floor and offering me a length for memory’s sake. I told him no. No thank you. I had enough memories of my hair.

Walking down the street I caught myself in the shop windows, I was almost bouncing along. I felt so gleeful. It was a shock but also nice to be free of the weight of my hair. Nothing to hold me back, weigh me down. Nothing for anyone to ever hold me back with.

For most of my adult life I have worn my hair shorn so short there was no chance any fingers could grasp hold of it and entrap me. Much like a bouncer at a night club wearing a clip on tie, no way a drunk could strangle him.

My lack of hair rendered me virtually unemployable I looked too rebellious and it was with fierce determination that I convinced a small advertising agency to take me on. I became a stylist. The work was so easy for me setting up rooms to be photographed, rearranging tiny details such as putting a half full mug on the coffee table to create a welcoming space, letting a few flowers fall from a vase. I was very good at it actually and quickly established myself as a freelance stylist and moved into film production. I suppose I had made everything look right my whole life and here someone was willing to pay me to do it.

James pursued his love of history and attended university working in pubs at night to pay for it. He had a huge interest in film too, wanted to be in the High Art end of things. Somehow he ended up doing sets for a small agency close to me, it was easy to both study and do the odd jobs. This is where we met the people and made the s to work our dream. And James gave up his courses and plunged himself into Bevan Bedroom Productions.

Our dream did not actually start as a wish to make documentaries but to commit something worthwhile and interesting on film. We did that.

We worked long and hard and learned the business inside out, working for other people and we saved too. After all, two can live as cheaply as one. I can sometimes I could barely afford to buy ten Marlboro. And we ate a lot of beans on toast. But that did not stop us from going out to enjoy London, the museums, the galleries, the pubs. We loved London.

I could spend hours at the V & A fondling the feet of the statues until a curator

would ask me to stop. That is where I felt closest to you Frank looking at all those wonderful feet. All those pairs of perfect symmetry.

I always think of your feet, I have such a clear picture of them in my head. That day when you were lying flat back on the big rock and I looked at your feet for the first time. I mean really looked at them. I was lying on my side facing you, enjoying the sun. I must have been sixteen and took a closer note of things by then. After all, we all have feet.

That mark right before you toes where your foot got stabbed through with a pitch fork. I that day so clearly, you were the one who stabbed your own foot, right through your rubber boots. Trying to kill a poor little mouse. The mouse got away, ran away giggling. And by the time you got your boot off, I thought you were going to faint at the sight of all the blood. Boy did you bleed! Maybe that it was your own blood, because you sat down hard on the cement floor with such a smack. Like that mouse I was giggling too. It was James that steadied you, consoled you about the sheer volume of blood and took you to the house to your mother. Whose reaction was similar to mine.

I let my eyes linger on your toes for a while and then they wandered the length of your smooth hairless flesh iring the high arches.

“Straighten your legs, Frank.”

You made a small adjustment but it didn’t help.

“Frank, your left foot is about an inch bigger than your right foot!” I exclaimed.

You slowly raised yourself and looked down at your feet then looked at me, perplexed but the hint of a smile. “So it is!” and promptly laid back down.

“Frank!”

You laid there laughing until you could not stop. Finally wiping the tears from the corners of your eyes “If you had seen the expression on your face Audrey you’d have laughed too.” And you promptly started to laugh all over again.

I laughed too because I knew I had the most ridiculous expression on my face. Goggled eyed. “I always presumed you to be perfect Frank, and now I discover this,” I pointed at his feet he obliged and held them together for me once again. “I don’t know I just thought that perfect symmetry would have been part of the Frank Addison package.”

“I am nearly perfect Audrey.”

And then you kissed me. Just like that. Rolled over on your elbow, us sitting on the big rock. Sun shining through the willow tree. You kissed me.

Of course I couldn’t think of a thing to say after that and felt myself blushing to the roots of my hair.

And that made you laugh more too.

“I had to wait until you were sixteen after all,” You said looking at me from your laid back position.

I still sat there and blushed more. You’ve taken me by surprise Frank, somehow you’ve been a god to me all those years untouchable and now I find you human. An imperfect one at that. And then you kissed me! Of course I had been secretly, madly in love with you all those years but never expected anything to come of it.

“Sweet sixteen and never been kissed,” you said as much a statement as a question.

I squirmed with that, it was true but seemed a half truth, considering all that had happened between Struan and I. I suppose Frank I could have told you then and there. But what a thing to consider! How could I tell you about things that I still didn’t understand myself?

I was tense that summer and started smoking too. Struan smoked and I was always taking his cigarettes. I prayed that Struan would not find out about you and that you, Frank, might rescue me from Struan, but for the next two summers I managed to keep you both apart. The smoking helped conceal lingering of Struan’s smoke on me. And you really hated it.

I don’t smoke now, just sometimes, usually in the summer or Cairo.

Everyone smokes in Cairo. My theory on that is the air is so incredibly filthy it makes it that much cleaner to inhale it through a cigarette filter. By the time

you’ve been there for a few days your throat is so sore anyway, you may as well be smoking like a chimney.

One of the ladies in the room, a new lady, is a heavy smoker. She has a raspy voice and is always asking to be taken outside for a cigarette and then someone obliges, helping her to her wheelchair, detaching her oxygen and off they go. I can smell the hot heavy nicotine on them from across the room when they return. The rule must be that she can only ask a fellow smoker to do this with her. She asked the wrong person yesterday and received such a look of withering disapproval, she did without her cigarette.

I suppose they are used to me now, almost always making sounds, snorts and things. I guess I seem a little crazy but at least I have not taken to talking to you out loud. With that, I smile Frank, because I have spoken to you out loud but only ever in wild and windswept places where no ears can hear the words as they are carried away in the wind. I have no control of what I say in my sleep mind you, given the strange half sleep half waking who knows what the ladies have heard.

I have been sleeping again and for a second all the sounds in the background reminded me of lying on the soft white leather couch at James’, late on Saturday afternoon, an hour’s snooze. I would be tucked under his ivory quilt with Cracker hidden underneath. James wasn’t supposed to know his cat was with me. Biscuit would be perched comfortably at my feet. I can hearing the football scores on the BBC. Fulham 2 Queens Park Rangers 1. Albion 1 Wimbledon nil. West Bromich Everton a no score draw and so on and so on. I doze, and now for the Scottish league. Hibernian 1 Celtic 1. The drone goes on and on I like the presenter’s voice no changing in tone or emphasis. I always slept so well for that hour, peaceful, warm and safe.

I swear someone in the room has been reading the football results out loud. And I really was curled on James’ couch for the last hour. I guess I’m just a bit more

comfortable here if I can dream of football scores. Used to the snakes of lines around me. Can curl up happily with them but then again I must have been able to curl up happily with a snake most of my life if I look at Struan. Struan, a snake at my shoulder.

Since it is Saturday, there are many more people about. All the visitors who couldn’t make it in the week. Hordes walking down the hall talking children being restrained by their parents. Shushed and warned in the hall. Every chair in the room in use. Including mine but it has been moved across the room.

Football in Egypt is interesting with all the coffee houses setting out dozens of chairs in a chaotic cluster for big matches, where coffee is ed from one person to the next because you can’t move. People can rally round and watch the game on a TV that they can barely see. A snowy frazzled picture, everybody cheering in unison as a score happens. James and I make ourselves scarce during football games, our Arabic is just not good enough to understand what is going on because it really is the same as hearing it on the radio. But it’s nice to see the community spirit as they crowd around to watch.

There is community spirit here; the church ladies have stopped by to see if there is anything I need. But I can’t really talk to them. I could use a visitor though, it is terribly lonely lying here waiting for the days to , just waiting.

I wonder if any of your brothers or cousins are here. Is there any excuse at all for you to be setting foot in this hospital? Their wives, their children? Your wife, your children? Do you have a wife or children? I don’t want to wish tragedy on your family but I would love to hear your footsteps in the hall. I know I would recognise them.

I hate being here and cannot begin to understand why it is taking so long to

figure out what is wrong it is as if time is the only thing the doctors can give me. Time and antibiotics. The uncertainty is getting to me. Because there is only one thing I am certain of today. You’re not here Frank.

Sunday October 4

My body is twitchy with frustration, all this time just laying here and thinking things that I could do without. One of the reasons I have survived so well is my capacity to keep busy. I fear I am about to lose my mind. It is simply the frustration of doing nothing. Drugged to the eyeballs might help but I won’t take that option. So Frank what do I do now?

I don’t know where to go in my thoughts because it seems there is nowhere safe to go, a tangled conflict appears everywhere I look. My back aches, my jaw aches and I can’t stand it, I’m starving but can’t eat and I feel like doubling over from the pain in my stomach but that would be too strenuous. Let’s see itchy dirty greasy hmm maybe that’s just about enough for this little tirade.

So how’s your day going Frank?

I can hear the rush and roar of the wind outside, instead of it carrying me away it seems to be entering me a whirling chaotic rush through my head. Sometimes it seems to grab onto the seal of the window and try to pull the glass out. Same as that pain in my stomach like a hand from nowhere reaching deep inside me and ripping parts out.

I feel even the wind has betrayed me today. My friend the wind. My solace the wind. How could he have betrayed me too.

The wind surely is male?

Claire really is my only woman friend. I know other women but none I could call friends. Claire won’t miss me yet, it hasn’t been long enough.

It was only ten days ago that I drove into this town and because of my thoughts, the events of my life playing out before me it seems as I have been here for eternity. While I would not wish to be dead I really do wish to be a bit more alive. I have racked my brain for a pleasing thing to think. A free thing. Three things come to mind racing through the desert on Iron Maiden, charging through London on my bicycle and cruising down a beautiful white slope on skis. None of these appeal this morning and the noise around seems deafening or maybe I am just a bit oversensitive with the wind still howling outside and the incessant crashing of food carts I can find no peace.

The student helpers seem content with racing the carts in the hall no matter how much noise they create. There are more of them today, maybe this foul weather has brought them all inside too. I am sure they mean well, but enough is enough. I must be terrifying to look at still because only the most hardy comes near me and glances at the nil by mouth sign and promptly leaves my bed space. Perhaps it is the fierce half crazed look in my eyes?

Candy is a Monday to Friday day nurse so she is not here for me to chat with today. To hear a few funny words from.

Libby gone for the weekend, she apologetically told me she had a wedding to go to in London. I perked up. “No not London, England,” she apologised again. “Sorry it’s London, Ontario”.

My rings are still on my finger and will fall off soon with the weight I am losing.

About two years ago James and I gave each other rings for Christmas. We didn’t plan to do it and were both equally surprised when we found we had done the same thing. I gave him a beautiful titanium ring, thick and rounded with a long streak of gold in it. And a deep set diamond, a whole carat. As a diamond ring for a man it is very tasteful. And since it is titanium it is surprisingly weightless. A feather in your palm. The finish is matt and looked wonderful on James’ hand. A bright flash from the diamond when he talked, his hands were always gesturing or pointing.

I had cycled over to James’ flat that Christmas morning, the air fresh and clear, a touch of frost, mist rising from a hollow in the park and absolutely no one about. Not even a single dog walker. That was a first for London.

I dropped my pannier in his hall and we gave each other a big warm hug in front of all those photographs. We are pretty big on hugging. I have never mentioned that before. It is Claire who taught us to hug. She insisted that we learn the art. We embraced it!

James had coffee made, the smell filled his flat. He must have been at it for at least an hour before I arrived. Creamy white poinsettia on the table. Perfect white linen white china and pale white butter. Then there was a panettone, golden brown loaded with peel, raisins and currants. The table was set with a huge pile of fruit. No, not white fruit. I smile at that. Mangoes and kiwis, pineapple and strawberries all cut and displayed beautifully.

He picked all the peel out of his panettone, made a little pile of it on the side of his plate and I ate it. We drank out of big white mugs and then he took from his pocket a little box and ed it over to me. I was very surprised. I ran to the hall and searched my pannier for his present. A tiny white box, wrapped in crisp white paper, smooth folds and silver and gold ribbon. I put it on the table in front of him and gave him another hug.

We opened our boxes together. He was delighted.

I was delighted too. My ring was a group of three individual rings; two tiny platinum rounded bands, one for either side of a wide gold band. The gold band was studded intermittently with tiny diamonds and three deep blue sapphires. It filled my finger to the knuckle. It looked superb. We sat there for a while holding up our hands like newly engaged teenagers. These rings were worn on the ring finger of the left hand.

James told me he thought the three were perfect and perfectly echoed in the three sapphires. Because all things happened in threes.

I told him his was titanium because he was very likely to try space travel next.

We laughed together and ired our rings some more.

Cracker, who was sitting on the chair beside James meowed inquiringly about all the excitement, wanting to be included. Biscuit wandering about disgruntled, James’ feet were moving too much for him to comfortably lie down on.

The clatter of that cart again. Giggles in the hall.

And it has just reminded me of the noise in Cairo. Of tawla in a coffee house. Tawla is backgammon and it must be played with vigour, noise. The dice thrown hard against the table, sometimes bouncing on the floor the face checked before

it is picked up. The counting done crack, crack, crack on the table. I played almost every day with Bashir while James wrote in his big green book. I never read what James wrote while he was writing but always looked over and marvelled at his beautiful curving script, the way he was so absorbed in what he was doing, even the graceful way he held the pen. And the way he left perfect sized spaces for photos or ticket stubs. Even the receipt for our coffees sometimes. He was so meticulous in what he did he rarely noticed the game until he was done writing, and then took part in the cheering. He rarely played himself. Said he liked to watch the competition build between Bashir and I.

Coffee houses are for men really but since I am a foreigner and with men, it was ok for me to be there. Bashir smoothed the way. While we played the men would crowd around and watch, rooting for Bashir, groaning and roaring; giggling too, when he lost. Which he did a clear fifty percent of the time. Of course I lost fifty percent of the time too.

Bashir was our driver in Cairo. With his beat up old Lada, waxed and polished, that he was oh so very proud of. He won a rally in it ten years earlier, the medal placed on the dashboard beside his hand of Fatima. And he kept a little picture of us in a frame on the dashboard too. He changed it with one of a lovely tall Dutch lady or a couple from Australia. We were all his regulars. Spending months at a time with each of us when we were there. He showed us his other photos because he was very proud to have us all, much like his gold medal. We were never in Cairo at the same time and he didn’t have to choose between us.

We met him outside the Nile Hilton. The Nile Hilton seemingly the place for meeting anyone new. Leaning on his car smoking a cigarette and happily taking the directions to our place on Manial Roda. “ye mean wah ye mean.” He laughed at our pronunciation and added he only lived around the corner himself.

It seems to me in my life there has been a lot of laughing and it is something that we did often whoever we were with. We didn’t spend time with people who

couldn’t laugh. Who couldn’t laugh at themselves either. We liked him, so we took his phone number and called him when we needed him, until eventually we just booked the entire time we would be in Cairo. He helped smooth the way for everything. Organising the riding for me, even getting on a horse just once to please me. I almost fell off mine I laughed so hard at him. He laughed too knowing how ridiculous he looked, arms clasped around the horse’s neck, he refused to let go. To sit up. But boy did he laugh.

He took us to places where we would not normally have been welcomed, but as part of his family we were.

Once we played a wonderful game with stones in the courtyard of an old disused mosque. I couldn’t understand the game. We threw the little stones into an intricate square drawn in the dust. I leaned on the fountain where the faithful would have washed their feet and I watched. James played, he caught on and won too.

Bashir was also a very good driver, never too outrageously fast and always careful. Honking his horn to indicate a lane change the way they do in Cairo. Talking and gesticulating the whole time too. ing baksheesh in the proper manner. We learnt a lot about Egypt from him. We saw Pharonic Cairo, Coptic Cairo and Muslim Cairo.

Unlike Mustafa in Luxor he never tried to sell us things and had almost no cousins or family because he never mentioned them beyond his wife and two children. No perfume factories to visit. No papyrus painters.

He did not wholly approve of Guillaume who was really quite camp and besides that, it was not proper for me to be staying with him; alone with a man without James! I don’t suppose he really approved of Guillaume’s lifestyle either but

didn’t comment on that too often knowing we were so close to him. He didn’t drive for Guillaume when we weren’t there.

I realised that Bashir did not know about James’ death and it hurt to have to tell him. I let it out accidentally. I spoke of James in the past tense and even with his limited English he knew what I meant. Then I had to tell him the whole story. He pulled over and wept with his face in his hands. He felt even more possessive of me after that and offered to take me home with him, and his wife could look after me.

I insisted on going to the flat, I explained as gently as I could that I had to go through all of James’ things there.

It was hard seeing Guillaume and he hugged me too hard at the door and then carried my bag upstairs for me. Despite it being afternoon, he had the glasses ready for coffee, the kettle boiled.

That night we went to a small mosque and saw the whirling dervishes. I had seen them before and could not help but be transfixed by them. In the darkened room you soon forgot the hard benches with the wild wailing, the drums beating and the endless twirling of the dervishes. Streaks of colour moving so quickly you began to forget that they are human. I know they wear white and have never found a reference to them wearing colour but in my mind they are coloured, with the right palm raised to God, the left downward towards the earth, they become a streak of colour to me.

Even with the mounting misery of grieving James afresh in our old surroundings the dervishes helped. In some ways I could understand the endless whirling, it would remove any ill fate or bad omens and they and those of us there would lose our identities and become one with God. I drank in the music the darkness

and felt some peace in the twirling night.

We had several days together revisiting favourite spots of James’, pointing things out to each other that James loved. Guillaume knew him so well, understood him. It pleased me that to know that while James was away from London he had such a close friend.

We hired a felucca and drifted lazily along the Nile, enjoying the sunset, looking at the stars lighting up the sky. The chaos and noise of Cairo a soft blur to those of us on the river. We had a picnic with us, the last of the English cheese I had brought with me and bread and tomatoes. And drank far too much beer. Egyptian beer – Stella beer.

We giggled the whole way home. Trying not to stagger or appear drunk in any way. I don’t know if we were wholly successful.

Guillaume became my lover. We were in my room on my bed and it just happened. So slowly naturally that we didn’t realise until we were entwined in each other’s arms. It somehow felt right. It felt good. I felt my shoulders shrug involuntarily then relax as a response.

“Just get through this Audrey, you will look back and not feel the same intense pain you have now.” He gently stroked my hair away from my cheek and then tucked it behind my ear.

My eyes were red from crying and I could not bear such tenderness. I pulled away from him.

“In so many ways you are like your brother” he said, watching me intently. “Yet you both are so very different also.”

I looked at Guillaume and saw the same things that James would have seen. A man capable of such ion and such tenderness. It was something that we both must have cherished, yet we deprived ourselves of. Except through Guillaume.

“James committed suicide Audrey. It saddens me, he told me he was going to do it but I didn’t believe him.” Guillaume studied the ceiling lamp, a globe of pierced tin with blue Egyptian glass in some of the holes. It had the effect of making the room seem round. “It is a terrible burden that I will always carry.” He shook his head as he spoke.

He stood up on the bed and hit the light. Its swinging had the effect of a ship on a stormy sea and I began to feel a little queasy with it.

“I simply refused to believe him.” He hit the light harder this time, and jumped off the bed. There was nothing I could say and so many things I would have liked to say, to ask, but this was not the time.

“James said he didn’t want to continue, to put us through it all.” Guillaume paced back and forth in front of the bed.

The room seemed to be swinging side to side. I was feeling dizzy and sick. This information, the swinging light, the seemingly swaying room.

Guillaume paced then looked towards me again. He saw the sick look on my face and immediately stepped up on the bed, reached up and slowed the movement of the lamp. He laid down again and scooped me into his arms and held me tight and wept.

It turns out he had been James’ lover for the past three years. I had guessed some time in the evening from the way he spoke of him. It made me feel sick I wanted to scream in revulsion. I wondered at how incredibly naïve I had been. But as I held him it didn’t seem to matter anyway. In a strange way it had brought all three of us closer.

Later Guillaume got up and walked to his room, I could see through my French doors. He opened his top drawer and reached to the very back and produced a wooden box that he set down and opened carefully. Taking out a small scrap of fabric. Instantly I knew what he had.

He gave it to me. Gently dropped it into my open cupped hand, closing my fingers softly around it and kissing the tips.

Funny I had not thought about it at the time of the funeral. So unlike me to miss an important detail like that.

“James gave it to me before he left,” Guillaume said through a flurry of tears. “I should have known then but I would never have expected him to do it, you know. I thought-well.” He shrugged, an expansive movement of his shoulders.

I held the ring delicately in my fingers examining it as if maybe it could reveal the secret to me.

“I haven’t worn it or even put it on.” He murmured not taking his eyes off the ring as if by chance it would come alive on its own.

I slipped the ring on my thumb. It was huge and dangling, the diamond catching one of the tiny beams of light from the ceiling lamp and sending glittering flashes of colour.

I choked back the tears and took Guillaume’s hand and slipped it on the ring finger of his left hand. “I think that is what James meant to do.”

We held each other bodies entwined and wept until we finally slept.

Guillaume brought special coffee in for me that morning and it was a special delight that he sat down beside me. I was groggy from the beer all the emotions and everything we had said and done the night before. I had lain in bed nervous as I listened to the spoon clank on the glasses. That he chose to be with me again now, made me weak with relief. I couldn’t face the loss of this last close link with James.

We drank our coffee in relative silence and he traced his fingers over my body softly like the touch of a feather.

He stroked my buttocks and I clenched them tight my body going rigid because

of his touch.

Then he simply said, “Was it Struan who got to you too?”

I recoiled in anger knocking the last of my coffee over as I rose and pulled away from him.

“What do you mean by that!” I was suddenly shrieking at him “tell me exactly what you mean!”

I was on my knees pounding him, the bed with my fists. I became deranged and Guillaume just laid there calmly taking the odd blow and letting me scream it out.

“No one knows!” I sobbed. “No one knows.”

“Audrey,” he whispered, “it is all right now one knows, you didn’t know about James, James didn’t know about you, ok?”

We were silent again and I cried and cried until finally there were no more tears.

“You ok?” He asked brushing my damp hair off my cheek and I felt a rush of anger at him again, how could he be so tender with me when I was as worthless as Struan had made me, when I really didn’t deserve it. I would never deserve that after all I had done. I pounded him on the chest with my fists, such a futile

helpless act. But it did help.

“A tiny bit better?” he asked in that gentle voice. I sobbed on his smooth hairless chest.

“Audrey, James didn’t know.” Was all he said. He smoothed my hair and held me.

So Struan belonged to both of us as well.

I know you would not like Guillaume but then I expect you will never meet him. His gayness too obvious for you he might have scared you off. I think if you were to look at the whole man you would be very surprised at all he is, Frank.

James must have seen it too. That is why he chose him.

I chose him.

We both chose him.

That wind howling and rattling still. The glass shuddering against it.

Frank in your own way I suppose you belonged to both of us as well.

Monday October 5

Frank this morning the sky seemed a very strange blue grey with spots of white cloud. As I watched it go by, I realised the strange blue was in fact cloud because part of the real blue sky appeared a little later. Amazing how one small square on the world can fool you.

Flowers arrived.

Bright. I need the colour today. There are three big sunflowers mixed with blooms of purple and red. Three orange Transvaal daisies too. The sunflowers seem to be faces smiling down at me from my bedside table. I knew who sent them, of course that didn’t stop me from hoping for a second they were from you Frank. A nurse’s aide read the card for me and adjusted them so I could see them perfectly. She ired them too.

The card is signed, “Thinking of you Claire, B & C too.” So even the cats are thinking about me.

The car hire company must have got hold of her from my credit card. I wonder if they put the cost of the whole vehicle on my card. That should be about my limit taken care of!

Claire, Claire phone me.

“Those flowers are beautiful,” said Candy, who had just finished changing my

sheets. She stopped and ran her finger over the velvety centre of one of the Transvaal daisies. Soft little pad for butterflies to land. I know they are velvety because I like textures and I often stroked them too.

She smiled at me, “It’s nice to know someone out there cares, isn’t it?”

“I guess I have been feeling a little forgotten,” I mused.

Candy plumped my pillows, holding my head up while she did it. “Audrey, you have been very brave considering all you have been through you know.”

I smiled and felt teary. Sympathy was not really what I expected. I suppose I haven’t told you but they have added a new machine beside the slide projector one. Maybe that’s why she thinks I’m brave now. The new one whirrs constantly like a food processor on a slow grind. A giant cube of solid grey with lights, cables, and of course tubes that are leading to me. I have always been able to hear things so clearly. It is probably pesto that the machine is making. With being here and all it just didn’t seem important until now to tell you that my health seems to have got a little worse.

No whirring in my kitchen though. James had all the toys, I like to do things in a classical manner with a whisk or knife. A lot of work but I swear it improves the taste. James made wonderful pesto. With his machine.

I would like to be wearing my favourite charcoal-almost-black corduroy shirt, and be standing in my kitchen making something. Anything. A knife in my hand cutting neatly I am always neat. Perfect matching cubes of something. A stainless steel pot on the stove with olive oil, onions and garlic. Everything starts

that way. What would I make? What would you like Frank? I can imagine you sitting on the stools where James and Claire always sat. The kitchen would be warm. You would like my counter; it is dark purple, like aubergine. It is made of ceramic tiles and is very smooth and shiny. I usually have a big bowl of hard green pears and plums on the counter; they look nice but I eat them too. Lime green is the second colour of my kitchen. The two are lovely together.

I was standing in the kitchen chopping onions when Claire arrived. My eyes were red rimmed and streaming. She came and sat down. I wiped my eyes with my forearm knife still in my hand. “Onions” I said.

“So how was Egypt?”

I didn’t look up from the chopping. “I enjoyed Egypt very much.” I had already decided in my mind I wasn’t going to make too it easy for her.

She fidgeted on the stool. I had made no move towards the kettle. Tea.

“Work is-”

I interrupted her, “I’m not really interested in work at the moment, Claire, to be quite honest with you I couldn’t care less.” That was the truth. it had dawned on me while I was away. It all seemed so trivial. I could not be bothered with Bevan Bedroom Productions anymore.

“Audrey don’t be angry with me.” She rearranged the pears and plums, putting

them in two distinct groups within the bowl. Pears. Plums. Her turn to make things difficult.

“That is why you were so rough with me about selling James’ flat, isn’t it? I had to find out for myself.” Point of the knife poking sharply into the board as I leaned on it.

“Mmm…” her best psycho analyst’s response. She was fidgeting more with the pears.

I snatched the bowl away, “You’ll bruise them.”

She sat quietly then, just waiting, head nodding to the rat tat tat of the knife on the board.

“I’m going to find things aren’t I? In his flat.”

“Mmm…”

“I found out a lot of things in Cairo.”

“I imagine you did Audrey.”

I peeled another onion. “So how long have you known, Claire?”

“Known what?”

“You really are being difficult, and coy doesn’t suit you not at all not one little bit!” I spat at her. “Known that James was gay?”

“Oh,” she paused, looking straight at me, eyes soft. “Five years I guess. I promised James not to tell you. I am not supposed to tell you but I knew you would figure things out. I couldn’t tell you until you were ready or knew some of it.”

I raised my eyebrows and continued on the onions. “So whose friend are you?”

“That’s unfair.”

“I know,” I nodded assent my head going with the knife “And what about Struan, do you know about him too?”

“Yes Audrey, there is more for you to know about Struan.”

“Hmmph.” I didn’t want to go into it how could she have known all this? “That he systematically raped James and I every summer from when we were thirteen?” I was having trouble seeing the cutting board by this time; onion tears, emotion tears. “Anything else you want to add?”

“Oh Audrey I didn’t know!”

“Well now you do.”

With her hands on the counter’s edge she looked like she was going to run around and hug me. I chopped fiercer, faster. She winced and stayed put.

“Onion soup,” I sniffed.

She had looked at the pile of onions cut and the bag almost empty, “That’s not the way you usually cut them.”

I diced through the pile unevenly “I am breaking from tradition for once,” I said, slamming the knife down one more time.

She flinched. And watched. “Audrey, Struan died of AIDS two years ago”

“What!” She was brave to tell me this while wielding a knife, I set it down on the board and leaned heavily against the counter.

Claire walked me to the table. We sat down and she made tea.

I rubbed my eyes with my hands, spreading fine onion juice into them, and cried. There was too much happening, all of the things I had known for sure were lies. The balance of things was skewed, swinging. I felt unsteady, a headache hit me like a blow with a butcher’s cleaver.

I wandered to the bathroom and washed my face, my hands, scrubbed my nails hard getting rid of the onion, all the while shaking my head as if maybe I could get things balanced if I did so. The icy cold water giving me a jolt, which helped.

Tea in a mug on the table when I returned.

“James was his companion at the hospice, you see Struan had no-one,” she said her own eyes misty. “It was one of the main reasons he went away so much every year, he needed the break.”

“Did he have AIDS too?” I blurted.

“He didn’t tell me, but I sort of guessed.”

I drank my tea. Claire never made it right – not like James.

“Struan made us swear not to tell you, he was terrified of you.”

“Us!” Spitting tea out. Slamming the mug down tea splashing over the table. I stopped thinking for a moment my mind a shocked blank. “You knew Struan?”

Claire winced, “yes well someone had to take over when James was away. You see everyone abandoned him when they found out he had AIDS.”

“I abandoned him years ago.”

“I know, Audrey. I know. I thought it was because you had found out what he had done to James. He never once mentioned what he did to you. He always spoke fondly of you, highly of you.” She leaned across the table and held my arm.

“Hmmph.” I glared at her “Well bully for him.”

I yanked my arm away and mopped the tea up with a used tissue from the pile that had grown on the table scrubbing little circles with it. Tears fell and I scrubbed at them too.

“Was I stupid or blind not to have figured things out?”

“You were neither Audrey.” She said simply, not judging me or James.

“But he was my brother I should have known everything about him,” I said sniffing giving up on the tissues and wiping my nose on my sleeve.

“You knew everything you needed to know.”

“James was a good man wasn’t he, Claire?”

“Yes Audrey, he was.”

James’ pesto is bright green and I have been sleeping dreaming of it. With brilliant red tomatoes, roasted peppers – red ones yellow ones, and thick crusty bread. The machine is still whirring and I had better think of some other way to describe it or I will be moaning in pain from thinking about food. A paint mixer maybe.

So today is a day of colour and I can see that, looking out the window yet again. It is strange the way your perception of the world changes when all you can see of it is one tiny square. How I know that square. A small paved area; beyond that, sumac on the banks of the river and fields and fields moving on into the distance. I have always loved sumac the way the group stands together and picks out a form that appears to be one. Rising bumps here and there but still smooth as one. The furry red tops are so bright now and the leaves are so many shades of red, crimson and touched with gold, they make me gasp with pleasure. Underneath there are milkweed, some with the pods splitting the white fluff bursting out. Others still perfect tear drops, no sign of a split in them yet. They are all a soft yellowy green. The contrast between the sumac and milkweed is striking. We don’t have milkweed in England. So we don’t have monarch butterflies either.

For the life of me I can’t all of the things I’ve told you. There are so many things I would like to say. Maybe I’ve said them. Fleeting like the butterflies I suppose. The fever is getting me again and I don’t want a repeat of last week.

You had butterfly bushes in your garden, huge purple cones that were always covered in them.

I planting bulbs with your mother, Frank. You, your brothers and James dug out all the beds while we were in the kitchen making a huge pot of chilli. How possessive I became. I was sitting in my rocking chair watching your mother make chilli.

Out in the garden too, I was watching but for once had to help, it was too cold to be standing still.

My fingers were icy, but having them deep in the earth made them warm for the earth was warm and that surprised me, pleased me. Your mother taught me about plants, kneeling at her side sticking the bulbs in. I thought she was planting onions. The pointy bits at the top, where the flower comes out and the flat hairy bit at the bottom that will make roots. She scattered them by the handful across the beds and we just dug and stuck them in where they fell. We spent the whole weekend kneeling there. Four bushel baskets of bulbs.

And then it snowed; just a fine icing sugar spread of white over everything. The heat of the newly dug bed melted it pretty fast, much faster than the rest of the garden.

The beds followed the curving line of the bank and that spring the edges came alive with tiny green buds, bigger ones towards the back, all sticking out through the snowy dirt. Then the crocus’ purple ones, yellow ones, all along the edge. What seemed like a million daffodils, more sunny nodding heads appeared at the back. And later the tulips; orange, yellow, red, purple, tall, short, fat, thin. I

chose my favourite one, it had long tapered petals in a soft lemon sorbet colour. Your mother had scattered them in such nice sweeping patterns, although I didn’t realise it at the time. The result was so beautiful. It was ours, we had done it.

The next year I was surprised to find that they came up again. Of course I know now that bulbs do that. I wonder if they are still in your garden. It must be mostly daffodils the tulips wouldn’t have lasted this past twenty odd years. Would they?

Come to think of it, there were always sunflowers in your garden too. Planted all along on top of the bulbs, they were never cut and the birds used to come and feast on them. Your mother would approve of my terrace, with its colour and huge variety of plants. She would have liked England too, because the growing season is so much longer and we don’t have to worry about snow too much.

I wonder if there will be an early snow this year? Most years there is one about this time, never staying long, just letting us know that winter is coming. I can’t imagine it right now with the sun streaming down the way it is. Almost makes me forget the wind and storms we’ve been having.

I feel a bit like it is winter, coming inside, bundled in all those coats, sweaters, scarves, hats and mitts, the sweat pouring off you instantly because it takes so long to get all the layers of things off.

I am sweating like mad again. The fever is back with a vengeance. Candy has had to change my sheets again and she’s given me extra layer of padding underneath so that the plastic cover on the bed doesn’t stick to me through the puddle and wet sheet. Because at the rate I’m going, it’ll need changing again soon. They have increased the fluids in my IV so I don’t get dehydrated. I can feel the sweat forming at the small of my back, behind my knees. Beads on my

upper lip, in my eyebrows.

I always got wet in London. Cycling. Wet through. I’d shower when I got to work anyway, so it didn’t really matter. Everyone thought I was insane for cycling in all weather, all year but I figured you’d get wet then you’d get dry. If I got wet cycling home I’d throw my things off in the hall and dive into bed, grit and all. Because in London you were always covered in grit.

Those flowers beside my bed help, I can look at them and be absorbed. Forget the sweat and pain block out the machines. James brought me a tiny bouquet to the office once and we both laughed so hard over it. I have a perfect globe of crackled glass for this very purpose which I found at Portobello Road. I keep a tiny bouquet on my desk at work and it would have to have at least red yellow orange and purple in it, not to mention a variety of greens. The one James brought that day was a delicate mix of hosta leaves, variegated soft green and cream mixed with startling white freesia. Too white to be a real bunch of flowers.

I put it in a jar and set it on his desk. “No you’re not getting away with that one!”

I stomped to the store immediately and returned with bright green lady’s mantle, brilliant blue cornflowers and shocking pink globe-flower.

I put it neatly in my little vase ruffled them about and announced to all “now that is a bouquet.”

In my flat I keep flowers in the dining room and living room. Every arrangement I love, I spend ages selecting the right flowers, sometimes just mixed single

stalks that scream and sometimes ones chosen with a bit more caution. The arrangement in the living room is positioned on the mantelpiece where part of it is reflected back in the big ornate mirror and it hits you directly in the face the second you walk into the room. The arrangement in the dining room is freestanding in the middle of the table but placed one third down its length. I have a huge dining room table mahogany, so old it looks black it could seat ten easy but usually it only seats three at one end. Me, James and Claire.

I’m rambling Frank and have drifted in and out of sleep all day. Again.

I wonder if my mother would have had a garden to equal yours. Or would she have danced through life the way she danced through the house. She never got a chance though did she? I think of my mother often, just nice thoughts, made up of scraps of memories. But when I am sick, I wish for my mother. My real mother. You have to wish for your mother don’t you? When we were really small, she would give James and I Smarties when we were sick. Get Better pills she called them. If I am sick I ask for Smarties, my little coloured Get Better pills. I have been sick and alone so many times. James would have come Claire would have come, but there were times and places when they couldn’t. Like now. I’m going to cry. I want my mother. Because I feel pretty sick right now.

I’ve slept and cried and slept. Cried softly mind you, I don’t want everybody feeling sorry for me. And it doesn’t seem so bad right now. That’s because the moon has come out. It was so very dark earlier.

It is sitting low on the horizon, a full moon Frank, big round whole. It seems gigantic, causing a shadow of the window pane to fall across my bed. Light shining off all of the machines beside me. Are you looking at the moon tonight? If so please think of me.

Tuesday October 6

Today the wind is a gentle woman moving slowly, gracefully by my window rustling the leaves in the sun, the glorious sun. I do love the sun; how can you not help but smile when the weather is like this? When the sun is smiling down upon you. One of those magnificent autumn days with everything in full colour.

They have removed the food processor and I am really much better. Forty-eight hours with that thing flushing out my system did the trick. The fever broke overnight.

There is a new doctor with gleaming white teeth in a big smile; he stands over me, hands on his hips. “So you’re doing much better?”

“I am,” I reply. Almost chirpy. I don’t him but he saw me when I was in and out a few days ago. He talks to me in such a familiar way. I respond in like.

“Well, we are going to keep a close eye on you,” flashing of white teeth. “You have responded well to the drug therapy and maybe we can avoid surgery.”

I would rather not have chunks of me carved out. While the pain has certainly lessened it is still present. The nurses have explained they can change the drugs, the pain drugs, the sleeping drugs, but I don’t want any, I want to be aware of what is going on. You see they have caught me lying awake, staring out at the night.

Candy was the one elected to talk to me since they know I have warmed to her and she sat at my bed for a while and explained all this. “Audrey, you are going to have to get some sleep, you need to rest. Just lying there closing your eyes when we come along is not the same thing.”

I listen to her and promise I will sleep. But I am a fighter Frank, a silent strong fighter and I will get through. I have got through many times before.

Has the monotony of the hospital got to you yet Frank? It certainly has its ups and downs. I smile.

The sun is shining on my covers right now and I am drifting in and out of sleep. There is an old lady visiting the old lady beside my bed. They are talking about strawberry jam, she just opened a new jar this morning and had it on her toast it has reminded her of being out in the field picking the strawberries. Fresh as an early summer’s day she said.

There was that sunny afternoon when you and James were sitting on the rock talking. It was the summer before you kissed me. I came along the path from the swimming hole so quietly stalking. I could hear your voices but not make out the words above the sound of the water and trees. You were laughing too. I froze for a moment and just listened. I had a hard time not giggling because you two had no idea I was there. How close I was. I enjoyed listening, it wasn’t very interesting but I liked the way your voices blended together.

Then I stepped out and you both gawked at me. I grinned and ed the two of you on the rock and lounged along the edge so I could look up at both you and James, my fingers dangling in the ing water. You were wearing faded blue

cut-off jeans and nothing else, no shirt, no underwear nothing. No underwear – I was catching glimpses of your body that I found quite exciting. Golden sun, golden tan, golden body hair. Tiny views of white thigh and up through the frayed edges of those cut-offs. I couldn’t take my eyes off you. But you kept talking away with James and barely noticed me. The same as I didn’t notice James really. Or Struan.

I must have had longing for you written all over my face.

Struan quietly watched it all from the bridge. Leaning over the railing smoking. He flicked his cigarette butt into the river.

He called out my name sharply “Audrey!” and I turned to look up accidentally rolling backwards at the same time. It was not the first time I had fallen into the river but it was the most poignant. I could hear him using a slightly different tone greeting you two, “James, Frank.” As I tumbled in with an almighty splash that sprayed you both. It was a cold shock. I had to swim against the current around to the side where you could step up, my clothing stuck to me all over. You and James were beside yourselves with laughter. I stood there dripping, furious. You didn’t know what was going on in my head. Or in Struan’s.

I left you for the house, scrambling up the path, willow leaves sticking wetly to me and grit on the palms of my hands. Struan was waiting out of eyeshot on the road. He grabbed my upper arm cruelly I could feel his fingers sink into my flesh.

He spat, “You are MY little whore.” And didn’t say another word as he marched me up the hill down the lane and to the shed.

Why he chose the shed I’ll never know. But he savagely raped me in the same manner as before. This time though the very fierceness frightened me and I obeyed his every word with real fear that he was going to hurt me this time. Really hurt me.

“I saw it Audrey,” he hissed in my ear.

“What Struan?” turning my head towards him. His forehead was touching my cheek, his red curls in my eyes. If he had seen the look in my eyes he may never have come near me again but I couldn’t show him that. I looked at all the tools neatly in their places on the wall in front of me. I thought murderous thoughts. In my head selecting a sharp screwdriver and plunging it into the base of his neck.

“The way you were looking at him,” he bit my shoulder sharply, his teeth tearing my flesh.

I didn’t budge, not even a wince. I closed my eyes and drew calm breaths through my nostrils.

“You were lusting after him.”

“I don’t know what you mean Struan.” All innocence my body completely still despite the terrible quaking inside.

“Audrey,” a mocking voice testing one last time. His fingertips dug into my hipbones.

I never itted to looking at you Frank and I wonder what would have happened if I had.

He was soon appeased, became tender kissed my neck.

I swore to be his alone, his little whore, in a strong clear voice. When he left I walked to the barn, didn’t run like my head screamed at me. Run, run. I added the ten dollars to the growing pile in the bottom bushel basket.

He still called me his little boy but my breasts had grown a tiny bit over the years. They were covered with bruises from his rough handling, as were my hips my back. The bite on my shoulder had bled. It would leave a scar. My arm where he had half dragged me to the shed, well it was ringed in a deep red mark from his grip. His hand never moved, the mark was a clear print of his hand every finger outlined in blue. His thumb had left a deep black gouge.

I can hear it in my mind. Even today I can think those words with the same strong voice I used that day. I try not to think about it. I carry it in a little box hidden away where only I know of it.

All those secrets. I worked so hard to keep them secret and paid such a high price for it and now everyone knows. Well some people know. That is enough to make me feel like everyone knows.

Claire talked; tried to explain it all to me sitting at a café on Kings Road the day before I left. Well I don’t want to think about it her words to sooth me help me

understand maybe make it all better. Did you know I bought all new clothes to come here. I wanted to look my best in case I saw you. Of course they were mostly black things but some that nice dark charcoal grey too. A small departure from black.

Dressed now in the hospital gowns of mint green or pale pink depending what they put on me. Snaps on the shoulders so the wires and things can get in and out. A huge departure from black.

Lying here now I had quite forgotten that there is a real world out there. Since I seem to exist entirely in my own head at the moment and I need to grasp something tangible from memory to be reminded of it.

Kings Road, the number 19 buses that go right over Battersea Bridge to my place. Those lovely old fashioned Route Masters, bright red, where you can jump on and off at the back and dash up the stairs for the front seat. The seat with the view. A ticket collector asking where you will be going, talking, joking, holding onto a seat as he winds out a ticket for you. The people, droves of people. Kings Road is chaos. That is the easiest way to describe it, sometimes even on a bike it is difficult to navigate. The pedestrians are terrible, all laden down with bags because Kings Road is one of the best places to shop. Never looking where they are going because the windows are too interesting. If I cycle down Kings Road I rehearse in my head: if a pedestrian gets in my way and I can’t avoid him I will leap onto him and have him cushion my fall. I have had so many falls, not all my own fault and a bit of cushioning by a pedestrian would help. I have never done it mind you. Once a man had his hand up hailing a cab and as I went by I reached up and slapped his hand with mine. He was shocked at first, but then I could hear him laughing as I continued on. A deep full laugh. I was laughing too.

At the moment I can see it so clearly in my head. I’d start at Sloane Square and Peter Jones, and walk you all the way down the street. I laugh again. The

Chelsea Psychic Gardens on the left, well at least for the first ten years in London I called it the Chelsea Psychic gardens. Do you have any idea how many people I said that to? It is actually the Chelsea Physic Gardens. I can be incredibly naïve sometimes. I have to stop laughing, although I am much better, I can’t laugh too much, it still hurts deep inside my abdomen when I move. I imagined a garden where all sorts of supernatural things could happen, where herbs would be grown to enhance your ability to see into the future and a tea of special flowers would alter your personality in some enchanting way. No one ever corrected me they probably thought how charming, how colonial. I can get away with that. Canadianisms eh?

The Chelsea Flower show is held there. The most wonderful show on earth. My first year in London I was riding down the embankment and looking at them setting the show up trucks and plants and more plants. Whole gardens being made, huge trees brought in, and yes more plants. And I forgot what I was doing I was so interested in what they were doing and I hit the curb and fell off my bike into the road. Oh I hate to it it but I am a member of the Royal Horticultural Society. Can you imagine? Me.

Oh Frank it truly is a good day. I don’t know what it is feeling better everything. Maybe the happy faces of those beautiful sunflowers beside my bed. The thoughts of strawberry jam on toast. Summer days. I had better be careful here, I am exhausting myself! The weather is fickle though, now there is not a hint of sky or sun and the clouds are very low, dark and burdened. But I am still feeling good.

It was a Tuesday morning. Actually that was only two weeks ago. You see what I mean about this little bit of time taking on the appearance of a whole lifetime.

The café is on the sunny side of the street, done to look just like a real French café. A good place for a Tuesday morning, with the sun shining. Happy people on the street still clinging to summer. Inside some people reading papers on

those wooden poles that hold the paper together. Others just drinking coffee, watching the street.

Claire and I were in the farthest corner of the window. I could look out, she couldn’t, the sun was warm on me. The waiter in his white apron brought us cappuccinos. I got a croissant too. I let the sugar sink in through the foam, leaving a big hole in it before I stirred. Then I started with the spoon, the chocolate making a brown twirl in the foam until it was all the same colour. And for some reason I felt agitated and kept right on stirring staring straight over Claire’s shoulder through the window and onto the street.

“Audrey, could you stop!” said Claire looking at me alarmed.

“Oh sorry,” I licked the spoon and rested it on the saucer and looked at her.

“Where were you?” she asked, worry on her face.

“I don’t know,” I frowned. “Where was I?”

“You weren’t here with me, that’s for sure.”

“Ok how did Struan find him? I mean we’ve had absolutely no all these years.” Feigning interest, feeling betrayal in my throat.

“Actually it was the reverse. James found Struan quite by accident.”

“Oh!” I was surprised, imagining Struan sneaking around behind my back to James.

“Well James left work early one day to get his jabs before he went away and bang, he walked right into Struan as he was coming out of the hospital. I guess he looked in rough shape and James talked to him. Heard the whole story. That was about four years ago.” Claire took a sip from her cappuccino.

I gazed over her shoulder. My mind a blank again, staring out at the ing world. Did they betray me with Struan or protect me from him?

I brushed my hair away from my face, resting my chin on my palm. I forced myself to concentrate on what Claire was saying, it seemed to fade and blur; in and out. I know it was because I didn’t really want to hear it all, but if I did this once I may never have to hear it again. Or ever ask again.

“I would have gone right by him so many countless times.” Hammersmith and Fulham Hospital is on Kings Road, the new one built right where the old one was. The hospice is nearby too.

“I know, Audrey,” said Claire, leaning over, hand on my arm again. The warmth of her equal to the warmth of the sun. “I often wondered if you would see me or James go in. I felt like I was making furtive glances over my shoulder every time I entered the building.”

“I would have helped too you know.”

“I know.”

“James wanted you to but it was Struan, he insisted you not be told. So I helped instead.”

I gave a little snort and felt that rising sense of betrayal but who did the betraying? Claire or James.

“James didn’t tell me, about-uh-well what Struan had done to him?” She looked embarrassed. “I mean I took it strictly as a cousin helping a cousin. Family, you know?”

I nodded. “Guillaume told me, I didn’t know either but I’m glad he did.” My hands were shaking now and I couldn’t pick up my cup. “I suppose that makes it seem sort of complete. I’m glad you know all of it too.” My mouth saying things that seemed so disconnected to my real thoughts.

She rattled on, ing out all the important details of what had happened those last two years of Struan’s life. Two years since he died. They had kept that secret so long.

“We pretty well looked after him in his flat those last few years and finally he was in the hospice.” Claire looked sad. “And we went there every day.”

I hadn’t touched the croissant.

I was fairly numb and flat by the afternoon as I left for Heathrow. I thought about it on the plane the whole way. James’ ashes in the wooden box in the little green velvet bag on my lap. I hadn’t asked about where Struan’s remains were. I didn’t know if I cared. I leaned my head on the window and stared out. And slept. I always sleep on planes.

I have been sleeping again and it is dark. Evening already. What woke me was a disturbing vision.

Two bleeding hands being held up to be bandaged. Or feet needing bandaging, no not the time with the pitchfork, it is something else, so very different from that, this is a plea for help and I cannot where it comes from. This is when I do need James or Claire, I’m sure they would this.

It is so very clear. An image of-yes-hands. But not Struan’s he wouldn’t have held his hands out for anyone to help him.

Libby has walked by down the hall, her aunt is in another room now. She isn’t in critical condition anymore unlike those of us in here. Must be after suppertime now.

She stopped by later and we talked, she gave me all sorts of details of the history of the town, who married who and all that. She did stop by yesterday but the ladies in the room shushed her and told her not to wake me. I guess they are all looking out for me now.

I listened to it all, some people I ed, others not. I was even able to ask about a few she had forgotten. It was nice to hear all those familiar names, to recall the faces. We giggled like school children.

“Now that little boy Rick Morgan, who spent all the time with you at the bridge is Frank Addison’s son.” She scrutinised me as she spoke.

The little monkey is the son of Louise Morgan and you Frank his father. So Frank, there are things I have yet to find out.

“I thought maybe you had something going with Frank?” She interrupted my thoughts.

Luckily I can keep the emotion off my face but I had a hard time with it, let me tell you. Libby talks all the time so I didn’t have long to look imive.

She said it again, “I thought maybe you had something going with Frank, I know we weren’t at school at the same time but I was sure you did.” Libby is persistent.

“Well we grew up together I practically lived in his house all those years.” I managed a laugh. I didn’t ask about you, about her, I couldn’t, I would have given myself away. I didn’t know Louise Morgan. She must have moved here after I left. Rick is a Morgan too. Morgan, that means you are not married. Hmmm.

“You never really had an interest in boys.”

I smiled wearily, “No I didn’t, did I?”

“You were just too busy getting good marks.”

“I was.”

We talked more about school, my mind was mainly lingering over you and Louise Morgan, imagining her blond, tall, athletic, everything I was not. That would have been eight or ten years ago, just about the time James and I were finding our feet. Hadn’t even begun Bevan Bedroom Productions. Still slugging it out at our jobs, dreaming, discovering London and Europe. Hadn’t even made it to Egypt yet either.

I haven’t spent much of my time speculating on your life Frank, there just didn’t seem to be any point in it. Yes I wondered, but mostly just hoped that you were happy. I was happy having you with me to tell all my little stories to.

Libby has gone home now, it must be after nine because all the visitors are gone and the room is settling into quiet. Where did today go? It seems to have ed so quickly.

Surely you must have talked to the little monkey about the rescue? Have you no curiosity whatsoever about what I am doing here? Frank why have you not come to see me?

I know that the days are fleeting in autumn as they get shorter and shorter but they seem to be about an hour shorter every day and then of course the nights are getting longer and longer, looming heavily in front of me.

At the moment I have the moon. The moon peering through the stormy clouds. It is eerie and beautiful watching the clouds reach and whisper by. Tonight I don’t feel so alone, so frightened.

Please look up at the moon tonight Frank.

Wednesday October 7

Frank it snowed! It has snowed overnight. For a while I watched the flakes fall, then I must have fallen asleep. Now woken, everything is covered. Not a light dusting but a thick fluffy layer. The nurses seem to be bouncing around this morning. Snow does that to you. The first snow anyway. It just seems so exciting and makes things bright the street lights glowing blue off the snow. They are on, it’s still early.

The view from this room is so familiar now, but altered today. The pavement gleaming icy in front of my window then the fields rolling beyond. Covered in snow at the moment the only colour beyond the monochrome black and white is a distant haze of burgundy and bronze. The dogwood stems at the foot of the sumacs which I hadn’t really noticed before but the snow really picks them out. I am sitting up for the first time. Felt a little light headed but now I’m ok.

There is a stand of deciduous trees bare of leaves, iron grey branches reaching out against the sky. I couldn’t see that before. I know in the distance beyond lies your farm; then ours.

It is funny that there is such an early snow. Perhaps to erase the pain and memories of this time of year for me; when the trees stand naked, exposed, their colours a discarded heap of unwanted clothing at their feet. The shiny blackened leaves glistening I’m sure under the snow, just not visible. The snow almost brings a sense of innocence to the scene and yet I feel a dark nature creeping underneath.

It is almost like a movie set out there, still untouched before the action starts. I’m making it a romance and for a second I thought it was going to be mine, with

you Frank, but I just ed a new figure has entered the script. Louise Morgan. Sounds good, she could be a movie star. It is appropriate because I don’t think of me and romance or even me and sex. I don’t even think of me and tenderness. That is why with Guillaume I was so angry. Tenderness makes me vulnerable. I will not be vulnerable, not that I’d really thought about it before Frank.

Winter was fun and warm. Cold outside of course but warm inside. Your house anyway.

I can playing hide and seek in the winter, down by the river. We were sworn to keep away from the river and we did. Always. We knew never to trust the ice, the water was so fast rushing underneath that if you broke through the surface, it could carry you away under the ice, in a flash. We could never be sure of where the ice was thick or thin. So we just stayed off the river in winter. But we played all over the banks and on the trails that ran into the woods and up the hill. Slinging branches full of snow at each other, making snowballs, laughing and chasing.

We always built a fire in the winter on a Saturday afternoon. There was a clearing in the cedars that was sheltered where we had laid a circle of stones and you always got the job of lighting it Frank, because you were the oldest. After it was lit and going, we would put potatoes around the edges and then play hide and seek for another hour or so. We had made so many tracks and trails - you had to get really good at telling the old tracks from the new and I was fairly good at that. Better than you anyway. We almost always won too, because you and I always worked as a team. I ed what prints everybody’s boots left, you then knew who we were looking for where they were likely to hide. Then later we would stand around the fire and eat our potatoes, blackened from the coals and steaming hot, our fingers seemed to be scorched and our faces were covered in charcoal by the time we were done. Throwing the crusty black skins into the fire to flame away once we had eaten all the insides. Using snow to scrub our faces clean. Once I stood too close to the fire and melted my boots. Boy did I get

in trouble for that.

Frank, when I light a fire I think of you. I am a very good fire lighter, in fact one of the best! I cheat. I always have a candle or two and put them in when I lay the fire and make sure that I can catch the wick when I light it. Only if it is an outside fire of course, it would be a bit dangerous inside. The wax melts through the whole lot and keeps it going. Even with wet wood it works. I sit and look at the flames and think of you.

I have had the strength to look at the newspaper now, easier to read sitting up. And yes, Frank, it is your house for sale. I will get the courage to ask Libby about it tomorrow. I can’t imagine that, your house without you your family in it.

Looking out the window, it is so pretty out there.

I had forgotten how I like winter, since we don’t really have it in England; not in London anyway. Winter is something you go to, like a ski holiday.

We always had hot chocolate at 9:30, having taken the first half hour to make our way to the restaurant. First the gondola up and an easy run to warm up our legs. Then a little T-bar. Scooting off to the left through the trees, a broad avenue, then a high speed quad to take you up the next section. Then one of the worst parts; a slope that caught the sun all day and after being groomed at night, it was frozen rough in the morning, with scattered pebbles of ice. I always called it kibbles and bits. I would shriek kibbles and bits, over and over, laughing as I went down, my voice vibrating with it. Kibbbbbbbles aaaand bbbbbits. My feet and legs screaming. And then hot chocolate.

I called it Heissen Chocolate House it has a real name but I can’t it. The man who owns it is a hunter and it is used as a hunting and hiking lodge the rest of the year; out of ski season. There are hundreds of mounted stuffed animals. Some of the tiniest deer I have ever seen. It kind of gives me the creeps, but it wasn’t out of place there in the mountains.

The man knew us and he always brought us schnapps with our hot chocolate. Two little glasses, his fingers in them as he carried both mugs in the other hand, held by the handles, he never used a tray. Then he sat down and talked for just a few minutes. I can’t face schnapps at the best of times and certainly not at 9:30 in the morning. If I couldn’t get James to drink mine I would pour it into the ashtray and hope it evaporated before anyone threw a match in. Our glasses had to be emptied. James had a hard time with schnapps at 9:30 in the morning too. We couldn’t tell the man not to bring them; we didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Our communications were limited. But we did a lot of smiling.

At Heissen Chocolate House you could choose a sharp steep run to the right or a meandering one to the left. I always went right and James always went left. I liked the huge speed with the sharp corner at the bottom before ing up with the meanderers. Dozens of tiny quick flick turns before the big one.

That would have been the spot for me. To ski off I mean; because if you don’t make the final corner, there is nothingness beyond. If you were watching the mountains in the distance which are pretty spectacular let me tell you, you could miss that corner so easily. Of course in that section there is no time to be looking around at the scenery only planning ahead to your next move.

I loved skiing, the power, the speed, the wind. Always hoping for the perfect run, the moment when you are no longer attached to the world. I grin while I ski and my teeth get very cold.

James liked the precision, smooth, accurate, graceful not too many risks unless he was following me, move for move. Skiing is like that, if you can ski directly behind a good skier you will improve by following them exactly. It is harder if you go first; kind of like tracking, you have to judge the hill.

I am laughing again. Once James was following me exactly and it was such a wide slope where you were cutting almost across the mountain. It looks deceptively simple and when you cut back on yourself the hill really does fall away from under you. I had spotted a tiny lump and used that as the point for pivoting my turn. James missed that tiny lump, his skis finding nothing to bite into and ended up turning wildly in the air. Poles, skis, sunglasses flying in every direction. He beat me to the bottom on his backside.

Another time he decided to race me down and took a short cut underneath a tree instead of around the top as I had done. Well he caught a patch of mud and stopped dead. At least his skis stopped dead, he tumbled on, head over heels straight through the mud. It was pretty amazing, he did a full somersault with his skis still on. His white ski jacket was never the same. I couldn’t help him, I was almost wetting my pants I was laughing so hard, waiting on the other side of the tree because of course I got there first and stopped. I knew what was going to happen. I leaned on my poles and roared. James looked up at me all sheepish, grinning. He didn’t mind me laughing. He got out of his skis and looked at himself and laughed with me. “Roll!” I shouted, he did, he looked just like a puppy rolling in the snow. I loved him so much. He got most of the mud off. Then I used hands full of snow and scrubbed the rest off for him. He never really went for spring skiing after that. And really, he knew better than to try to race me. Not that I didn’t fall, I have had my share of falls but there are no witnesses to them now so I won’t have to tell.

With the tranquil snow this morning I will tell you how James died. It was good, Frank. He skied off a cliff avoiding a child. I know the spot exactly. A broad sweeping curve where several trails meet and two lifts stop, it is very close to the place where we had our hot chocolate in the mornings.

When you are at the bottom of the Heissen Chocolate Run there are several lifts that go off in different directions. But if you rode the second one up you will be back looking down over kibbles and bits; Heissen Chocolate House, a tiny speck in the distance; this time a few hundred metres above where you got off earlier. This is where James would have come that day. I wonder if he had hot chocolate and schnapps first? Anyway if you stop there and look you, will see a little plateau where people always stop and look down at kibbles and bits in horror. Then a smooth curving trail to the left. James would have taken that trail. He would have built up speed. Started the smooth curve left, then jumped to the right to avoid the child. There is no fence because there are warning signs to slow down and it is very difficult to build up speed there anyway. You’d have to be a good skier to do it. James is a very good skier. He must have pushed quite hard for the speed and I guess he didn’t slow down.

People told the police afterwards that it all happened so quickly a blur of a skier and then he was gone off the edge, the child left standing in his skis untouched and unaware of what had happened. It was the parents who saw it all and thanked god that James hadn’t hit their girl. In the reports it all seemed to be an accident no reproach for James going too fast in fact he was praised for his bravery.

When we rode the two man chair up, we would see my point of departure and then he would point out his. We had talked about it. You talk about all sorts of things on a chair lift. Anything really to forget you are freezing your backside off with the wind howling in your ears and up your jacket.

I wonder how many times he did the trail that day to get his timing right. He would have had to do that run time and time again to get in the right position to make it look accidental. His courage no problem, he always did what he set out to do.

I wonder if he did the right hand run for me, before? Just to check out my departure point? I wonder so many things and will never know. I don’t think I’ll ever ski again.

I wonder if there was blood on the snow.

James had already died of AIDS. Those years he spent with Struan dying. He saw what was coming for him and decided to end it before it got that far. I wish he’d told me. Maybe he thought I’d go with him. I doubt that I would have. But I would have liked to have had a proper chance to say goodbye. Not that rushed phone call on a crackly line from Cairo. I think I told him I loved him and that he should hurry home.

Everybody is late today, the roads just slippery with the snow. And they are all noisy in the corridor with feet stamping to shake the snow off at the door. I am glad to be warm curled under my covers.

That first winter we were in Canada my mother thought she would perish from the cold. The biting wind that got you the second you stepped out the door. It seemed the house was alive with its creaks and groans. The floors were always cold. We wore sweaters all the time. That is when we did the dancing in the dining room; that kept us warm.

Driving home one night from town. All three of us in the front seat – my mother, James, then me. It was an old ford with the huge wide bench seat and giant steering wheel. There were huge banks of snow piled on the side of the roads. And the snow was still falling, those giant fluffy flakes. All we could see out of the foggy front window was more snow falling, a vast soft whiteness and not much else. Our winters were always really snowy. My mother wasn’t used to driving in it and we had to build up speed and be going quite fast down the hill

to get over the bridge and make it up the hill on the other side. We skidded when we hit the wood surface of the bridge and slid sideways, how we never hit the bridge is a miracle since it is barely wider than a car. Especially those big old cars. But we didn’t hit it and came slipping and sliding off the other side, my mother counter steering with every swing of the car. We lost all our speed and ended up in the snow bank at the bottom end of our lane. She gripped the steering wheel for a few moments with her eyes closed, and then calmed herself. She left the car there running with us in it and stormed up the hill. Not to our house Frank, but to yours. It had been both exciting and terrifying and James and I were happy to just sit and wait in the warmth of the car, surrounded by darkness and falling snow. Discussing what had just happened, excited with a sense of adventure.

Not too long after, your father came out on the tractor, my mother perched daintily beside him. He was slapping his gloved hands together for warmth, then laughing with her as he dug out the front of the car to attach the chain to the bumper. The scene slowly lighting up as the car’s headlights emerged from the snow. We watched from our cosy cocoon and then he towed us to the top of our lane.

When we got in we sat at the kitchen table and warmed ourselves with hot chocolate, barely able to contain our excitement as we held our mugs. My father treated it with disdain. My mother didn’t drive in the winter after that.

Then there was that really snowy winter when you barely made it home for Christmas with all the bad weather. You know the one I’m talking about. It was my last winter in Canada. But of course we did not know that at the time.

I’m full of snow stories today and my fingers and nose seem cold just thinking of them all. And that building sense of excitement that goes with it.

We had the heaviest snowfall ever. More than forty inches came down Christmas eve. It was so beautiful. It had been snowing the whole week and I began to worry that you would not make it home for the holidays with the bad roads. But you did.

It was that kind of cold that just nipped you and with the beauty around you the nipping didn’t seem to matter. The snow was hard and packed in places not the crunchy kind but the really squeaky snow. When there is no chance of going anywhere quietly. But again the beauty even made you forget the squeaking.

We had walked for hours, from right after supper and then we stopped on the bridge. The snow kept right on falling as we walked and we had a high mound of snow covering our left sides. That is the way it was falling. So just like everything around us we had inches of snow mounded on us too. We brushed the snow off watching it fall into the blackness of the river with its silver crust. We had nowhere to go to be alone so we ended up going into my barn. Yours would have been warmer with the animals but no-one would disturb us in mine.

We went to my spot in the barn where I had spent so many private hours safe in my nest of quilts. I kept a few old quilts there to sit on, curl up in. I would often lie on my stomach and look out from there. To the house, to the river, to the town in the distance.

That is where we went that night and we laid on our stomachs looking out at the snow falling. We lay there on a quilt, another over us and we took our coats off. The barn light was directly below my little lookout so anybody coming would not see us looking out; they would be blinded by the light. So we looked out at the snow falling and the whiteness whirling all around.

I guess we didn’t do much talking, we didn’t really have to, a lot of the time we

knew what the other was thinking. We kissed a lot. Ahhh kissing. Yes when you kissed me first, I was sweet sixteen and never been kissed. Well I had been kissed but I had never kissed back. How I enjoyed kissing you. And being kissed by you.

Snuggling together, everything felt so perfectly right. I wanted all of you but we lay there with our arms around each other. I know it was the age difference that stopped you and I would be eighteen soon.

I woke early morning, Christmas day! What a wonderful gift to have you in my arms. Somehow while sleeping I had curled up behind you my nose was buried in the back of your neck where your flannelette shirt had slid down and you smelled of hay. I slipped my arm under you shirt. Your flesh under my hand seemed like velvet and your chest hair silkier than the pelt of any animal I’d ever touched. Your warmth your manliness made me feel so safe so complete tucked up behind you, I tried not to move. But you woke you must have sensed my waking and you rolled over and kissed me. “Merry Christmas Audrey,” you whispered in a sleepy voice.

We scrambled and laughed into our coats pulling hay out of each others hair still finding time to kiss in our haste.

I crept into the house on my tiptoes and slipped into my room shutting the door heart thudding as I did so. I heard other feet in the hall but threw myself into bed and ignored them.

Later Christmas morning I woke and smiled to myself pulling the covers up around my ears sealing in the warmth, recalling your embrace from only a few hours previous. There was such excitement in the air, my life – I had so much to look forward to. I found James still in his room and we wished each other Merry

Christmas, he did not know what had brought my high spirits but he felt them too. And we bounded down the stairs eagerly.

My father was in a fierce and black mood, must have known I’d been out most of the night. It became a joyless day because of that.

Actually it is has turned wet and bleak. The snow is gone now, except in some of the places where the sun didn’t hit, but it will be gone by morning. Just not cold enough for it to linger yet. And now I am overwhelmingly tired, I must have worn myself out today with all that sitting up. Sad in a way too, all those thoughts of such a peaceful white world. I’m going to go to sleep. Maybe I will have to conjure up images of all those kisses, imagine your arms round me and get cosy again. Goodnight Frank.

Thursday October 8

“It was wonderful to see that snow yesterday,” announced Candy “but it sure reminds you of all the little things that need done before winter really sets in.”

“Do you want me to get out?” I offered beginning to slide my legs out of the covers. After sitting up yesterday the bedside chair did not seem so far away.

“Oh we’ll just do as we have been shall we.”

I moved to one side then the other as she pulled the sheets across the bed. Looking again at the chair, it really did not seem that far away. Candy caught my eye and smiled, “Maybe tomorrow eh?”

“I know, but I’m ok sitting up now and I think I can do it.”

“Tomorrow, a little at a time for now.” Smiling as her hands smoothed and patted.

I watched her finish and realised that she didn’t make any promises none of the nurses ever did, there was never mention of out of here or going home, only tomorrow, kindly, over and over.

“You seem to be feeling much better now, but still looking a little tired though,”

she folded my spare blanket and set it over the foot of my bed, “don’t you be sitting up too long, take it in stages.”

We both turned to the window at that instant because the sun came beaming in.

“Just when you get your winter coat out and put away your shorts the weather turns!” she mused as she straightened the tissue box on my table, her fingers lingering on the flowers. “It always seems that way doesn’t it?” Checking my lines before going through the whole routine at the next bed.

Reluctantly I laid back down and stared out of the window. Listening to the discussions of leaves to be raked, blankets to be washed, quilts to be aired and summer things to be stowed away. It has become a glorious sunny day, no hint of yesterday’s snow around and it feels almost like a warm wind coming in through that crack of window. Maybe we’ll get our Indian summer now. How I would enjoy that. There is laughter coming from the hall and it has kept the sense of cheer in the room. All of us tucked neat in our beds expectantly, the nurses bringing the laughter in with them.

That last summer in Canada we spent every moment we could together, you and I, between your job in the city and mine here. Usually long walks we could just walk for hours couldn’t we Frank? Talking iring the countryside around us or just watching the river go by. Now that I think about it we never really went out anywhere with me saving like mad for university and you paying off student loans.

It didn’t really matter that we didn’t go anywhere though, we were completely at home being outside and alone, just the two of us. I had enough of people from my job, serving endless cups of coffee and breakfasts at the Riverview Restaurant.

James worked at the cement factory and I envied him, they never hired girls because the work was too heavy. He did manual labour, set tasks that could takes days to complete and he was always tired because of it. That is the part I envied, I would have enjoyed the monotony of it, not having to smile or think about which customer ordered sunny side up or over easy eggs. Scrambled or over hard. And toast. No toast. Toast is the worst thing about serving breakfast no sooner than it pops up about to be buttered when another waitress steals your toast! Once the toaster went a little haywire and the toast was tossed high in the air and it was a scramble to catch it before it hit the floor, that lasted about a week before a new revolving toaster took it’s place.

James envied me because he wanted the people to talk to, I’m sure he would have done much better than me and earned heaps more in tips. But they never hired boys! My goodness when I think about it I really cannot imagine a boy serving there.

I want to be busy right now, a huge job ahead of me a mountain of paperwork and yes I’d like the sun to be streaming across my desk. My brow would not be furrowed as it is now seemingly scowling at the sun it would be furrowed only because it would be so bright shining off my papers, my work. I’m not much in the mood for laying here listening to people talk having small conversations myself. I would just like to be occupied with some task, all this thinking, thinking, thinking, it is going to make me crazy.

Oh Frank what am I going to do, I am so restless and becoming agitated with this confinement. I want to stretch and run, play, scream even. Anything but be here! It is that sun it is making me think of summer and I want to be outside. Aghh! That pain digging into my side like a knife, it must be the anxiety of my captivity making things worse, Frank I am in serious pain right now feeling terribly anxious because of it.

My eyes squeezed shut right now and I am trying to think warm and pleasant thoughts – not think about this pain ripping through me. My hands not wanting to be still at my side they clutch at the sheets scrunching tight. A light sweat breaking out over me head to toe. Oh God – Frank I can’t stand it!

And in my mind I keep coming back to the same day. We had been walking along the river, jumping from stepping stone to stepping stone, slipping on the slimy green moss. The water running cool over our bare feet. Before getting to our big rock.

I sat with you as my armchair, soft, relaxed, well-worn in. Your chest was the back for me to lean against and your legs were the armrests, where my arms settled naturally. I held onto you, thumbs under your knees, hands on your calves. It was so comfortable. It was the happiest I had been in my life, mainly because I was there with you. The willow trailing over us like a canopy giving us dappled sun, then brushing the surface of the river.

We had been talking about fish; one had jumped out of the water to catch a bug and landed with a splash. That was the nice thing - we could talk about anything, and then have long comfortable silences too.

The sun shone off the water and we closed our eyes to it. We could hear a dragonfly. And from time to time I opened an eye to peek at it hovering, twinkling, jewelled blue in the sun. Gauze wings busy.

Struan crossed the bridge returning from town and he looked down on us.

“Oh how cute,” he sneered.

We both jumped at his voice.

Leaning casually on the railings. “Country boy and my little whore.”

Frank, you must have felt my body go rigid reacting instinctively his voice and possibly to the truth in his words because yours responded in exactly the same way. It happened so quickly, Struan’s voice alarming both of us, his words chilling.

My comfortable arm chair now as hard as wood, repelling me off and I scrambled to face you. You must have suddenly realised that I had some sort of relationship with him because I didn’t say anything.

You looked at me with such revulsion, then you pulled away from me, withdrawing your legs and sliding farther up the rock. The horror on your face said it all. You could no longer meet my eye. The dragonfly had your complete attention.

I heard crunching on the path and cringed.

Struan came down and made it worse, “She’s mine you know; my little whore.” Such delight on his face, in his words.

He didn’t make a move for me as I expected; his arms lunging for me, to drag me away. I was crouched for a quick escape, almost hoping that he would and

you would rescue me. But that would have been too simple. Instead he positioned himself beside you in such an amiable way and settled himself down.

The sun was shining still but despite that I was covered in goose bumps and chilled, I couldn’t say anything. I closed my eyes and winced. My toes turned to ice.

“I’m sure she likes it all ways but anal sex is her favourite, did you know that Frank?”

It was the first time I’d heard those words and as I’ve said Frank, I can be terribly naïve. Well, I didn’t even know that the sex I had with Struan was anal sex. Not normal sex. I knew that it wasn’t right for many reasons but I didn’t even know that. How could I have known? I was eighteen and still a virgin.

You looked at me in disgust your eyes made a slow blink and then directed your disgust at Struan. But still you didn’t say anything.

Could you not have asked? Maybe I would have told you. Or did you want to believe him. It was the truth. Take the easy way out.

I was ungainly, awkward and couldn’t move from my huddled position. I wanted to scream at you, at him. I wanted to throw up. But nothing came out of my mouth.

We all sat there is stunned silence it seemed like hours but it was just moments

before you stood and I found myself scrambling to my feet reaching for you.

“Its not like he says,” I cried clinging to your arms shaking them not wanting to let you go. Your face seemed to say everything and you looked down at my hands on you and I let go, as quick as that.

“Frank let me explain – talk to me” I begged my voice rising to almost a screech.

“I can’t talk about this right now,” was all you said and you turned away from me.

Struan smiled at me over his shoulder as he ducked under the willow and up the path.

I stood on the rock and threw stones into the water watching them break the surface and ripple, then the ripples becoming lost in the current.

It would have been so much easier if you reacted angrily. Instead of that pure revulsion. That night James tried to console me but he didn’t know what had happened and as we sat in my room, I couldn’t tell him. I was so jumpy, all over the place with emotion, disted sentences, pacing back and forth but never saying the real words. Escape screaming through my head so loud that I was snorting with it. Sitting cross-legged on the bed then leaping up and pacing more. Smoking inside even, windows flung open to draw out the smell but not really caring whether the blue jay or my father found out. I was feeling so reckless, flicking smouldering butts out the window.

I was so angry, hurt and confused, but couldn’t get that out. James stayed with me just the same, not answering Struan; who was outside calling for him. He listened and slowly drew me into a real conversation about what we would be doing in the autumn. Agitated and trapped was how I felt, wanting to be away, out in the big world. And we talked excitedly about going to England not for the first time; we had been toying with the idea for years. My anger and anxiety giving way to a zooming crazed elation.

We had our money in place; we had worked like the blazes doing all those summers jobs saving for university. It was like that you were supposed to get jobs and work for the summer. And then with grants and things University wasn’t so hard to pay for. Most of us had swollen bank s by the end of the summer. So why not take it and use it for something different. England, that would be different. That would be the perfect escape.

I could have gone over to your house that night and tried to explain but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. What could I possibly tell you that you hadn’t heard that afternoon?

Later I saw your car in the lane. Your headlights shining in the trees. And then spinning gravel as you hit the road, a little weave of lights then you straightened out, went over the bridge, up the other side and you were gone.

You went back to your job and didn’t return that summer and I never saw you again.

It’s evening now and I expect that there will be visitors. I have slept fitfully this afternoon and know the others in the room have seen how disturbed I am, I’m not sure if I cried out in my dreams. I’m tired of the days measured by noisy food trolleys, nurses taking blood pressure, temperature, leaving the

thermometer in your mouth too long. Waiting hopefully for the doctor to come and give a few words. A very specific few words; you are better now, you can go home. I want to be out of here now and am feeling well enough to go. If I was moving I could get rid of some of the creeping agitation and then the pain would go away.

Libby has come in with yearbooks and it lightened my spirits we giggled over them for a while. You weren’t in any, of course. We were never in the same school at the same time as you. Your first year of high school when James and I went to public school; and then you had graduated by the time we got to high school. Coming home some weekends and mostly reminding us of how exciting your new friends and life were. We listened with big ears, at eighteen how could we not be interested four years at university and now a year of articling finished. A real job as a lawyer just begininng. Your five years always gave you the advantage over us.

I imagine you in the courtroom talking in your gentle reassuring manner, winning the confidence of all listening. How could a voice like yours do otherwise?

I have not asked about you and Louise Morgan. I have not asked about your house being sold. Maybe I’ll ask tomorrow.

Instead Libby quizzed me on Bevan Bedroom Productions. She said with a giggle, “It sounds like something in the sex industry.”

Both James and I had been asked about that many times and sometimes I wished we’d called the company something else. But we kept the name, it was so perfect after all those hours of plotting and scheming in the bedroom.

“Shipping,” I announce excitedly to Libby.

She gives me a look that says: What?

“You see it is bed after all, spending all this time laying around in bed and I get ideas.” I make a little bracelet with my IV line around my wrist. “I guess it works in any bed; I’ve just had an idea for a new documentary. Shipping.”

“Whatever made you think of that?” she asks.

“I don’t know, it just popped into my head.”

She looks amused, surveys the crumpled sheets, my snap-on mint gown, “So this is the creative mind at work?”

“Once I was on a flight. For the first few hours I swore I could hear a dog barking in the distance and finally asked a stewardess because it was keeping me awake, she smiled and told me there was an unhappy little puppy in the hold.”

“I wonder how they move the horses?” she mused, “you know for the Olympics and that sort of thing.”

“That’s how it works,” I tell her. “People are always curious about things,

anything really, but obscure things work best. You sit and wonder for a while then you go out and find the answers, sometimes it turns out to pretty boring and it doesn’t come to much but sometimes you get something good.” That was the longest sentence I have said since being here. We are both used to my funny stiff voice where I can move my lips and not the rest of my mouth, jaws still firmly wired together. Now we hardly ever comment on it and I have given up apologising.

She pulled a face, “It must be hard to let go of something once you have worked on it and decided it’s not going to work.”

“It is, but you stick it in a file and move on to the next one.” I laugh. “At the airport once I saw a huge parcel upright on a trolley, it had to be surfboards. It was in the middle of winter, at Heathrow and freezing. The guy pushing the trolley had such a deep tan, sun bleached hair in dreadlocks and shorts on!”

Libby shivers at the thought.

And I feel warm and happy, now that my mind is focusing on things in the real world. “Maybe three boards, all wrapped together in brown paper, then taped, it looked like a sarcophagus.”

“A what?”

“A huge stone coffin.”

“Oh,” she nods.

I laugh, “You would benefit from a day or two at the British Museum! I’ll take you there sometime.”

In my head I am sorting out shipping ideas, knowing that somewhere I have already started a file on it. Surprised too that I have just invited Libby to come to England.

“Ohhh,” I sound crestfallen as I realise when I started the shipping file. James. His body.

“What?” begs Libby.

“I was wishing I was at work,” I lie so easily sometimes, but she needn’t know the real reason for my change in mood.

Before Libby leaves she stacks the yearbooks on my bedside table and I have sorted through the heap. There is one that belongs to her older sister which I hadn’t seen earlier, don’t know how it got into the pile. I immediately searched through it; I have a picture of you now. To trace my fingers over, a neat little square with Frank Addison printed nicely underneath, in case I didn’t you. I even the shirt you are wearing. Western style with pearlised snaps, a beautiful turquoise blue plaid with flicks of red and yellow. Of course the photo is black and white but I can see the colours.

You wore that shirt for three years and it seemed to me you were always grinning when you had it on. I teased you about it and said you should have had a cowboy hat to go with it and you always tweaked the imaginary brim for me. I smile as I think of that now.

I can’t seem to get rid of the terrible anxiety I feel, being all cooped up in here is making me a little crazy too. I’ve managed to get my lines all tangled up and the nurses are not being very helpful. And with you Frank, so close, so very close, it does seem to be a terrible tangle.

Friday October 9

Last night I missed James in the same catastrophic way I missed my mother when she died, the way I missed you Frank when you left. It is so painful and I feel a real naked wound in my heart and soul.

The lady in the bed across from me is not very well and her husband stood and shouted at the nurses this morning. Demanding a doctor. Right now! We were all lying in our beds rigid. The husband is now pacing in the hall, his shoes squeaking, he comes in again and again glowering at us, all of us. The lady is not moving; she has curled into a tight ball. One of her hands is out of the covers and she seems not to notice, but it has almost folded forward to the wrist like a bird’s wing. A broken wing not in neat folds but with the feathers spread and crooked.

I close my eyes so that I stop looking at her. I would have my curtains closed around my bed but I don’t want to be alone right now. Her life appears to be so close to the end.

In London I can seeing some street theatre at Covent Garden; where a man had three people on grizzled leather leashes that looked chewed, they were dressed in crooked straps of leather themselves and their flesh was spread with dirt and soot. The three were walking almost as if they were gargoyles come to life in a crouched coiled manner, snatching at the crowd with dirty searching fingers. Some people were laughing and others, like myself, were turning away in horror. Because every time they found a target they moved with lightening confusion, surging together, then they all whirled and faced another target, turning the man wildly with them every time. It did not feel much like entertainment to me, more like a visitation of some primeval terror. Yet the man held all three on the leashes, never getting tangled, and they circled round turning him again and again him before lunging out at the crowd, fingers outstretched, teeth bared. A little girl cried and clutched her father but he did not

take her away, instead he stood transfixed by the macabre scene.

It all feels a little like that now, but I can’t get up and stroll to a cheery pub and forget, leave the entertainers behind. I am stuck here watching or listening. My eyes are still closed but it seems so futile with the horrible scenes I am finding in my head to play instead.

I have the gruesome thought, that we, lying in these beds, are the gargoyles.

The doctor has come; he has taken the man by the arm into the hall. He is talking in a loud whisper asking him to settle down.

“I want her to be in a quiet place!” he shouts back and we all shrink smaller in our beds as if we were teenagers at a party and we’d been caught making too much noise.

Rolling her out of the room now. Her charts have crashed to the floor, papers skittering under the beds. Covered in hospital hieroglyphics. She is oblivious to all of this.

I had a history test with a new teacher those first few weeks of grade thirteen. I like history and had studied hard. But the test had confused me, the questions did not seem to lead to answers that were in my head; they only made me ask more questions. I wrote what I could and tried not to have the foolscap sheet littered with crossed out sections and question marks.

We all gathered around our lockers and talked about it afterwards. No-one was happy with what they had done.

When we got our papers back, mine had a red forty-nine in the corner. The test looked terrible with my scrawled writing and blue streaks over the page where I had scribbled things out, and the red. Forty-nine! I had never failed anything before. My ears turned red, I was blushing so hard. I stared at the paper and tried not to look around and see what the others had got and did not shuffle the paper under my book as I felt I should do. I didn’t want to draw any attention I prayed that no one would notice my mark. My head and shoulders felt stiff and sore from sitting so upright. I didn’t move.

That night my binder fell from my arms onto the kitchen floor and the test went flying out, stopping at my father’s boot. My red forty-nine grazing his reinforced toe. He set his mug down methodically and picked it up.

“So this is how you waste your time, Audrey? The taxpayer’s money?”

I cringed and couldn’t make myself step forward and take the paper from him, all I could see was the big red mark on top of the smudgy blue sheet.

It was James who came to my defence, snatching the paper from his fingertips, folding it in half and handing it to me. The mark no longer visible.

It was weeks later that I found out I had the highest mark in the class at fortynine, but it still didn’t take away the sense of failure I felt.

I suppose I wonder if my life has been a failure Frank. And had I really spoken all these words to you what would you think of my life?

This sense of failure so important because I wanted to be perfect for you, to let you know that despite everything I did alright. I have wanted you at my side for so long your very absence highlights what I see as my failure.

I am perfectly normal if the truth be told, at least I think so. Of course I have no way of judging what your perception of normal is.

How do I see you now, still 25? I suppose I do because I have had no other image to carry with me. I never saw you go through the stages of your life to see how you evolved. That burst of anger I saw in you the day I arrived back in town keeps coming to mind

I really do want to see you no matter how you have turned out.

Since the shouting earlier everyone is marching around being efficient, despite that husband being in another section of the hospital now. They have come to me with quick and decisive movements. Removing all of my lines and smoothing neat plasters over the bloody holes. Rolling the machines away. Almost robotic in their actions. My blood results are good no sign of infection the pain in my side now must be an echoing trace of what I had before and only highlighted by my anxiety. Anxiety over being held captive.

I have the urge to get up and run to escape before anything changes. But I lie down and wrap my arms around myself without the cold line touching me, confining me. It is nice to be free of the intrusion. I curl into the foetal position

and look out the window.

I am so tired though, it seems like my existence is a whisper.

Sheets of rain are falling knocking against the window and the sound makes up for the absence of my whirring and kerchunking machines.

I am so tired though, it seems my existence is a whisper.

Some mornings I seemed to get on my bike in my sleep and travel great distances before realising I was riding. Often when I cycled through Battersea Park I often saw a lady with two standard poodles, big, untrimmed with glossy chocolate brown coats of loose curls. Always early in the morning she carried with her a tennis racket and a fluorescent green ball, when I saw her over by the river she would stand in a grassy area and fire the ball hard and the two dogs would hunt it down with such speed but one day the ball came too close to me and before I knew it I had one dog on either side of me. They were snarling and hunting me down with more vigour than they had ever used on the ball and they had no difficulty in matching my speed. My heart was in my mouth with terror and as I looked over my shoulder the lady was standing in the distance screaming for the dogs to come back. But they did not listen to her, instinctively pursuing me with teeth ever closer to my flesh, I was increasingly aware that the black lycra would offer little protection.

And one sunk it’s teeth into my bottom ripping into me and I pedalled all the faster, failing at my plan to grab my U-lock and knock the dog dead with it. No sooner had it sunk it’s teeth into me it let go and stopped and it’s partner stopped with it.

Breathless and shaking I stopped at the edge of the park and looked back wondering what had gotten into those dogs this morning.

I took a drink of water from my bottle to get rid of the terrible thirst my fear had brought on.

I have had a sip of water and that was wonderful. Water is wonderful.

I want something. It is as if my life has been punctuated by vast periods of want

I want to be able to cry out in pain and have somebody hear me

I want you to have loved me Frank!

I could have sat down and mimicked James’s books, mine would have been filled with want, all written in my scribble; with headings and subheadings and things crossed out, but they all would have been want. Want in general statements. Want in minute detail.

James left a letter for me in Egypt. It sits unopened in the top drawer of my bureau in London. It is where I keep my will and other important documents. It seems they will be snug and safe amongst the soft sweaters. It will tell me that he is going to end his life. It will tell me how he enjoyed his. But I have his books for that, what more could he say? I suppose he had to round it all up and finally say goodbye. I don’t know if he attempted to explain. I don’t know if he needed to explain himself.

I imagine it has some line in it somewhere that appears innocent enough at first glance and then there it will be written in his beautiful script; the final good bye.

I don’t know if I will ever be ready to find out what he has written.

I close my eyes and listen to the rain fall and trying not to think about anything at all. Food carts noisy in the hall.

I should be allowed to eat soon and cannot think for the life of me what I could eat, it seems like such a long forgotten act. Anything that will go through a straw that is, my wired jaw the only remaining evidence of my accident.

One of the last things I did before leaving for England was to carry the bushel basket of ten dollar bills to the shed. I brought a few extra baskets with me and went to the house for candles and matches. I laid a fire with two candles at the centre and all the paper notes around it, there was more than seven hundred dollars there. Seven hundred and eighty to be exact; I didn’t need to count because I knew. Seventy eight times. I stacked the other bushel baskets on top and knew that this would be a roaring blaze in no time with all the good dry wood in the shed. The worn wooden handles of tools. The cans of paint and oil.

I sat on the fence across the field and watched and smoked. Soon I could see smoke, great puffs of smoke and not a hint of flame. Then it burst, the flames licking out of the windows at first as the glass blew out and then the shingles on the roof curling and blistering until they too were lit brilliant red with the fire.

It gave me such pleasure to watch that fire grow and as it did evening started coming in. I lingered there as the light faded and the flames grew. Just watching.

It took about two hours before the fire crew arrived. Someone must have seen the smoke and called. There were a few people hanging around watching too.

Flames leaping up, small explosions from inside the shed.

The firemen shouted back and forth to each other as they worked, some attacking the shed with axes. Others using wet sacks to beat out the grass fires shooting up from the falling debris. A few of the observers ed in too.

I did not think that it might reach the house and the wind changed and my heart gave a little cheer as it did, but the fire crew were on to it pretty quick. They doused the house down with water, great tears pouring from the windows.

My father arrived on foot, the driveway was filled with vehicles, all receiving a shower of glowing ashes. He put his hands on his hips and stared at the scene. Not doing anything or approaching anyone, just watching.

And finally it was out. The shed had fallen into a glistening black heap still glowing red in the centre. Long trails of smoke into the night. The firemen talking to my father now, lots of animated discussion.

I had watched the whole thing and could not bring myself to leave the scene, I was mesmerised by it. All dressed in black I had no worry or thought about

being caught, because I can be a perfect study of stillness.

It is lying here still in the bed that keeps me from the heat of the fire the snarling teeth of the dogs, but despite that I am still feeling pain. Jolting me between visions of pain and terror.

Instead of me being one of those terrible gargoyles it is as if one is inside of me right now, clawing and digging to get out. Tucked into my left hipbone, biting if I move too much. Lurching and lunging within the confines of my skin. I’m using the stillness technique again. I am afraid I am getting a little worse Frank and I don’t want this to be happening, my heart races in panic as I think of it. If I stay still I should get over it, for surely it is a fleeting memory of being sick and I cannot possibly be getting sick again. Can I Frank?

I can sitting in a café in Rome, across from me a lovely old arched doorway falling to ruins with a curved set of stairs leading out. A stone dog sitting looking wistfully down the street away from me. I sat a while and drank my coffee; wrote a few postcards. That dog was a perfect stone grey terrier, every hair curled delicately. When I left, I stopped by the dog and it turned its head to look at me and wagged its tail. I almost leapt out of my skin. It was a real dog. But it had been so very still that I had been mistaken. I wondered who that dog was waiting and watching for with such devotion.

Oh Frank, I want to cry out now this thing inside of me biting and gripping I don’t know what to do. What is it? What will they do to me when they find out?

The pain feels like it has exploded and something fiery is coursing through my veins.

I will try not to be afraid though, if I remain still it will go away. So I lie here looking out of the window not moving. Wondering if the lady has died in some quiet and dark room down the corridor. Wondering why I have dreamed and waited for you so long.

I wonder if I would have made you a happy man. Are you an exuberant happy man? I suspect not.

Would you have made me and exuberant happy woman? I believe so.

Saturday October 10

Lying in the loose hay on the hayloft floor looking at the sun shining through the cracks in the boards, forming steep oblongs of light, glittering brightly with the dust in the air. Arms folded behind our heads our bodies touching each other along their full length.

I have my arms behind my head now and that was what I was dreaming when I woke this morning, blankets heaped upon me providing the warm hug of security.

Frank I want you to be here so badly, the calm peaceful way we could just be quiet together, enjoying our surroundings.

That was what I was dreaming when I woke this morning. The sun is beaming in and I think that Indian summer has arrived. Libby is here now with a bright flowery summer dress on and her cheeks are flushed rosy. She is as pretty as the flowers beside me, what an unusual thing to think! Am I dreaming?

I feel so lightheaded and warm.

Again I have been sleeping. Libby has brought in a pair of silky black pyjamas for me, with a high Chinese style collar and embroidered buttons.

Slowly waking up and gaining mobility I reach out and touch the fabric, mmm nice. Where would she have found them? I will never know, but they will feel

wonderful against my skin Now that I’m not all attached to my machines I can have some freedom to wear what I want. It’s a first step to getting out of here. I will try and get up later but I’m too wobbly just now. Getting into the pyjamas will be enough for me.

Libby is back, smiling and she helps me get the pyjama top on. I struggle just lifting my arms. The bottoms are harder but I manage to place my feet on the floor for the first time in weeks, she has positioned me so that we can just pull the bottoms up once I am standing. Somewhat unsteadily holding onto to side table for .

Now I’m ready for you to visit. I look presentable, the bruises on my face mere shadows.

As I sit I can feel the pain in my side rising again. Stupefied with sleep in defiance to the pain I am sitting cross-legged on the bed the yearbook is open in my lap and my finger rests on the picture of you, as if in some ways you will become real by me touching it. I don’t want to shut the book and lose my connection to you.

Frank I ran away it was the bravest and most spectacular thing I ever did. I left it all behind. Or so I imagined.

I chased a dream. I refused to lay down with my fears and in a way it might have been running away but along with leaving the fears I brought a dream with me instead.

I slip back into the bed, with no strength to pull the covers over me, the yearbook

falls to the floor with a pillow. Silencing the pain of losing you.

I was just thinking about Cleopatra’s Needle, that big granite obelisk sitting on the Embankment in London, pointing into the sky, black lions guarding at the base, the Thames lapping at the side. It was the first time I had realised how very old things can be that history is something tangible and not just an idea. It gave me an overwhelming sense of awe.

And Cairo the exciting blend of modernity and antiquity, pushed right on top of each other with barely room for everything in between.

Everything is whirling in my head right now fragment here and there ideas popping out of nowhere. And a hazy sense of voices talking to me, telling me things, demanding my attention. I think my mind is playing tricks and trying to stop me thinking about the growing pain in my side that at times threatens to rip me in to pieces.

I am lying on my side eyes closed and ignoring the window, the room and the people around me. Because I get a sense of people closing in on me. And I almost seem to be drifting away from them.

I think they have stuck a needle in my arm but I am not sure. It is in the same haze of past and present perhaps I am only thinking of the past few weeks. I can feel the violent rush in my body. Hot and furious like rage.

Struan, Struan, rage.

Struan was not gay he just wanted both men and women equally but I wonder why he had to enact such terrible violence with us all.

Claire will know the answer to this because I am sure she will have searched it out of him in the months she spent holding his hand. Actually I don’t want to know because despite all that Struan did to me to James I still feel comion when I think of him. I don’t want to learn any secrets of his past.

The heat has flowed through my veins and I feel a warm blush over me. Like spring.

James wanted a big lawn of lush green grass with a clothes line stretched between two tall poles where he could hang his ivory quilt out in the sun to dry.

And I have had a little taste of freedom on my bike racing through London, little glimpses of life of beauty. Up near Clapham Common the road has a rough surface and when you cycle along you can see leaves all imprinted on the surface. Each pressed down hard perfectly flat from the traffic such pleasure to see almost as if the road was decorated for me to travel along.

The common crow must have been talking about herself when she said all women are whores. Perhaps she didn’t want to be alone in that. I know I’m not a whore. We are what we think of ourselves. What we make of ourselves.

Where was my father when all this was happening? He was too wrapped up in himself and his fancy women to care . He was too busy listening to those poisoned words and kissing those poisoned lips.

Despite everything I think I had a good childhood because of the freedom I had.

“Jolly lucky” Claire would say and smile. She was the only one who could ever say a thing like that to me because she knew deep down that I wasn’t jolly lucky. I worked jolly hard instead.

I was thinking about my teapot in London a big ceramic one that does not go with my kitchen my things but I love it anyway. James gave it to me. It is huge makes about six cups and by the time I have drunk them they are barely warm. It has whirling stripes of blue on creamy white. The part I like best is the lid like a china marble twirling on top.

Frank when you see a beautiful woman sitting in a café; in her sunglasses, drinking coffee, will you think of me the way the sun hit my hair and made it sheen by the river. Imagine I am that woman and smile to yourself.

Getting my toes warm in the sun with the soft fur of Biscuit tickling me. Feeling Cracker curled under my arm hearing his almighty purr.

Somehow I gave Claire my rings in an act that had Libby in tears she was here a while ago and I don’t really have the strength to visit right now but with my hand dangling and me my pointing at my finger and mumbling Claire over and over, she understood. They were almost falling off anyway; she had no trouble removing them. She tied the three together with the piece of ribbon holding the card from the flowers and slipped them into her dress pocket.

I wonder like that little slip of ribbon she tied so neatly; are there many more loose ends? Things that need to be sorted out tidied up packaged with a neat ribbon.

Libby is praying at my bedside I imagine the sun beaming down and hitting her, the words she speaks are so sweet. She is crying, I would like to tell her not to be sad.

I have not begun to tell you all those stories Frank there are so many wonderful happy times I would like to share with you. In my mind I did. I have rattled on and on and told you such trivial things but I hope they are making a picture for you of the whole.

There is a little girl sitting in my chair, I’ve never seen her before, she has a long dark braid over her shoulder and a denim dress on. Her feet don’t touch the floor and dangle mid-air, her ankles are crossed, she has her hands folded in her lap and she is staring intently at me. Not blinking or looking away. I am tempted to speak but can’t summon up the strength. Then her attention wavers and she examines the huge purple bruise on her arm turning it this way and that.

A little tousled haired boy comes to her and takes her hand. “C’mon,” is all he says and she pops off the chair and walks away with him holding his hand.

I have slipped away again to that place of such strange peace and calm. It really is nice here Frank.

Let us be sitting on that big rock now. And have the sun come down and touch our shoulders and the water dances in the dappled light.

On my bike now rushing along the river the wind in my hair where I am does not matter, what river I don’t care. I feel so free the hairs on my arms alive with pleasure. My heart pounding my ears. Overwhelming euphoria.

Not to be confused with euphorbias, bouncing green heads with hidden pleasures like red stems and tiny black dots on the bracts. The fresh living colour of them. In some ways things seem to be happening so quickly rushing before my eyes

I cannot seem to what I was saying.

I swear I can hear your footsteps in the hall right now my ears are pricked up listening.