Pulp Idol - Firsts 2019

Pulp Idol - Firsts

Writing on the Wall Toxteth Library Windsor Street, Liverpool L8 1XF Published by Writing on the Wall, 2019 Š Remains with authors Design and layout by Katrina Paterson ISBN: 978-1-910580-35-6 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

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Contents Foreword Introduction Jacob Riley The Boat

VII IX 5

Alistair Daniel Montreal

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Philippa Holloway Borderland

23

Jan Cabral-Jackson Louis & Marguerite

37

Lesley Van deMark I’ll Have the Onion Soup

53

Paul Perry Beyond Ash and Oak

65

Paul Tarpey Mush

81

Stephanie McGill Past Forward

95

Trisha McKeon Twister

101

Kalvin Hunt Elemental Rising

115

Patricia Kelly Wrong Side

131

Matthew McKeown Writing for Thompson

143

Afterword

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Foreword We’re proud as ever to present the latest batch of new, unpublished novelists unearthed through our annual Pulp Idol writing competition, this year with twelve first chapters from the competition final held during WoWFEST 18, our writing and literary festival held each year during May since it was launched in 2000.

The past year has seen a rising tide of voices demanding that new writers from diverse and working-class communities be heard. This is something that has always been close to our heart and was the reason why Pulp Idol was launched in 2006, in recognition of the need for these new voices to have opportunities for their writing to be published and to provide pathways to bring it to the attention of both mainstream and independent publishers.

Our instinct that there were plenty of writers out there who needed these opportunities has been proven correct, with between fifty and sixty-five applicants per year battling it out for a place in the finals. The quality of the winning entries has brought success after success, with mainstream publishers such as Hodder and Stoughton offering a two-book deal to one of our winners, and independent publisher Bluemoose Books snapping up finalist Ariel Kahn’s debut novel Raising Sparks and publishing it, to much acclaim and success in 2018 – Raising Sparks was runner up in The Guardian Newspaper’s Not The Booker prize competition after topping the poll to reach the shortlist.

A special thanks as always to the people who work tirelessly to make the competition and this publicaVII

tion happen each year - The Writing on the Wall staff and Trustees, our volunteers and judges, editors and proof-readers, in particular: the writers who were our judges and editors, Deborah Morgan, Jim Friel, Sally-Anne Tapia-Bowes, John Donoghue, Jude Lennon, Clare Coombes, Helen Dring, Penny Feeny, Sarah Maclennan and Colin Watts who generously gave up their time to judge the heats and edit these chapters and give such valuable feedback to those who didn’t make the final, and our final judges Laura Campbell of Greene & Heaton Literary Agents and Lucy Morris of Curtis Brown Literary and Talent Agency.

These are the people who help create the pathway that is bringing these new voices to these pages.

The quality of writing this year is as good as it as ever been, and we have no doubt that our readers will, like us, be left wanting more after reading each first chapter, hoping that our 2019 writers will achieve the success of previous Pulp Idol writers and have their work recognised by publishers aross the country. We wish them all the success they deserve and offer our sincere thanks to all the writers who entered Pulp Idol last year, and continue to help us make it one of the most successful writing competitions in the UK. Mike Morris & Madeline Heneghan, Co-Directors, Writing on the Wall.

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Introduction Jacob Riley’s beautifully written, The Boat, takes us into the isolated and fractured community of The Banks, twin strips of land marooned in a sea of fog. It’s as atmospheric as it is thought-provoking, as we look at what happens to a community when the prophecy their society is built around isn’t what they expected.

Alistair Daniel’s Montreal has an engaging narrative, and strong physical and verbal humour. There’s a real lightness of touch here that captures the moments of easy friendship amongst a group of young men – you hope nothing bad will happen to them, but suspect the author might not be as kind to his characters...

Philippa Holloway’s Borderland takes the unlikely subject matter of nuclear protest and weaves it into a compelling and utterly convincing story. And in this first chapter, protagonist Helen’s love for her fragile young son and the pastoral beauty of her homeland is conveyed in shimmering prose that will captivate the reader.

In Louis and Marguerite, writer Jan Cabral-Jackson delves into the early crusades and brings the twelfth century vividly to life. We are introduced to Marguerite in a moment of drama when she is dismissed from her post, as a possible victim of leprosy, and forced to flee with her young son. This is a world where peasants have no rights and survival takes cunning and courage and we are rooting for Marguerite every step of the way.

I’ll Have the Onion Soup by Lesley Van deMark is a poignant and humorous semi-autobiographical read that tells the story of a single woman looking for love online.

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Ultimately, it is a story about what it is to be human, a story about how the events of our past, shape our expectations for the future.

Written in the style of a classic 1930s children’s adventure, Paul Perry’s Beyond Ash and Oak follows Peter a very bright boy with little in the way of social skills, as he negotiates the deaths of his parents and an unsupportive care system.

Mush by Paul Tarpey is a story of an unconventional romance told with a skilled comedic tone with plenty of social comedy. Set in the 1980s and using its cultural and political context, we are invited to explore how we live, how we think and how we feel.

Stephanie McGill’s Past Forward has a real, gut-wrenching impact from the first sentence. Its eloquence helps shed light on infertility, an issue that is still taboo even amongst women. This has the potential to be an exciting, essential novel.

Trisha McKeon is Irish-born and raised, and - presently, and not for the first or last time - the best writing in the language is coming out of that very country. Her novel Twister opens in 1960’s Oklahoma and that it will return us to contemporary Ireland (and has any European country changed so much in the past decades) is an index of the confidence with which she writes and the abundance of subject matter within her grasp.

Elemental Rising by Kalvin Hunt is a sensational sci-fi and fictional read depicting the trials and tribulations of Elle, the protagonist of this thrilling novel. Finding herself at the centre of a plot that could mean renewed war between humans and Elementals, Elle must face numerous personal challenges as well as uncover conspiracies on a journey that could risk everything she values.

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When Donnie’s nan develops Alzheimer’s, he decides to do all he can to help. Wrong Side by Patricia Kelly is a touching family story with themes that we can all probably relate to, this chapter gives a taste of Donnie’s adventures to come.

Matthew McKeown is a young, thoughtful and incisive writer with a keen eye for the absurd in today’s society. Novels that use sport for their setting and subject are rare, and novels that satirise our obsession with sport are even rarer: reasons enough for celebrating Writing for Thompson, which promises to do both and with the necessary aplomb. We need more writers who are sceptical about the world as it is given us, and certainly if they can combine and complicate that scepticism with warmth and wit, because this is what we have in his work.

Clare Coombes, Helen Dring, Sally-Anne Tapia Bowes, Penny Feeney, Jim Friel, Sarah Maclennan – Editors.

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Pulp Idol

Jacob Riley

Nurtured on Philip Pullman and Garth Nix, my thirst for magic and adventure has guided my adult self towards those who can enchant the very words on the page: Jorge Luis Borges, Bruno Schulz, Gabriel Garcia Marquez...

The right words can be as potent and powerful as any spell.

The Boat The natives of The Banks, twin isthmuses marooned in a sea of fog, have always foretold of the coming of The Boat. As Boatcoming day looms, generations of religious anticipation rises to meet it. But what happens when a prophecy providing the bedrock of a civilisation fails to come true? jacobriley.027@gmail.com

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The Boat Jacob Riley It was summer, so the fog was thin. Even now, with the first house lights of the evening pluming orange in the vague distance, Tomass could still see the shadowed husk of the Church from his bedroom window, its flag hung out towards the River on its long pole. He tapped his pencil against his teeth. He was trying to form an idea of what the Boat might look like.

Three books lay open on his desk, each depicting contrasting images of the Boat’s appearance. The first one proposed a spindly-limbed contraption that reminded him of a spider, the second one simply described a large wooden bowl, but the last one was the one that had gripped his attention. It suggested that, contrary to every known Boatcoming prophecy, the Boat would come not along the River, but from under it. Tomass gazed out of his window and imagined it rising from the water like a gigantic ladder continuing on into the sky.

The Boatcoming had commanded the attention of the whole of The Banks for months now. The spring harvest had been stowed away in crates and rationing books were handed out. Laymen wandered the pews with baskets during Mass collecting scrap metal and wood to be melted down or reshaped into new tools for the Rebuilding. The Boat hung over all conversations; each transaction was in preparation for its arrival.

As the shade of evening deepened, more and more lights appeared in windows, the River taking on their amber hue as it ran unbending through the walled corridor of houses. Tomass’ window, like every window on 5

the Wayside Bank, looked out onto the stone brick houses of the Churchside Bank, which stood starkly opposing the fog-rotted wooden abodes of their sister isthmus.

Houses were inherited on The Banks, and it was common for several generations of a family to share a roof.

Most houses, in fact, had family names affixed above their doors. Tomass’ paternal grandparents had shared their house since he was born, until they had both died three years ago, weeks apart and of the same malady that had taken many of the elderly and the weak that winter.

Cold winds whistled through the wood of the houses on the Wayside Bank, the smell of damp was ever-present and Tomass and his family often slept in their coats. But for the most part, qualms from the Waysiders concerning comparative living conditions had been extinguished by tradition and the pride of prolonged hardship. In fact, many more complaints were voiced by the Churchsiders, who felt that sharing the resources of their larger and more bountiful bank was not so much alleviating the poverty of the Waysiders as it was causing them to share in it.

Despite the contrast between the two strips of land they shared a terraced uniformity, and the houses of each lined The Banks as unbroken as two rows of teeth. No light shone between them, behind them there was nothing but fog. They had no back doors or windows but looked out only onto the River. This was all, these banks, these houses; anything different was inconceivable. And yet tomorrow was Boatcoming day.

The kitchen was the only room yet to be stripped of its ornaments. Tomass’ mother had emptied their ration book to make an occasion of their last meal in the house, 6

but had spent most of the time giving a running checklist of things they might have forgotten to pack. It took two glasses of verum before she stopped fussing enough to eat her dinner, and she had just finished her fourth. She joked that the Church could ration as much as they liked as long as she had her verum. Strictly speaking, they were supposed to have handed over the remainder of their unsold stock in the final ration-gathering last night, but Tomass’ parents had kept behind a small supply of bottles. It wasn’t really a sin, his mother said, after all, they had made it themselves. It was the same excuse she often used when she poured herself a glass as she was doing now, glass and bottle tinkling together in her unsteady hands, before reaching over the table to refill Tomass’ father’s. The pungent spirit tasted exactly how it smelled.

The smell had never particularly bothered Tomass until he had been allowed to try his first taste several months ago, but now it made him balk. He traced a pattern of circles on the tablecloth while his sister Thella sat opposite him, toying with some potatoes she was reluctant to eat.

Their father, who had been drinking before dinner, was reciting a verse from the Prophetic Book, chanting in that silly sing-song priest voice. ‘…and when we listen may we hear the River’s comforting purr, and may our banks stay evergreen and the land provide, and may the fog keep and preserve us, until the Boat takes us on.’

Tomass’ mother clapped tiredly.

‘I’ve always thought that was beautiful,’ said his father. It was a passage he had heard, and indeed spoken, every week of his life. Each Mass closed with a collective recital of that verse, gravely intoned in the manner of Father Rainee, the priest who led it.

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‘What will we say to end Church after tomorrow?’ asked Thella.

‘Yes, I suppose it will have to change, won’t it?’ mused Tomass’ father.

‘I’m sure they’ll think of something.’ said his mother.

‘Eat your potatoes, young lady.’

‘But they’re horrible!’

‘They’re good for you.’

‘They’re cold now anyway.’

‘Well whose fault is that?’

Thella stuffed a potato in her mouth and pouted as she chewed. Tomass poked his tongue at her but she didn’t see. He reverted to examining a cut on his finger.

Calluses were forming all over his hands. Last week he had cut into the heel of his palm with a saw and hadn’t noticed, his leathery skin never even bled. He was still getting used to the way things felt when he touched them. Under his hard, numb skin everything felt rough and distant. Pencils rested uncomfortably in his fingers.

But if Rowan decided to extend his apprenticeship after the Boatcoming they’d be seeing much more work in the Rebuilding, and not just the repairs and piecework they were accustomed to. He missed his old hands.

‘We never did do anything about that cupboard.’ Tomass’ mother spoke loud enough to be heard but nobody took much notice, fixed in their own reveries. The cupboard door above the kitchen sink hung permanently ajar, one of the hinges having rusted loose. ‘It’s bothered me all these years.’ Its interior bared itself to the room now. Emptied of its breakfast foods and bowls it signified the occasion much more than the coloured banner of old bedsheets they had pinned above the doorway.

She sighed through her nose and slumped deeper into 8

her chair. Silence had pervaded much of their meal like an uninvited guest insistent on taking the floor at every opportunity. Her arms hung loosely at her sides. Tomass thought her hair seemed to have grown lighter of late, not quite greying but almost matching the sallow colour of her skin. His father, this far into his drinking, had withdrawn from his usual boisterousness and his breaths had taken on the quality of snoring.

‘Looking forward to seeing the Boat?’ Tomass’ mother had turned her head to face him, her pupils were wide and glistening in the light of the chandelier hung low over the table.

‘I was reading a book that said it might not come across the River, but actually from underneath it.’

His father lifted his chin from his chest. ‘Nonsense.

How could it do that?’

‘Well, why couldn’t it?’

‘It comes across the River.’ He swung his arm in a loosely horizontal line in front of him. ‘None of the real books mention anything about that.’ He tilted his head back and closed his eyes.

‘But how far away is the New Bank?’ asked Thella, who hadn’t touched another potato since her last one.

‘We don’t know yet.’ said Tomass’ mother.

‘But we’re not coming back, are we, not ever?’

‘No, but the New Bank will be better.’ said Tomass.

‘Yes it will.’ said his mother.

‘But how do you know?’

‘Of course it will be, why do you think everyone’s been so excited?’ Tomass’ father spoke without opening his eyes.

‘It’ll be great,’ his mother yawned, ‘we’ll have so much more space, and food for everyone, and it’ll be warm and 9

we’ll have loads of fun with everyone in the tents. We’ll all be together like a big family, and Tomass can help to build us all nice new houses… you’ll see soon enough.’

Thella was swinging her legs under the table, and her foot kept knocking against Tomass’ knee. She didn’t seem to notice, and he didn’t mind.

The house was quiet while Tomass washed the dishes.

His father had wandered off dreamily into the living room and his mother was coaxing Thella to bed. He could just hear her through the ceiling, telling her she has to go asleep now, the Boat won’t come if she doesn’t go asleep. All but one of the chandelier candles had gone out, and the last flame flickered in the draught coming through a gap in the planks of the wall. The door of the broken cupboard was exactly at head-height for Tomass, and he had had to fully open it to be able to stand at the sink unobstructed. He had often snuck raisins and nuts from the breakfast sacks when he was cleaning up in the past, but he kept his head down now. Staring into the empty cupboard at such close range felt odd, like seeing the back of your own head.

He scrubbed the crusting from the last plate, emptied the dirty water from the wash-bucket and dried off his hands. His calluses were white and soft now. The crockery was in a sack with the living room ornaments, which sat bulkily in a corner of the room. He could feel the dead layers of skin on his fingers moving against the cloth and rope as he tied it shut.

He lugged the chinking sack into the hall. As he passed the living room door he saw his father standing in the middle of the room, eyes closed, swaying slightly.

He watched him for a few seconds, wondering wheth10

er he should call out to him. Then he put the sack by the door with the rest of them and climbed the stairs to bed.

Boatcoming day. The flags had been taken down from their poles and each door stood open, as instructed in the Prophetic Book. Everyone gathered on the banks of the River, surrounded by and sitting on the contents of their houses in sacks and suitcases. Children made pathways through the clutter to run amok in. Some grownups wandered in and out of their houses as if checking some kind of schedule. Others stood head and shoulders above the crowd, standing on suitcases to look downriver, probably hoping to be the first one to see it, to heroically proclaim its arrival as if it was somehow their doing. Some people lay on the ground, resting against sacks or the walls of houses, too weak to join in the festivity. Everyone wore their thickest coats and gloves, some wrapped up in shawls and blankets. The morning was cold and the fog was thicker than forecast, and seemed possessed with voices echoing from up the length of The Banks where the scene, no doubt, would be the same.

‘Give it a rest,’ Tomass’ father mumbled, hungover and rubbing his shoulder. He had fallen into a game of Catch with a boy on the opposite bank. He returned the ball the first time with an impressive over-arm throw and this had delighted the boy so much that he had thrown it right back. Thella lay on top of her suitcase, her arms across her chest, pretending to be dead. Tomass’ mother held the mantelpiece clock in her hand and had just announced into the hubbub that there were ten minutes to go.

‘Ten minutes. Needs to bloody hurry up.’ said his fa11

ther, throwing the ball without even looking. His aim was poor and the boy dropped the ball into the River where the current carried it away. He started to cry, just about audible from this side of the River. His mother scooped him up and took him away. Tomass’ father tried to shout an apology but it either didn’t carry through the fog or was ignored, and he quickly went quiet once he realised the attention this was drawing from those around them.

He mumbled something to himself, eyes burrowing into the ground.

Ten minutes passed. Unease trickled through the crowd. An old woman not far from them was arguing with her family, ‘It’s not coming! I told you! What did I tell you?’ while a younger woman, presumably her daughter, fruitlessly tried to fan down her shouts with her hands.

‘What’s happening now?’ asked Thella, cross legged on her suitcase, looking from parent to parent.

‘I’m sure it’ll come soon,’ said Tomass’ mother. ‘Maybe we just got the time a little wrong.’

‘It can’t be,’ said his father. His dark eyes scrutinised the fog.

‘It’s probably just a bit late,’ said his mother.

Suddenly a glow appeared off in the fog, right above the River. It was faint, Tomass thought he might have been imagining it, but it grew slowly brighter. People started to point, sharing tentative looks with their neighbours, was it actually happening? And then cheers broke out from further up The Banks, rippling backwards until those around Tomass took it up too. The air burst with noise as a few tendrils of light broke through the fog, beacons coming straight from the glow.

People jumped into action, laughing as they gathered 12

their bags around them.

‘Kids, get your things! Get off that, Thella!’ Tomass’ mother was ushering them over to their father, who had moved right to the edge of the River, and was leaning out over it to see. A man Tomass vaguely recognised from Church looked him dead in the face with wide eyes glowing like jewels in his gaunt face, a bulging sack weighing down his shoulder. ‘It’s here!’

Tomass dragged the crockery sack over to the River’s edge. His mother watched him deposit it at her feet and gave him a brief glowing smile before turning back to the River. He followed his parents’ gaze. The glow was really quite bright now. Thella stood at his side, futilely craning her neck to see past the bodies in front of her.

‘What can you see, Tomass?’

‘It’s still just a glowing light.’

‘Is it getting closer?’

‘I think so, it’s getting brighter.’

A father a few feet from Tomass had lifted his daughter onto his shoulders, his thin frame seemed almost to buckle under her weight. She was pointing, trying to articulate something.

There was a thinning in the fog. The glow grew clearer for a second, a burning circle, rising over the River.

Silence fell. Tomass, standing at his mother’s side, could hear the ticking of the clock in her hand. And then a yell and a loud splash. Someone across the River had tossed a sack into the water and was wrestling with the hands that were dragging him back from the edge, his furious shouts muffled by the fog. The current took the sack with haste and carried it off downstream. All heads turned to watch it go, like mourners at the send-off of a body.

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‘What? What is it?’ asked Thella.

‘It’s just the sun.’

Their parents were silent. The fog had swept back over and they both stared transfixed at the hazy ball of light, unable to shake that brief mirage from their eyes.

Tomass felt a chill grip him at the strange frozen sight of the people around him, some had slumped to the floor, most stood motionless as if caught in a spell. It was as if some terrible news had arrived, and nobody was sure what to do about it.

‘Is it not coming?’ Thella whispered to Tomass.

‘I don’t know.’

After a long time the first few people went back inside, and the noise rose back into a din of a different tone entirely. There were people crying in other people’s arms.

Some of the people who had been lying down had still not gotten up.

Gradually the crowd thinned out, and Tomass’ parents led them back inside the house. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’

His mother said, fishing a bottle of verum from one of the sacks and sitting at the kitchen table, clutching it as if it was a hot drink and she was warming her hands.

That night Tomass could still see people outside from his window. A couple sat huddled together just below on top of a suitcase, and a little further down someone stood at the edge of the River, cradling a bundle that Tomass assumed to be a baby. And on the opposite bank, no more than an outline in the fog, Tomass could just see a figure lying curled up against a wall. Even from this distance he could see them shivering.

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Alistair Daniel

I teach creative writing for the Open University, where I’m working on a PhD. My short stories have appeared in The Missouri Review, Narrative, Litro, Stand, Flash, The Stinging Fly and The Irish Times. I’ve been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and longlisted for the Fish International Short Story Prize.

Montreal New England, 1993. Five European teenagers are heading for the Canadian border in a stolen van. Four of them will never arrive. alistairgdaniel@gmail.com

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Montreal Alistair Daniel When you’re young – 19, say, or 20 – death is like a shark, fin slicing the horizon on a hot summer’s day, when the sun-warmed water swells beneath you and the tide tugs at you so gently you hardly notice that you’re bobbing out to sea. At least that was how it seemed to us, the five of us, the ‘Maniacs’. As far as we were concerned death was something seen on TV, a low-budget production shot in foreign lands, starring dictators, diseases and drought.

These disasters added colour to the backdrop of our lives, but to us they were no more real than the scenery in a school play and without them, we suspected, without famine and war, nobody would ever die. Certainly, we had no plans in that direction. We were only just starting to live, and our mortality was an ugly rumour that no one had seen fit to confirm. We didn’t know that sooner or later death finds a way of stealing up on you, weaving through the water, nuzzling your leg with its snout, but then some people are lucky and don’t see it coming, but go on drifting right up to the end. I like to think that this is what happened to us, or most of us: that we were unperturbed that summer, thinking we were still in shallow water, and if we straightened our legs we could stand.

At any rate, there was no sign of any shark when we found ourselves in Matilda one morning, pelting down the highway with the windows rolled down and the wet air gushing in and the radio blaring and the green mountains rising up ahead. Matilda was a clapped-out Plymouth Voyager with a dodgy cassette player and three rows of fake leather seats. One of the tyres was al17

most bald, but right then – right at that moment – we were more concerned about the radio. Stuart had flicked through the stations, keeping one hand somewhere near the wheel, but they all played the same songs: Dreamlover, Have I Told You Lately?, Runaway Train. That one was appropriate, at least.

‘Tory Boy,’ said Stuart, ‘for the love of Christ help us out here, man.’

I hoisted my backpack from the floor and rummaged in the pockets.

‘Faith No More,’ I said.

‘Bedwetters,’ said Stuart. ‘Couldn’t find metal with a magnet.’

‘Nirvana.’

‘Never mind.’

‘Yes.’ ‘I mean “forget it.”’

‘What’s wrong with Nirvana?’ I said. ‘I thought they were “the spirit of punk”.’

‘The spirit of-?’ Stuart let go of the steering wheel and grabbed my polo shirt with both hands. ‘Hippies, Tory Boy,’ he said. ‘Fucking hippies, with their fucking tie dye T-shirts and their fucking mascara. Cobain is just a buftie with a henna tattoo. Fucking Nirvana. The clue is in the name, eh?’

He threw himself back into his seat, brushing a hand across the steering wheel just in time to prevent us from plunging into a ditch, then he jammed the wheel between his knees and craned his neck over his shoulder. The van began to drift across the road.

‘Maarten! What have you got for our delectation, big man? Scandinavian rap? Underground klezmer? Tibetan throat singing? Japanese funk?’

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Maarten was sprawled across the second row, rolling a joint. ‘Sorry, man,’ he said. ‘I only have cds.’

‘Fucking capitalist,’ said Stuart. ‘You with your fucking Sony Discman, you selfish prick.’

Maarten grinned.

‘What about you, Simply?’

Simply Red leaned forward and propped his stumpy little arms on the back of my seat. ‘Actually Stuart I have tape I think you will like,’ he said.

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Stuart. ‘Is it Simply Red?’ ‘No.’ ‘Moscow State Orchestra?’

‘No.’ ‘Ace of Base?’

‘Show him, Simon,’ said David, and he passed the tape to me. I held it up for Stuart. It was the Proclaimers.

‘Oh aren’t we the fucking wag, my little Commie apparatchik?’

‘Maybe you like to sing for us, Stuart?’ said David. ‘“Letter from America”? “I’m Gonna Be?”’ ‘I’m gonna show you the end of my fist, you cheeky bastard,’ said Stuart. He puffed out his cheeks. ‘Right, boys and girls, there’s only one thing for it: we’re going to have to sing. Who knows the words to “O Canada”?’

‘But we are not in Canada,’ said Karol, from the third row.

Stuart threw me a glance. ‘Have you not told them yet?’ he said.

‘Told to us what?’ said David.

My throat tightened. I shook my head.

‘Fuck’s sake, TB,’ said Stuart, ‘what are you playing at?’

‘I thought we agreed-’.

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‘Thought nothing,’ Stuart cut in. ‘Any agreement we made is a figment of your feeble wee brain. Now spit it out, man. These boys deserve the truth.’

The truth. By this stage in the summer, after everything that had happened, I ought not to have been astonished

by Stuart’s chutzpah, but I was.

‘Tell to us what?’ said David.

‘Just tell them for crying out loud,’ Stuart groaned.

‘My balls are aching with the suspense.’

Slowly, I turned around. David and Karol were staring at me, expectant and confused. The lump in my throat had swelled to the size of a golf ball. I swallowed hard.

‘Boys,’ I said, ‘we’re not going to Greenville. We’re going to Montreal!’ I punched the air as I said this, to emphasise the greatness of the plan, but my fist rammed into the roof, and the whoop that capped my announcement sounded more like a yelp.

David’s reaction was worse than I’d feared. Before I’d even finished he had buried his head in his hands and was shaking it from side to side.

‘No,’ he groaned. ‘No, no, no, no, no!’

This was over the top, even for David; so much so I began to think I’d made a mistake. But to my relief Karol seemed untroubled by the news. He blinked a couple of times and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

‘Okay,’ he said. His face showed all the anguish of a Trappist monk. Then he said: ‘Where is Montreal?’

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Philippa Holloway

Philippa Holloway has been a zombie in a b-movie, once brought someone back from the dead, and spent three days in Chernobyl’s Exclusion Zone as research for her novel. She challenged herself to publish short stories on every continent, so far achieving success in the US, Australia, Africa and Europe.

Borderland Helen, a self-taught prepper and single-mother protesting plans for a Nuclear-Power Station that will consume her land, travels to Chernobyl’s Exclusion-Zone where her skills and beliefs are tested by those living with its legacy, and realises she must choose between her child and the fight to save her family heritage. lion.parsley@gmail.com

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Borderland Philippa Holloway February 2014, North Wales.

He is small for his age, only a month and a half into his second year at primary, not quite six. Goose-grey eyes and jackdaw stick-nest hair that makes him look smaller.

She won’t cut it, no matter how many times people hint, or state bluntly, that she should. Being different will give him strength. In the long run.

Helen sits on her haunches while he brings her folded underpants and balled socks, fleece pyjamas and a tattered book for her to tuck into his rucksack. Already it holds waterproofs, a water bottle and a hand powered torch, high protein snacks, and a silver foil survival blanket neatly folded into a small square pouch. There is a list in carefully formed child’s handwriting inside a small brown notebook, and after each item is carefully stowed he marks a tick on the page with a stubby pencil.

‘Think,’ she says when he’s finished. ‘Is there anything missing from the list?’

He sways in his big hiking boots, rotates like a miniature scarecrow in a breeze, scanning the room for anything he’s missed.

Stops turning.

‘Modron and Mabon.’

‘Get them, then.’

He picks up a large pickle jar from the floor at the side of his mattress. It’s half full of cabbage scraps and sticks, and somewhere underneath the leaves there are two large garden snails buried deep inside their shells.

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‘I’m ready.’

Outside, Helen pauses in the wind that cuts in off the coast and rushes over the fields, stares out over the island at the razor-sharp teeth of Snowdonia, distant on the mainland. It’s a clear, late afternoon, the watery sun just on the horizon behind her. The mountains still have snow on the peaks. The fields nearby are tinged deep blue in the fading light. She shivers.

‘Did I ever tell about the blue fields, Jack?’

He looks up at her and sighs. ‘Yes. Over and over and…’ Freckles on pale skin.

‘Alright, no need to be cheeky.’

He carries on in a monotone, ‘Taidy sprayed the fields bright blue to stop Caesar…’

‘Caesium.’ ‘…to stop the sheep getting…dirty?’ A frown. He waits to be corrected.

‘Contaminated.’

Jack looks at the grey fleeces and muddy underbellies of the sheep huddled against the spiky hawthorn hedge, rubs a sleeve under his runny nose. ‘It didn’t work, they’re still dirty.’

She ruffles his hair. She wasn’t much older than he is now when the first images of Chernobyl’s shattered reactor flickered onto the tiny black and white portable TV in the living room. Doors and windows shut tight against the hot spring sunshine until the rooms were stuffy and her nose itched for fresh air. She remembers pressing her fingers against the cool glass of the hall window and watching her dad disappear inside the rubbery skin of a monster suit to go and check the sheep. The gritty texture of powdered milk on her tongue. There were hushed 24

conversations in the kitchen that went quiet as soon as she or her sister walked into the room. Enough to know that everything had changed, that they weren’t safe anymore, no matter how many times they were rocked on laps and whispered reassurance.

Jack kicks pebbles into puddles while she locks up, then reaches for her hand as they walk up the lane towards her parents’ farm and the car her dad lets her borrow. She’s late today, going over to help Ioan with his little hobby flock. Jennifer will be checking her watch.

As they walk Jack tugs at her wrist, then wriggles away and skips ahead, just out of reach. He is confident on the stony path; jumping over puddles and avoiding the peril of rocks that jut up out of the slate chips and could turn an unobservant ankle. If he’s nervous about his first night away from her side he’s either hiding it or has forgotten for a moment in the game of the journey.

She can feel the tension in her shoulders, beneath the straps of his rucksack. Walks faster to burn up the adrenalin that floods her system whenever she thinks about the next few days. She could cancel the whole thing, of course, but what kind of message would that send her son? No, she has to test them both. Survival depends on identifying your weaknesses, facing them head on.

Her sister’s farmhouse isn’t far. It sits right on the edge of the Anglesey coast, just a field and a sandy, root-tangled path separating the garden from black rocks and foaming sea. Wylfa Nuclear Power station is less than a mile away, so heavy and solid it could be a castle. Except the shape is wrong. The angles are industrial, the defences military. There are no windows. It fades in and out of sight between the knotted oak trees that line the drive25

way, but even when she can’t see it, she knows it’s there.

Between the main road and Jennifer’s house they pass three empty cottages, a few rubbled spaces where other homes once stood. In the last year the landscape has already been scarred beyond healing, and there are plans to strip out the hedgerows next, to relocate the wildlife.

Helen has documented each change through her camera, keeps files on the plans.

As she eases the car around the potholes that lead to the farmhouse, sheep lift their noses into the wind that whips off the headland. They call out to their lambs over the threat of the engine noise.

Inside the car neither of them speaks; despite the regularity with which they come here, together, to help out and drink tea, they both know that this time it’s different.

Jack is watching her through the rear-view mirror. She glances up every so often just to catch his eye, to send him a sign that it’s okay. He’s going to be okay. She’s explained it all to him.

‘It’s a challenge, like an adventure.’

‘But why do you have to go?’

‘Because doing this will make us both even stronger.

It’s only a few days.’ Holding him tight and burying her face in his tangled hair, like the first day of school, but worse.

The security light comes on and half the house lights up, its corners worn and lichened, the mortar receding where it shoulders the brunt of the weather. She loves this house; her grandparents used to live here, before Jack was born she even lived here for a while. Cutting her teeth as a farmer by managing the livestock, then nursing Taid until they took him into the hospice. Remembering still makes her angry. The indignity of it. A fortnight of 26

morphine and tubes, and people filing in and out to stare at him and cry. Everything he swore he didn’t want. She’d sat with him to the last shuddering breath, using a little foam pad on the end of a plastic stick to keep his gums and lips moist while he slowly dehydrated; the sweet smell of loosening flesh under the blanket marking out his decline. They should have left him in his own bed.

It would have been quicker, more humane. She already has plans for her own finale. There won’t be any nurses to drag things out.

She pulls on the handbrake and cuts the engine. As the wipers fall still, tiny droplets of rain bead the windscreen. Jack sits in his car seat behind her, the straps so tight they make his coat puff out in segments, waits. The car is rocking almost imperceptibly in the wind. Jack never met his great grandparents. By the time he was born the house had been rescued from probate by Ioan and Jen, and their fat salaries from the plant. That’s the only good thing she can say about Wylfa. If it wasn’t for the plant the house would have gone to strangers. And now, years later, it might go to the plant’s replacement. Apart from her parents’ farm on the other side of the site, it’s the only inhabited one left.

Through the windscreen Helen can see the kitchen windows, steamed up from cooking. One is cracked open but not enough to clear the glass. There is movement behind the steam, blurred colours that must be Ioan and Jen draining veg or making gravy. They fade in and out.

When she unclips her seatbelt Jack copies her, and they step out of the car together, slamming their doors almost in synch. The night smells of rain and seaweed and sheep, the scent of roasting lamb just on the edge of the inhale, and then whipped away by a taut wind. She can hear 27

waves crashing over the rocks beyond the close-cropped pasture. And a low hum. She doesn’t look towards the floodlit glow of the plant, she feels it. Its presence is a shadow or a low white-noise that seeps into and colours everything around here. It vibrates.

She pulls Jack’s rucksack from the boot and helps him shoulder it. It’s heavy but he doesn’t ask for help, just leans forward slightly to balance. He reaches back in and takes the pickle jar out of the black maw of the boot and holds it to his chest with one hand, his other hand finding hers and squeezing. She squeezes back.

‘Remember what I said, it’s an adventure. You’ll get spoiled rotten, I’m sure.’

‘Can I watch TV?’ He’s testing her.

‘If Aunty Jennifer says so, yes. Her house, her rules, remember?’

There’s no need to ring the bell. As they step into the creamy warmth of the hallway, leaves blow in around their boots.

‘Shoes off, Jack.’ A whispered reminder, but not needed. He knows to be on his best behaviour here. He loosens his laces and shucks off the boots, then stands waiting. He’s still clutching the jar.

‘Hey, we’re here,’ Helen calls. ‘Sorry we’re late.’

The door to the kitchen opens and the smell of roasting meat envelops them. Jennifer comes out, wiping her hands on a tea towel. She is older than Helen, and apart from the shape of their noses, the tilt of their eyes, they could be strangers. Their hair had been the same colour when they were girls; coal back, fierce. Jennifer had dyed hers blonde as soon as she was allowed, turning any bullies into boyfriends. Helen had used her fists to silence them. It was quicker. The respect was worth the deten28

tion.

‘Hey, come on in little man.’ Jennifer kneels and hugs her nephew, pulling away when she feels the glass jar pressing on her stomach. ‘What have you got there?’

‘My friends.’

Jen looks up past his tousled head and frowns a question mark at Helen.

‘Snails.’

‘Lovely.’ Jennifer stands. ‘Keep them in the jar, okay?’

She helps Jack take off his rucksack and weighs it in her hands. ‘What’s in here? Bricks?’

Jack shakes his head and half smiles, and she carries on. ‘You don’t need to build your own house here Jack, we’ve got you a room ready! Come and see while your mam goes to the field?’

Jack doesn’t answer. He looks between his mam and his aunt and hugs his jar tighter.

‘Do you want to come with me down to the field?’

He nods.

‘Put your stuff over there then, and get your boots back on.’

He settles his snails down on the sideboard and crouches to lace his boots. She’s proud of how deft he is – she’s heard there are children in his class not yet fully toilet trained.

As they open the door again, Jennifer catches Helen’s sleeve.

‘Are you sure he’s going to be okay here?’

‘He’ll be fine, he’s prepared.’

They head off down the lane that slips between the garden and the orchard, Jack nimble as a goat over the roots and pebbles. He is prepared, it’s just not quite time yet.

29

She’s already done a full day’s work on her parents’ farm, taking Jack with her after school to tip sheep pellets into troughs, showing him how to use a pocket knife to hack away the knotted fleece of a wayward ewe who’d become tangled in a dense briar patch on the edge of the boundary field. She’s tired. Ioan meets her on the path, running to catch up. He is big; both tall and broad, a gut just the safe side of overweight. He scoops Jack up as if he weighs nothing and swings him onto his round shoulders, getting a squeal of delight for his efforts.

‘How are they?’ Helen asks.

‘They were fine this morning, but a few seem ready to drop.’ Out of breath a little.

Helen has been helping Ioan with his little flock for years. The rest of the fields had been sold off after Taid died, were now in the hands of the new project. But they’d kept a few, so as to keep the word ‘farm’ on the gatepost valid. They didn’t need the smallholding or the animals. Helen is pretty sure they make a loss on the livestock each year, but it keeps Ioan happy. She drops in a few times a week to check things over, help with anything he still isn’t sure of, or where two sets of hands are necessary.

While Ioan bounces Jack on his shoulders Helen does a quick tour of the perimeter, making sure the fence repairs from last weekend are still good, checking for any new damage.

The sheep are in the barn, penned in and ready to lamb, their swollen bellies widening them out so their backs are flat as tables. Jack, finally free of Ioan’s attention, scrambles high onto a stack of bales and swings his legs while the adults discuss the stock.

‘There are only two I’m worried about,’ Helen points 30

at a pair right at the back. ‘From their size, you might be looking at three, even four each.’

‘Bumper crop.’

‘Expect losses. You sure you don’t want Ianto to come over, just in case?’ A boy from Gwredog Uchaf, the other side of the lake; young and enthusiastic, skint enough to need the extra cash from overtime.

‘We’ll manage. I’m not useless you know.’

‘I know, but…’

‘If you’re worried, why are you going now? Why not wait?’ The edge is sharp, but she’s ready for it.

‘I’ve made provision. His number is in here.’ She hands him a thick envelope from her back pocket. ‘So are the quantities for the supplements after birth, and, just in case, a list of signs and treatment for toxaemia and milk fever. They both present the same, remember? So treat for both if you see any of them go quiet and stop cudding.’

She swings a leg over a wood-pallet fence held together with twine, and squats beside a heavy bellied ewe, running her hand along its side, pressing to feel for the hard knobbles of skulls beneath the thick, damp fleece. ‘If you’re worried about one, you should treat them all. But really, they should be fine. If I was worried, I wouldn’t be going at all.’ She stands up and looks him straight in the eye. ‘Any concerns, call Ianto. I trained him myself.’

Back at the house Ioan hoses down his wellies and slots them carefully onto a rack by the back door, while Helen and Jack take off their hiking boots in the porch.

Jennifer meets them in the back hall.

‘Dinner’s ready, are you staying for food or do you need to shoot off?’

‘I’ve got time.’

31

‘How’s mam?’ The usual question, the heart of most of their conversations. The last three years have been punctuated by bad test results and chemo, a shift from their parents’ kitchen being a place to eat Sunday lunch together to hushed meetings about anti-nausea medication, hair loss and probability. Watching her shrink and blemish before their eyes. They’ve had to negotiate new roles and it’s caused arguments. Because Helen lives close, in a barn she has bought from her parents’ estate and converted into a home, because she works on the farm and is in and out of their house daily, she is the one who bears the most weight.

‘She’s fine, eating more.’ She sees a softening of the shoulders beneath Jennifer’s cashmere sweater. Even in her Sunday jeans and with her hair tied back she looks elegant. Helen shoves her hands into her pockets and rocks in her thick woollen socks. She’s never really out of jeans.

‘I must get over to visit this week.’ Jennifer ushers them through the kitchen and into the lounge, reaches behind the sofa to pull out the basket of toys she keeps for Jack when he visits. He settles his snail jar beside him on the rug and begins removing items from the basket, lining them up in front of his crossed legs.

The lounge and dining room have been knocked into one; a big open space. A view to the garden at one end, and the field and sea at the other. Squashy sofas in pale grey are arranged around the original fireplace. A wide oak table and bookcases neatly stacked and spaced with vases marks out the dining area. Lamps everywhere. The light is soft, yellow.

There’s wine on the table; white with condensation in dewy beads on the glass. Helen paces the room, touching 32

the things that make it her sister’s; the expensive weave of the fabric covering the sofas, the silver framed photo of her and Ioan’s wedding day, a vase of shop bought daffodils; sunshine yellow just beginning to break through the papery spathe. It’s the kind of house people aspire to, a listed building tastefully renovated. An open fire, for luxury rather than necessity, has settled to an orange glow. She runs her hand over the radiator. It’s warm.

Jack has lost interest in the toys already; is lying on his tummy in front of the fire, swinging his legs up over his backside. He’s transfixed by the tiny world inside the pickle jar, his face close to glass. One of the snails has awakened and is gliding around its concave prison.

He’s had them for nearly three months now. She needs to make him release them soon, before he loses interest. She needs to make him set them free while he’ll still feel the loss like a rock in his chest. He needs to own that rock.

Jennifer glides in with a carafe of water and a china gravy boat, followed by Ioan holding a serving dish heavy with fragrant meat. There is a back and forth to the kitchen, fetching tablespoons and mint sauce, during which Helen whispers to her sister, ‘This feels formal, what’s going on?’ and her sister replies, ‘We just thought it would be nice, a proper meal together. I’m glad you have time.’

When they are seated around the table, there is an atmosphere redolent of Christmas, of the Sunday dinners of childhood crowded around the battered kitchen table back home, their mother plump, healthy and sweating beneath her apron.

There is a pause while the feast is consumed by their eyes, laid out on platters.

‘There!’ Jennifer exhales. ‘Lovely!’

33

Everything in the room is warm and yellow and creamy and soft. Light glints off the glasses like sunlight on the sea.

It doesn’t take long to wreck it.

34

Jan Cabral-Jackson

Jan Cabral-Jackson is a graduate of the University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing, with a Masters in Creative Writing. She was born in Lisbon, attended a French Lycee and works as a part-time GP in the North West. Indiana Press published her short story Redemption in June 2016.

Louis & Marguerite Louis & Marguerite is set in 13th century Normandy and the Siege of Damietta. Marguerite is accused of leprosy and searches for refuge in monastery hospitals, whilst her husband Louis fights in the Fifth Crusade, bearing witness to the first interfaith meeting between Francis of Assisi and the Sultan al-Kamil. drmjackson@me.com

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Louis & Marguerite Jan Cabral-Jackson Rouen, 3rd September 1221 ‘Hurry, Mademoiselle Pigache has summoned you upstairs,’ the head servant said, hobbling over to the kitchen table, cleaning her brow.

‘Yes, Madame,’ Marguerite said, dusting the dough from her hands on her tunic. She wondered what the Mayor’s sister, Isabelle Pigache, wanted at this hour. She had turned up unexpectedly and none of the other servants had seen her yet.

Marguerite crept up the dark and narrow staircase, carrying the brass oil lamp. She much preferred the warmth of the kitchen’s fire. She knocked on the door.

‘Come in and close the door,’ a man instructed.

Marguerite recognised him as soon as she walked into the chamber. It was Aurélien Medicus, the physician who had treated the Mayor’s sweating sickness. He only attended the wealthy merchants and nobles of Rouen.

Then someone shuffled, and Marguerite saw a woman with her bare back to her. She looked young, probably not even twenty-years-old.

‘Mademoiselle Pigache?’ Marguerite asked.

‘Stand back,’ the young woman said, ‘don’t look at me!’

‘You must grab these and burn them!’ Aurélien Medicus said pointing to the pile of clothes on the floor next to the woman.

Marguerite nodded. The young girl hid her face. Another man spoke, in a hoarse voice, ‘Now leave us and 37

forget what you’ve seen.’

It was her Master Nicholas Pigache, Mayor of Rouen.

He waddled over to the chair; his face was flushed.

‘Yes, Sir,’ Marguerite said, picking up the clothes. She closed the door, but listened through the gap.

‘These chancres on her hands,’ the physician said, ‘there’s no mistake. This is beyond our medicine. The priest will know what to do.’

‘No, please,’ Isabelle Pigache said, ‘I know what they’ll do to me. I’m not like them!’

‘My poor sister,’ Nicholas Pigache said, ‘you’ll be taken care of, I promise.’

Marguerite carried the clothes to the pit behind the manor. She used flint and watched them burn. As the night set in she looked up and met the Mayor’s prying eyes watching from the upstairs window. She turned away and heard the screeching of wheels coming to a halt. Marguerite heard hushed voices. The priest, Father Jerome, had arrived.

‘Please, Father Jerome,’ Isabelle Pigache said, ‘I’m not ill!’

‘Come child,’ Father Jerome said, ‘there’s nothing to worry about.’

‘Nicholas! Brother!’ Isabelle Pigache said, ‘don’t send me away!’

Marguerite looked up but the Mayor hid away from the window.

‘Come, Mademoiselle,’ Father Jerome said, ‘all will be well.’

The night fell into silence again as the carriage pulled away. What matter of illness was it that the physician sought fit to ask for the aid of a priest instead?

38

The next morning, Marguerite heard a knock on her door. A messenger came from the Manor with a brief message that changed everything- you are dismissed.

Seven weeks later Rouen, 20th October 1221 ‘Let me through,’ Marguerite shouted, pushing through the crowds; holding her son’s hand tightly in the Rue Brasiere south of the market square.

Nicholas Pigache kept on walking, saluting the wine merchants and fish traders in their market stalls.

‘Please, Monsieur Pigache!’ Marguerite said.

‘Move along woman!’ a soldier said.

‘It’s me, Marguerite Aubert, Monsieur Pigache, please!’

The Mayor stopped and looked, ‘Do I know you?’

‘I work in your kitchens, Monsieur Mayor. Louis, my husband, worked in your stables.’

‘How dare you stop me?’ Nicholas Pigache asked.

‘There must have been some sort of mistake, Monsieur Mayor. I was dismissed – ’ Nicholas Pigache turned his back.

‘I was there, Monsieur Mayor…the night your sister came to visit. I did as you said and -’ Pigache slapped her across her face. ‘You’re never to utter those words! And if I find you in Rouen again, I’ll have you hanged! Now leave…peasant.’

Henri let go of her hand, and pointed his fist to the Mayor, ‘Don’t hit my mother!’

The Mayor and the two guards laughed.

‘Henri, it’s alright,’ Marguerite said. She felt the dent of Pigache’s signet ring on her face and wiped the blood 39

running from her split lip.

‘Please sir, we have nothing left.’

Then screaming began, and people were pointing at her.

Marguerite drew her hand to her face. Her ragged veil had fallen to the ground, exposing the rash on her cheek.

‘Leper!’ The crowds shouted.

‘Leave!’

‘Get out, you sinful woman!’

Marguerite’s hands shook as she picked up the torn veil.

‘Maman!’ Henri screamed.

Marguerite turned to look but a stone struck her in the shoulder. She wobbled, and grabbed Henri’s hand.

The mayor, the crowds, had they all lost their mind?

The crowd’s voices only grew louder.

‘Let’s go, Henri!’ Marguerite said.

Marguerite ran as fast as she could, through the cobbled streets. She nearly fell dragging Henri along. She had the metal taste of blood in her mouth. Perhaps there was one person that could help them.

‘I can’t run,’ Henri said, ‘my feet hurt.’

Marguerite stopped, and saw blood seeping through her son’s torn leather soles. She brought him close.

‘Do you see that church over there?’ Marguerite said, ‘the one lit with the candles?’

Henri nodded.

‘We’re nearly there, not far. Do you think you can walk there?’

‘Yes, Maman.’

‘We’ll hide there tonight and leave Rouen in the morning.’

‘But how will Papa find us if we leave?’

40

‘He’ll find a way. I’ll leave a message with the priest when he comes looking for us,’ Marguerite said. She looked at her son, with his long clumsy arms and large brown eyes. It was easy to forget that he was only eight years old sometimes.

They sat in the back of the aisle on the right side of the church as the mass finished. The priest walked along the nave holding incense, followed by one of his acolytes.

She took a deep breath in and touched the old callous on her hands, vestiges from the days of thatching and ploughing she’d done. Marguerite felt the rash on her cheek tingle, and tucked the veil closer to her face. When the last parishioner left she approached the priest.

‘Father Jerome,’ Marguerite said, ‘we need your help.’

The priest didn’t look and blew the candle on the altar.

‘I work for Monsieur Pigache,’ Marguerite said.

‘Hmm,’ Father Jerome said, ‘the family has sent you?’

Marguerite nodded. She wanted a chance to explain herself first.

‘Follow me,’ the priest said ushering his acolytes out.

Marguerite and Henri followed the priest past the altar, down a few steps into an old crypt. It was dark and dusty, and two candles lit an old stone altar.

‘So what is this about?’ the priest said, ‘I don’t have very long, I’m travelling tonight.’

‘We mean to leave Rouen, Father Jerome,’ Marguerite said, ‘you see, I was there that night you escorted Mademoiselle Pigache.’

‘You shouldn’t be meddling in the past,’ Father Jerome said, ‘who are you again?’

‘I burnt her clothes as they told me. But they sent me away, dismissed. I have nowhere else to go.’

‘You’re a servant?’

41

‘I’ve done nothing wrong, Father Jerome,’ Marguerite said, ‘this is my son Henri. All we want is your help to get to a monastery, out of Rouen.’

‘You lie to me and then expect me to help you?’

She lifted her veil, ‘Please, Father, no one will help us.

And I don’t know what this rash is…’

The priest took a step back, ‘A leper, here? Have you lost your mind?’

‘I’ve not seen a physician, I can’t know for certain. But if you take me to the monastery hospital, as you did with Isabelle Pigache, perhaps they could help me?’

‘You fool!’ Father Jerome said pointing his finger.

‘Please, I have a few sous...’

The priest hesitated, ‘Show me.’

Marguerite drew out a few coins from her pocket.

‘Not even a livre’s 1 worth! Even if I took you as far as the Augustinians, you couldn’t afford the entrance fee!’

‘My husband is away in the Crusades. He’ll pay any monies owed.’

The priest laughed, ‘haven’t you heard? Damietta has been lost. Even Archbishop Poulain has condemned the current efforts. You’ll never see any silver or spoils, woman - your husband is as good as dead!’

‘Papa is not dead!’ Henri shouted, coming forward.

‘Of course, he’s not, Henri,’ Marguerite said, ‘have you no compassion, Father Jerome?’

The priest smirked, ‘Everything on this earth has a price, my dear.’

‘He’ll come home,’ Marguerite said.

‘I can’t help you. You should accept your punishment as God sees fit. Now go, or I’ll call for the guards.’

1 The livre was established by Charlemagne, equal to one pound of silver and was subdivided into 20 sous.

42

‘Let’s go, Henri, there’s nothing for us here,’ Marguerite said.

‘I hate you,’ Henri said spitting, ‘my father will come back.’

‘Be careful, boy,’ Father Jerome said, ‘or the Lord will cut out your tongue.’

‘And perhaps he’ll cut out yours!’ Henri said.

‘We’re leaving, come, Henri,’ Marguerite said pulling him closer.

‘I’ll pray for your sins,’ Father Jerome said.

‘Pray if you must, Father, but we won’t seek you in the afterlife.’

Marguerite took Henri across the Pont de Mathilde in the vicinity of Saint-Vigor. They walked under the cover of darkness, until she saw a barn ahead.

‘Hello?’ Marguerite said pushing the barn door open.

‘Stay there, Henri, I’ll see if we can find us some food.’

Marguerite knelt down on her hands and knees, searching for any spoils of food. All she could feel was the wet soil and the muddy hay brushing against her tunic. There was a peculiar smell though, of sweat and blood. Something or someone stirred.

‘Who’s there?’ Marguerite asked startled. She didn’t move. She thought she had touched something that felt like flesh, and cold against her hand.

‘Water...’ a faint voice said.

‘Stay there, Henri, don’t move!’ Marguerite said.

‘Maman?’ Henri said, ‘what’s going on?’

‘Water… a man said, ‘there’s a bucket by the horses.’

‘Water, yes, of course,’ Marguerite said. She grazed her knees on something sharp, a metal of some sort. She pushed it out of the way and saw the bucket as her eyes 43

adjusted to the darkness. The bucket felt light, almost empty.

‘There you are,’ she said tilting the old man’s head forward as he drank from it. ‘How long have you been like this?’

‘I tripped,’ the man said, ‘over the plough, a day or two ago.’

‘Can you stand?’ Marguerite asked ‘Not on my own, I think my leg is broken.’

‘We’re going to move you,’ Marguerite said, ‘Henri, come here but be careful where you stand.’

‘Alright, Maman,’ Henri said.

They pulled and dragged the man out of the barn, under the light of a crescent moon shining through the clouds.

‘Ah!’ the man shouted.

Marguerite stopped, ‘Do you want to rest?’

‘No, it just hurts,’ the old man said, ‘my house is right of the barn, not far.’

They walked into a small house, only a few feet away, surrounded by cornfields.

‘There’s flint and fire-steel on the table,’ the old man said.

Henri reached for the rushlight and Marguerite started the fire in the hearth. The man looked pale, almost grey. He had a gash just below his knee.

‘It’s a deep wound,’ Marguerite said pointing to his leg, ‘do you have a cloth I could clean it with?’

‘On that chest,’ the man said, ‘next to the oil lamp.’

She grabbed the cloth and sat next to him, cleaning his wound. The fire had risen, and smoke filled the room.

Marguerite missed the familiar smell.

‘You’ve done this before,’ he said.

44

‘My brothers kept getting injured growing up,’ Marguerite said, ‘but we have to send for a physician. The bone above your ankle is swollen - it looks broken.’

‘We won’t be getting any physicians at this hour.’

Marguerite looked around the small room, half of which was covered in hay. There was a table, two stools and a few wooden bowls and cooking pots by the fire.

She saw a loom in the corner of the room covered in cobwebs.

‘Why don’t you stay for supper and keep me company overnight? I have mead, some bread, a few nettles and berries left.’

‘Please Maman, can we stay?’ Henri asked. He was holding his head in his hands, sitting close to the fire.

Marguerite looked back at the man, with dried mud falling off his rough tunic. Not that she could judge him, after all, she had been wearing the same dirty coarse gown and tunic for days. His dark eyes appeared weathered by time and a hard life. He was very short, only a few inches taller than Henri.

‘It’s very generous of you,’ Marguerite said, ‘thank you.’

‘Call me Jacob, Jacob Cohen.’

‘I’m Henri Aubert,’ Henri said, bowing his head.

‘Pleased to meet you, Henri,’ Jacob said.

‘Marguerite Aubert,’ she said tucking her veil, ‘I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to trespass on your barn. We were looking for shelter.’

‘Nonsense,’ Jacob said, ‘you’ve rescued me, and I should be the one thanking you.’

They ate their supper in silence, their damp clothes drying by the heat of the fire. Marguerite shivered, her breath steaming against the flickering light.

45

‘Is this your land?’ Marguerite asked.

‘I pay taxes to my landlord,’ Jacob said, ‘Seigneur Chastel.’

Marguerite glanced at the abandoned loom in the corner, ‘Do you live by yourself?’

Jacob nodded and pointed at her veil, ‘Are you covering something there? Are you sick?’

‘Jacob, I –’ Marguerite said.

‘Is it leprosy?’ Jacob said, ‘You’re not wearing your badge but I guess in times like this it just calls for trouble.’

‘Please, don’t report us. We’ll leave.’

‘Who said anything about reporting?’ Jacob said, chewing on a stale piece of bread.

‘I don’t even know what this is…’ Marguerite said, touching her cheek over the veil, ‘The crowds… the priest, they say it’s leprosy, but I haven’t seen a physician. We’re going to Mont-aux-Malades.’

Jacob shook his head, ‘I wouldn’t trust those priests either. Look in that second drawer for me and bring me a box.’

Marguerite brought over a small wooden box.

Jacob opened it gently, taking great care as he took out a faded piece of fabric, ‘This belonged to my wife. This was her badge.’

‘Your wife - she was a leper?’

Jacob shook his head again, ‘No, we’re Jews. We have to wear them too.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘I warned my Yael not to leave the house on her own.

It was dangerous, there had been riots. But she wanted to say goodbye to our son. He converted you see. He wanted to prove himself and join the Christians on Crusade.’

46

Marguerite looked over to Henri who had fallen asleep.

‘She was wearing this badge when they beat her and left her in a ditch. She was half dead by the time I found her.’

‘I’m so sorry, Jacob.’

‘She passed on the tenth day of our seventh month, our Yom Kippur. Almost fifteen years ago now.’

‘What about your son?’

‘He’s here in Rouen, but I don’t see him anymore. He doesn’t remember, you see.’

‘You?’ ‘No. The handed down stories of our ancestors; the massacre of the First Crusade in the autumn of 1096.’

‘What happened?’

‘Their armies rounded them up in the synagogue and killed all of those that didn’t convert.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Enough about me, what of your husband?’

‘My husband was summoned to the Crusades five years ago. Our landlord, Nicholas Pigache, was a vassal to the warrior bishop, Comte Vitry. So it’s just me and Henri, for now.’

‘What does a peasant know of war?’ Jacob said shaking his head, ‘Have you had any news?’

‘They came through as letters written by Comte Vitry, but the Canon Herbet de Andely has stopped mentioning them in his sermons lately. We can’t read or write, so I hoped that as long as the letters kept coming there was a chance my Louis was still alive.’

‘Wars are terrible things,’ Jacob said putting down his mead.

‘I don’t know where we would be without your help 47

tonight, Jacob.’

‘This thing on your face…is that why you run?’

‘I saw something I shouldn’t have. At least that’s what I think happened.’

‘You say you’re journeying to Mont-aux-Malades?

Perhaps there is something I can do for you… and you’d be helping me too.’

‘Anything,’ Marguerite said.

‘There is someone, Raoul. They call him Raoul The Jew. He’s a merchant and a creature of habits, if he hasn’t changed. You should find him in a tavern in town around midday, The Salamander Inn. He’s the tallest man you’ll ever see, probably wearing a colourful robe; you can’t miss him.’

‘What should I say?’

‘Raoul owes me a favour. Tell him I’ve sent you to ask for help and that I’ll pay him to take you and Henri to the monastery.’

‘Jacob...’

‘I would have been left for dead if it weren’t for you.

I’ve saved some silver and I don’t know how long I have left. It would make me happy to see you and Henri safe.’

‘I can’t quite find the words, thank you.’

‘Get some rest. This leg is bothering me still. I’m going to sit up by the fire and mind it for now.’

Marguerite heard the rain falling heavily on the rooftop as she lay down next to her son. She loved how his hair smelled. She whispered, kissing his head, ‘everything will be alright, Henri.’ He didn’t move, and his steady breathing reassured her. She thought of Louis then, and their last night together before he left on Crusade.

‘Promise me you’ll come back, Louis,’ Marguerite said, pulling the cords of the leather bag tight.

48

‘I promise,’ Louis said.

‘Henri needs a father, remember that,’ she said pointing at the three-year-old asleep in their bed. ‘That boy adores you.’

‘I’ll come back with plenty coin. We’ll leave this tenant land and start our own vineyard.’

‘Just come back to us alive.’

‘I’ve made him something,’ Louis said, placing a small piece of woodcarving in the palm of her hand, ‘to remember me by.’

‘Henri will cherish it,’ Marguerite said holding the carved wooden soldier, ‘Louis, I wish you weren’t going…’

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50

Lesley Van deMark

Lesley Van deMark earned a degree from Liverpool John Moores University in Liberal Arts, graduating with honours, awarded for work in therapeutic writing with victims of domestic abuse and women prisoners. Lesley is employed by LIPA as Wellbeing Officer, working with students with mental health issues.

I’ll Have the Onion Soup This story is a semi-autobiographical account of being a woman on her own after 25 years of marriage and looking for love online. It’s a story about what it is to be human and how the events of our past shape our expectations for the future. ghostwriter910@hotmail.com

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52

I’ll Have the Onion Soup Lesley Van deMark You don’t know me. I’m not famous, I haven’t set a world record, I haven’t made headlines, I’m not rich or successful.

My father has just passed, and his passing seems like the end of an era, and although I am in my fifties, it feels like the end of my childhood. I have never attended a funeral before. I thought my Father would live forever and I find it uncomfortable seeing him displayed like part of a museum exhibit. The funeral home is very blue. Blue velvet drapes sweep across white framed windows and I walk across blue carpet to a room that has been dimmed.

I have a cluster of amethyst crystals in my hand that I want to slip into his as a parting gift. I don’t know why, but I didn’t expect his hand to be so cold, heavy and uncooperative as I try to slide the crystals into his palm. All I can think of is how I will hate leaving my devastated mother only 2 days after his funeral. I hate leaving my children, although they are no longer babies. The only way I can describe myself in this moment is a cuckoo bird laying my eggs in another bird’s nest. Leaving it up to another bird to finish the parenting job that I started.

Liverpool, England My first impression of Liverpool is that of total amazement. The culture shock is numbing, but in a good way, and the natives are friendly. It is a land where any problem can be solved with a cup of tea. Flip flops are not thongs, a fag is a cigarette and it would be anatomically 53

impossible to sit on your fanny. I often wake up in the middle of the night and for a brief moment I have no idea where I am. Then I remember. I’m alone.

As a child, I referred to myself as a writer. My office was under the bed covers. On a Sunday morning I would bury myself deep and listen to the voice on my transistor radio; recounting magical tales of woodland animals that spoke in human voices. I closed my eyes and listened carefully as the smoky, deep voice made the words come alive. I had a profound reverence for the power of words.

My father wrote poetry and my mother would listen to him read while she rolled mismatched socks together. I knew she wasn’t really listening. She was assessing the laundry situation. I, on the other hand, hung on his every word. I led a charmed life. I wrote poetry, lived in the countryside and made small stone houses for toads to keep them out of the rain.

In my late teens I adopted political and moral beliefs.

I petitioned to stop the slaughter of innocent baby seals and to put an end to the Vietnam War. I wrote about myself as a young woman, and how a man, ten years my senior, had raped me. I wrote about the disgust and shame I felt for the seals. I wrote an angry letter to that man, I never mailed it.

Many years later I would run away from home; suitcase packed, pictures of beloved pets and loved ones. I sifted through the things I might need over the next few months. I had thought it through. I needed to make a new start, see the world, join the circus. We all go through that, right? The only difference was that I was not a child anymore, not even close: I was in my mid-fifties.

A midlife crisis is a random name given by people to de54

scribe the actions and emotions of others that they will never understand. It is a growth spurt of sorts. It is a realisation that life is too short to waste. Men buy a sports car, women change careers, some get plastic surgery. I needed to change my entire life; which is a much more complicated type of surgery. Metaphorically, there’s a lot of blood loss. In fact, haemorrhaging comes to mind.

Changing your life is like building a house without blueprints, only messier. You know what it should look like when it’s finished. You have a picture of the house in your mind, but no concept of how to construct it or where to begin.

This is where my house begins. Its June 2011. I didn’t run away to join the circus. However, that would have better suited my personality; impractical, living inside my head, a hopeless romantic and a dreamer.

I’m enrolled in University to complete my second degree; English Major, Writer. Although, I’m not sure if I still call myself a writer. I’ve had writer’s block for years now. Too much has happened, I can’t possibly get it all down on paper. Anyway, who would believe it…

Both my parents are Liverpool born and raised Mother came from a privileged background. Her Father died when she was just a girl, but my grandfather’s family made sure that she had everything she needed. She performed on the stage as a young girl. I have photos - She looks beautiful, poised, in her dance costumes. She went to secretarial college and volunteered as a switchboard operator for the fire department during the blitz.

My parents met after the war at a concert for the troops in St. Georges Hall. They courted in the Kardomah Café on Bold Street, now a Jewellers, and she waited for him on many an evening outside the Paramount Cinema (just 55

off London Road), which no longer exists. I am reminded that my Father also no longer exists, and that stings for a few seconds.

I am working two jobs now and attending university full time. I am the eldest in my class. The first day I am met with curious stares and I’m sure the other students wonder whose mother has come to collect them from class. Eventually accepted by my classmates, but hardly a party animal, I must seek my social circle elsewhere.

My life takes an unexpected turn when I take to my bed with the flu.

Feb. 10, 2012 After being in bed with the flu for 3 days, I’m bored. I just heard an advertisement, rocking the airways for this new online dating craze. Wonder if it works? Maybe I should give it a try, wonder how much it costs? What have I got to lose?

Feb 11, 2012 Still in bed. Boredom has peeked. I’ve parted with my £28.00 introductory offer for 30 days. ‘Woman seeks man’. I upload a picture. My computer lights up within minutes with messages from men of all ages and lifestyles. I am a virgin online dater. This seems a lot easier than I thought. This man wants to know what position I like, I assume he must be referring to my employment preferences.

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Feb 26, 2012 It’s been 2 weeks since I joined the dating site. Some of these men look old enough to be my father. Their profile says 55, their skin says 75. However, I think I’m ready to accept my first face to face encounter. His name is Jerry. Jerry pulls up outside my house in an old van, (no expense spared). I sneak a peek through the side of the blinds. A black shrunken head bobs in the front windscreen, hanging from the rear-view mirror; its hair braided into a splay of dreadlocks, a bone through its nose.

Jerry stands poised at the door, his beard braided into the same. No bone.

Employment - not what I had envisioned for myself, but nevertheless, I do what any self-respecting student would do - I get myself a job working at the local supermarket on the tills. Every day is a new adventure: especially interpreting the local dialect and translating from American to Scouse. To begin with I think that perhaps one or two of the customers may have a foreign object lodged in their throats - the persistent guttural sounds turned out to be a citywide epidemic.

After a week of training I am turned loose on the public. I am well received by my fellow staff and particularly the customers. They line up to hear me speak. They ask me if I know anyone famous, or perhaps I know their Auntie who moved to America shortly after the war? She lives in Fresno, California they say. I memorise the price codes for a variety of fruits and vegetables - remembering that the long slender zucchini of my younger days is now a courgette and an eggplant has transfigured into an aubergine. I like that word, ‘aubergine’, it sounds so decadent and purple. I initiate polite conversation with 57

all my customers and afterwards I enquire, ‘Will that be cash or debit card? Please put your card in the machine.’ becomes my automated response. A man in a dark suit appears at my till every Friday after 6pm; feeds two dozen bottles of prosecco down the conveyor belt - followed by 6 boxes of condoms. I study his face but there are no clues. He does not smile, nor does he engage in the polite conversation starters I offer. I am intrigued by this man.

‘Would you like help with your packing?’

‘No.’ ‘£287.50 please. He produces his debit card just as I say, ‘Please put your penis in the machine.’ I am mortified.

March 2012 Simon wants to meet me. He works away on the oil rigs and I immediately see the attraction for me; independence. A man that lives his life and I live mine. He is home for 2 weeks and away for 3. This appeals to me, after all, it is way too early in the dating game to be deciding on a 3-piece suite with anyone. We meet outside The Playhouse in Williamson Square. It’s cold and drizzly. Simon has obviously used a faulty tape measure when recording his height for his dating profile and I generously judge him to be just under 5 ft. ‘Hi.’ he slurs. The air is filled with the smell of his last six pints and he asks if I would like to go for a drink. Later, he orders nachos and a few more beers and I listen patiently while he spills his life story and weeps uncontrollably. I hand him the serviettes from under the plate of nachos to dry his face.

A small splodge of cheese lingers by his mouth. I don’t accept his request to see me again.

58

Canada is cold in the depths of winter. Its 1982 and I am pregnant with my first child. How have I managed to get myself into such a position? No, not the baby - we all know that the stork brings babies. I mean being so far away from home without my family and having lost my entire savings on a business -deal-gone-wrong. The advertisements on the television seem to be centred around food. They taunt me with huge bowls of chocolate ice cream and adverts for Swiss Chalet slow roasted chicken. I can almost taste the gravy dripping from the chicken and rolling down my chin, except - it isn’t, and I can’t. On my way up in the elevator that afternoon, I find an onion that has rolled out of someone’s shopping bag unnoticed, and I put the discovered treasure in my bag. I spend the entire evening on my hands and knees in front of the toilet bowl. I have never to this day, eaten onion soup again.

I give birth to a son in early spring.

April 2012 I have an inbox message from Barry. He does not smile in his photos, but he looks nicely dressed. I converse with him for a week by text and we mutually agree that we will go for dinner. Barry arrives on time and as I open the door, he presents me with the most beautiful bouquet of flowers. I am suitably impressed. As I take them from him and thank him for the lovely gesture, he smiles.

Words fail me. I am not a shallow woman, but I require my date to have teeth. Barry has very few and they are generously spaced. However, it would be rude not to go to dinner, especially after the flowers. I will not go into detail, suffice to say that Barry is all hands. To be honest; I would rather hold his hand than let it roam loose on my bottom and I hope that he doesn’t try to kiss me at all. I 59

think I may have heard him wrong when he leans in at the end of the date and asks, ‘Can I touch your boobs?’

I receive a text message from Barry 20 mins after my rapid exit from his car. It is a photo of what is unmistakably the ‘brain’ that he keeps between his legs, covered by a five-pound note. I’m not sure about the significance of the £5 note - small change would have been more appropriate. However, there will be no second date.

I have reached the conclusion that there is no such thing as a man without baggage. An overnight bag would be one thing, but most come with an HGV. Every eligible man claims to have had his heart broken so terribly or been so badly fleeced by his ex-partner that he views relationships the way that I view onion soup - never again.

May 2012 Bradley, ‘Brad’ comes dancing into my life through a new dating website. His profile picture is him in a tuxedo, standing at the bottom of a very ‘Titanic sweeping staircase’ I love a man in a suit. A bit older than I am, he describes his persona as youthful and fun. We arrange to meet at a Greek restaurant in town and we dance and laugh, and all is well.

Brad and I date for a while. I enjoy his company and for once, I feel that I may have met a normal man.

He is busy renovating his house to put it on the market, he wants to ‘downsize’ since his divorce. His home is immaculate and since he doesn’t know how to cook, the kitchen appliances stand pristine and unused.

The wallpaper and furniture are dated, not my taste, but the house is spotless. I make myself comfortable in the 60

lounge and Brad puts the kettle on. I glance around the room - china cabinets brimming with pastel porcelain figures and I’m guessing they’re not his There are photo frames everywhere; on the furniture tops and on the wall, nice personal touch. Except - that they have all been turned around to face the wall. Brad enters the room and sees me looking at the large frame above my head. ’I don’t want her looking at me, is all he says. Wouldn’t be easier to take the photos down, I think to say. But I don’t.

We climb the stairs to see the newly renovated bathroom and as I pass the master bedroom, I glance in at the open sliding doors of the wardrobe. On one of the shelves, a large teddy bear sits, again - facing the wall.

I say, without thinking, ‘I like your teddy’ to which he answers, ‘Don’t talk to him, he’s a very naughty teddy bear, so he’s facing the corner.’ I turn to him, smiling a ‘don’t be silly’ kind-of-look, but his face is like thunder, he’s not joking.

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62

Paul Perry

Paul has written compulsively for as long as he can remember. He has decided that it’s time to share his stories (and stop leaving them unread in desk drawers). He has a long list of projects in mind, but he wants his first to be a book for younger readers.

Beyond Ash and Oak Beyond Ash and Oak is a story of loss, friendship and most importantly, the notion of home and everything that entails. We follow Peter, a hyper-intelligent boy with no real social skills, as he navigates the strange new world of the care system. p_perry@rocketmail.com

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64

Beyond Ash and Oak Paul Perry Peter had always been a bright boy, not bright for his age.

No, Peter was bright full stop. He was the kind of bright that made adults uncomfortable and children afraid.

‘Can anyone tell me why we decorate trees at Christmas?’

It was just coming to the end of term at school and Ms Garry was trying desperately trying to hold the attention of a class full of over excited eight year olds who knew that Christmas was coming.

‘Anyone?’

A red-haired girl called Amanda raised her hand ever so slightly when no one else did. The timid girl looked like she was about to faint when Ms Garry gestured to her and smiled.

‘Ah, yes. Amanda?’

Amanda stood up slowly, her chair squeaking against the polished wooden floor of the classroom.

‘My mum says that we decorate a Christmas tree for Jesus.’

Ms Garry waited for Amanda to continue, then realising nothing was coming, gave her a big smile.

‘Yes, Amanda, well done. You’re almost right.’ She turned back to the chalkboard where she’d pinned up a picture of a brightly decorated Christmas tree. ‘We decorate fir trees at Christmas because fir trees are evergreen.’

She turned to the class. ‘Does everybody remember what evergreen means?’ When the class nodded she turned back to the board. ‘A tree that keeps its leaves in winter is representative of eternal life – that means living forever – 65

and is how we remind ourselves of Christ. If we were –‘ ‘Well, that’s not right at all,’ Peter yelled from his seat.

Ms Garry, although young and quite new to teaching, had seen her fair share of odd children pass through her classroom already. Most were harmless. Peter was something else though. He gave her the creeps. She gave him her kindest smile.

‘If you would like to speak, Peter. You should raise your hand and then stand.’ She turned her smile toward the red-haired girl. ‘Just like Amanda did.’

Peter gave her a long look, Ms Garry would never have admitted it, but it made her nervous, then he stood and raised his hand.

‘Yes, Peter. Is there something you would like to add?’

Peter cleared his throat and moved to the front of his desk.

‘We decorate fir trees in winter because that’s what the pagans did before Christianity.’

Ms Garry gave Peter a dangerous look, but he didn’t quite understand why.

‘They did it to celebrate the winter solstice. I can show you. I read it in a book my dad gave me.’

Ms Garry was red in the face now, and she folded her arms across her chest. ‘That isn’t what we teach here, Peter. And I’d like you to remind your father of that when you get home.’

Peter raised his hand to speak again but Ms Garry blatantly ignored him and turned back to the board. She didn’t look at him again for the rest of the day.

The following day was the last of term before the Christmas holidays. Peter could feel the tense excitement in the air as he crossed the playground. He was excited too, not 66

for Christmas as such, because ever since his mum had died, his dad hadn’t really gone in for Christmas or anything like that. Peter was just looking forward to a few weeks where he didn’t have to come to school.

Most of the morning was taken up with a special Christmas assembly. Their head teacher, Mr Brown, led them in singing some hymns and carols and Ms Garry accompanied him on the old piano. Someone had draped glittering red tinsel all over it. It was desperately out of tune but no one seemed to mind. The children and teachers clapped and sang along with their bright, beaming faces. Peter wondered why he wasn’t like them.

The classroom after assembly, was just as loud an affair. They played pass the parcel and musical chairs and duck, duck, goose. Ms Garry was playing a tape of scratchy old carols, which she warbled along to from behind her desk.

‘Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way – be careful Jamie, not so fast. Now you Amanda, your turn – in a one horse open sleigh.’

As usual, Peter sat back and watched from his desk in the corner near the back. He wanted to join in. He thought about it. He even considered just jumping into the circle mid game, but he didn’t. His dad wouldn’t approve.

Just at that moment, as if it was timed, the classroom door burst open and in strode his dad. He walked slowly but surely in his usual tweed jacket and perfectly shined brown shoes, and looked up at the walls, inspecting everything as he passed.

When he reached the desk where Ms Garry sat, he rapped his knuckles hard on the wood. The sound made Peter wince.

‘Ms Garry, I presume?’ He inclined his head and 67

didn’t look away. Ms Garry nodded quickly, visibly swallowing. ‘Ms Garry, my name is Robert Llewellyn.’

He dipped his face slightly to look at her over his glasses. ‘That’s Professor Robert Llewellyn. I’ll assume you’ve heard of me.’

In fact, Ms Garry had no idea who this man was who so rudely had strode into her classroom, but being of a somewhat nervous disposition, she nodded anyway.

‘My son Peter brought me some rather alarming news yesterday. He told me that you teach certain things that are proven to not be true. That this class, even this entire school mayhaps, is involved in the perpetuation of religious dogma.’ He took another quick look around, his eyes pausing on the small nativity scene the class had made together and the various other Christmas themed decorations. ‘Is this true?’

Ms Garry didn’t say anything. She’d lowered herself so much in her seat that she was almost beneath the desk.

When he didn’t get a reply, Peter’s dad started another slow walk around the classroom. His eyes took in the coloured posters about farm yard animals and times tables on one wall, then he turned and walked the other way, taking in the drawings and water colour pictures the children had produced. ‘This won’t do. This won’t do at all,’ he mumbled to no one in particular.

Ms Garry seemed to have found her courage, or maybe it was pride at seeing how this man looked down his nose at the things her children had made. She strode from behind her desk and stood right behind him.

‘Excuse me, Professor, may I ask why you are here, disturbing my teaching?’

The professor let out a giant bark of a laugh, ‘HA! Teaching? You call this teaching. My dear, I see no teach68

ing in this room. I just see everything that is wrong with our schools.’

Ms Garry stood up very straight and stuck out her chin proudly. Peter tried to make himself as small as possible behind his desk. This wasn’t going to be good. ‘I’m afraid Professor, that I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’ She gave him such a stare that Peter wondered whether his dad would actually back down.

‘Have no fears, M’lady,’ the professor replied, buttoning up his jacket. ‘I do not wish to spend another minute in this classroom of yours.’ He did a quick search with his eyes and spotted Peter, making himself as small as possible off to the side. ‘Come, Peter. You shan’t be coming back. I’ll make sure you receive a much more suitable education at home.’

Peter spent the next two years being home schooled. He didn’t mind it as such, but he couldn’t say he liked it. His dad worked from home anyway, so it wasn’t such a big deal for him. Every morning he woke Peter up, give him breakfast, and then set him a task to perform before they broke for lunch.

His new classroom was the dining room they hadn’t used since his mum had died. Peter couldn’t remember using this room at all, he could barely even remember his mum. All of the furniture, the nice oak dining table, the fancy chairs, the cupboards which housed the nice plates, had all been packed up and shipped out to who knows where. In their place, Peter’s dad had brought in a desk, a computer (complete with projector) and various little pieces of lab equipment. It was here that he spent most of his time.

Peter’s dad grew a little bit odd over the next two 69

years. It has to be said that most of his colleagues and neighbours thought he’d grown a little odd after his wife passed away, but the real oddness, the things that made curtains twitch up and down the street, didn’t start to happen until Peter was home schooled.

The first incident came when a young man from the education welfare department arrived unannounced at their front door. The professor was less than pleased to see the man, but after rigorously checking his credentials and paperwork, he agreed to let him inside.

The first Peter knew of it was when there was a sharp knock at the door of his classroom.

‘Peter.’ Barked the professor. ‘Attend to me.’

Being addressed in such a way might seem harsh, especially, you might think, coming from his dad, but Peter was used to it. He put down his instruments; his calculator, protractor and compass, and stood to open the door.

He was greeted by a sneering young man with a rather unconvincing moustache. He loped into the room, marking things off on a clipboard.

‘And this is the classroom, is it?’ He had a nasally voice, like someone was pinching his nose. ‘This is where young –‘ He glanced at his notes, ‘Peter receives his teaching?’

‘It is. You’ll find it well equipped,’ The professor said rather stiffly.

The man with the clip board strode around, looking down his nose at the various pieces of equipment. ‘And what is this?’ he asked, stopping at Peter’s Bunsen burner and tripod.

‘That’s my new Bunsen burner,’ Peter said, eager to show it off. ‘I’ve just started chemistry and there are lots of experiments I’m-‘ 70

‘Chemistry?’ The young man squawked, rifling through his papers. ‘It says here that Peter is only eight years old. Should he really be playing with such dangerous equipment? It’s most irregular.’

‘My son is more than capable of using such things.’

The professor came to stand behind his son, placing his hands on his tiny shoulders, ‘Why don’t you tell the gentleman what you’re studying today, Peter?’

Peter didn’t mistake the gentle push that his dad managed to put in his voice, and he didn’t much feel like being told off again, so he took a deep breath and walked back to his desk.

‘Today I’ve been studying angles.’ He pointed to his maths sets strewn about the table. ‘Dad went through it with me yesterday but I was still a bit unsure about quadrilaterals so I thought I’d take myself through it again before I moved on.’

The education inspector gave a little cough and turned to Peter. ‘Take yourself through them?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Peter replied. ‘I teach myself most things. I only go to my dad when I get stuck.’

Peter was unaware that he’d said the worst thing he could in that situation. The inspector put his clipboard down on the table and began to scribble furiously on the page.

‘Have you seen everything you need to, sir?’ The professor stepped toward the prone inspector and Peter could see that his dad was coming to the end of his patience.

After a moment the inspector stood up, holding his clipboard tightly to his chest.

‘Yes, I’ve seen everything I need to.’ He gave the room a final sweep with his eyes. ‘For now.’

71

Despite the obvious disapproval of the inspector, a few weeks later a letter arrived from the home education team, informing them that Peter’s current learning environment was adequate and they were happy for everything to continue as it was.

And continue it did.

The second incident didn’t happen until much later.

Peter was ten years old and he’d been studying at home with his dad for almost two years at this point. You might think this would bring a father and his son closer together, but you’d be wrong. As Peter’s intelligence grew, as his cleverness became more than above average and strayed into boy genius territory, his dad began to see him less as a son and more as an experiment.

Peter’s dad was a professor of psychology. Quite a well-known professor in fact. So much so that his daily work involved people visiting him at home to get help with their problems; real or imagined.

Less people visited the house over those two years, teaching Peter was everything to him, and when he wasn’t teaching him, he was writing about him.

‘Oh yes, everything is going swimmingly,’ the professor told old Mrs Hedge from down the street. She’d collared him on the doorstep as he was bringing in the milk.

‘I’ve written a book as a matter of fact; all about how I teach little Peter.’

‘How do you teach him, Professor?’ Mrs Hedge asked, rising up on her tip toes, trying to get a look through the window.

‘Ah, you see, Mrs Hedge,’ the professor said with a wink, ‘you’ll have to purchase the book for that kind of information. Practical Parenting for the Practically Perfect should be on the shelves of all good book shops come 72

September.’

What the professor didn’t tell Mrs Hedge was that he hadn’t actually sold his book yet, but it just so happened that he had a meeting with a publisher in London the very next day.

‘Look closely at this picture,’ he said to Peter that afternoon. He held out an autumnal forest scene. ‘You have sixty seconds. GO!’ Peter sat and stared, the only thing moving were his eyes as they twitched from side to side.

‘Enough,’ the professor barked, snatching away the picture. He picked up another copy from the desk, placing the first face down.

‘Now this one. There are five differences.’ He held it out. ‘You have sixty seconds. GO!’ Again, the only thing that moved were the boy’s eyes.

They twitched even faster than before.

‘The squirrel in the left corner. The oak, dead centre.

An extra Robin on the elm to the right. The stream has less ripples and – this picture is roughly two centimetres bigger along each side.’

The professor smiled, ‘That’s your fastest time yet.’

He put the pictures back in their little file and sat down on the couch, sighing with content.

‘Tomorrow is an important day for me, Peter, for us.

I’m going to London to meet with a publisher. Soon the whole world is going to know just how special I’ve made you.’ He said this looking at his son, but from the corner of his eye, he regarded the red letters which were piling up on his desk. Teaching his son, whilst a worthy pursuit, didn’t pay the bills.

The next day, Peter was at home practicing the cello.

His father had given him Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 3 73

to learn, and it was proving difficult. It wasn’t for lack of practice, it was his hands. Sometimes he wanted to curse them for being so small. Sometimes he failed to appreciate the fact that he was still only ten, and his body just couldn’t grow as fast as his mind.

Audrey was in the next room. She was nineteen years old and lived opposite. She’d been nervous about babysitting Peter when the professor asked her. She’d never been in their house before, but she couldn’t say no to a little extra money.

Audrey was given strict instructions. She was forbidden (and the professor said it with such a tone that she obeyed him without question) to speak, to play, or in any way distract Peter from his studies. Whilst she thought it was odd, Audrey also thought it the easiest money she was ever likely to make, so she agreed.

This arrangement with Professor Llewellyn left her completely unprepared for what happened next. The doorbell rang and she answered it to find two police officers and a short, dishevelled man who introduced himself as Brian. After a brief exchange of information, she invited them in and they sat around the kitchen table.

The police officers gently broke it to Audrey that the professor had been killed in a tragic accident.

‘Oh no!’ Audrey said, putting her hands over her face.

Although she barely knew the professor, she’d watched him for years as he came and went from the house. She couldn’t help but burst into tears.

‘I didn’t realise you knew the professor so well,’ the smaller of the two officers said.

‘I don’t. I mean, I didn’t,’ she replied, snuffling and trying her best to wipe away the mascara which was now running freely down her face. ‘It’s Peter,’ she said, ‘he’s 74

so young, and I don’t think he has any other family.’ She looked across to the police officers. ‘What’ll happen to him?’

The dishevelled man who hadn’t yet spoken cleared his throat.

‘Ahh, that’s where I come in.’ His voice was so loud and full of bass it made the tea cups shake. ‘My name is Brian. The local authorities are aware of the situation and you’re right, young Peter unfortunately doesn’t have any family still living. That’s why I am here. I’m to be his social worker.’

Audrey hadn’t been prepared for this. Her plans for that day hadn’t stretched beyond binging on day time repeats of her favourite soaps and trying out the professor’s toastie maker she’d spotted on the way in. She took a deep breath and was about to speak, but Brian interrupted her.

‘If you like, you can leave now, and we’ll take over.

Peter is in my care for the immediate future anyway.’

‘No. No – I can’t leave just like that.’ She took another deep, shuddering breath. ‘I’d like to be there when you tell him. The poor little mite will be so scared.’

She couldn’t imagine Peter being scared of anything, but it was easier than trying to explain.

‘Well, that is a little unusual - considering you aren’t actually related.’

Brian took one look at her, taking in the smudged make up and puffy eyes and changed his mind.

‘Well, I suppose it can’t make the situation any worse.

Shall we take care of it now?’

Audrey, Brian and the two police officers stepped in to the sitting room. Peter was in the corner next to the bookcase, facing away from them. They watched him 75

as he practised, swaying in time with the cello, his tiny hands a blur on the strings.

‘Peter.’

Peter turned his head and saw Audrey and the group of strangers standing behind him. His bow hand fell still.

‘Peter,’ Brian said, stepping forward. ‘I’m afraid we have some bad news to share with you.’ He pointed towards the little leather couch against the wall. ‘Would you like to sit down with me so we can discuss it?’

Audrey burst towards the boy and grabbed him in a hug. ‘Oh, Peter.’ She cried into his tiny shoulder. ‘Oh Peter, I’m so sorry.’

Brian gave a little cough and stepped forward, placing his hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘I think it might be best if me and Peter spoke alone. What do you say – eh?’

Audrey seemed to forget how her mouth worked, and stumbled around her words for a minute or so. Finally, she managed to blurt it out all in one breath. ‘Yourfatherpeterdroveoffbridgehedeadisorry.’

‘Pardon?’ Peter said, looking up at her, his head tilted to the side like a confused terrier.

‘I’m afraid I will have to ask you to leave, young lady.’

Brian said crossly.

Audrey held Peter tighter than ever and took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, Peter. There was a terrible accident.

Driving to London, your father swerved his car to avoid a dog.’ Tears filled her eyes again.

‘Now young lady, I must insist you cease.’ Brian was tugging at Audrey’s shoulder with all his might but she held on even tighter.

‘Oh, Peter. Your father drove right off the side of the bridge. I’m sorry, Peter. He’s dead.’

‘Young lady. This goes against procedure.’

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Peter, being of a more stoic and rational disposition than Audrey, gently pulled away from her. He returned his cello and bow to the stand in the corner then turned to look at the collection of people in his sitting room.

‘Well then.’ he said. He used his tiny hands to brush himself off and straightened his shirt. ‘I suppose that’s that.’

He strode over to the fireplace, above which hung a magnificent portrait of his dad. He looked up at it. ‘A dog – really?’ Audrey sobbed behind him, giving him all the confirmation he needed. ‘Met his end by swerving to avoid a dog.’ The young boy shook his head and sighed, looking like a man twice his age - a fact that wasn’t missed

by Brian or the police officers. They exchanged confused glances. Peter was still looking up at his dad’s portrait, ‘I assume the house is mine then?’

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Paul Tarpey

I began writing short stories about three years ago after prolonged periods of working on local magazines, as well as performing live comedy at rock gigs and on the radio. This is my first attempt at a novella.

Mush Mush is a dark romantic comedy based on the true story of a relationship between a glam rock session musician and a serial killer. Their story has been rewritten and transposed to the early 80s to become a political and cultural analogy of those times. paultarpey2009@gmail.com

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Mush Paul Tarpey Tuesday 12th October 1982 8.17pm They were somewhere in the North East that nobody says they’re from. Tucked away inside the overcoat of a dying city. A town of shadows.

Lots of fucking character.

First time on the tour with his own room. A table to throw day clothes on and a splintered hanger for anything that didn’t fit there. All nice touches, but he’d changed on the bus.

The crowd’s chanting was insistent. They could wait.

The band could wait. They’d already had their moment.

Now it was spluttering off into the distance like a cranky old sod on a moped.

This wasn’t about the gig. He didn’t give a toss about the gig. Leaning forward on the edge of the plastic chair, his hands trembled on a white envelope clutched between his knees. The crowd’s mood was shifting. There was slow hand clapping beyond the dressing room and then a sharp tommy-gun knock on the door.

‘Get yeer friggin’ arse into gear, Dave!’

Dave tore open the top of the envelope in a ragged line with a plectrum. The vein on the right of his temple pulsed. Steadying his breathing, he slid the letter from its cover. Unfolded it. Stared at the neat prose. Then he read those words. And everything felt empty. His heart. His soul. His vintage flared trousers.

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Two Years Earlier Thursday 4th September 1980 6.32 AM Dave had been poisoned. He moved a dead arm from under his ribs and enjoyed the blood flooding back in.

The floor he had slept on creaked with these tentative movements. It was a rotten floor. Dirt and dust had copulated, and their spawn lurked inches from his face. There was a breeze from a jammed window, and the makeshift curtains swayed like dead moths.

Early morning light broke in. There were three anonymous male bodies scattered across the room, but he was the only one who hadn’t acquired furniture or covers.

Dave had been fine with it. His hosts hadn’t owed him space to sleep, and he sensed his temporary roommates were all regulars. From what he remembered, at least one of them had chosen this ahead of a short walk and his own bed.

The furnishing in the room was borrowed, frayed and faded blue. But there were signs of ample disposable income. A bulky 16” TV balanced on a three-legged coffee table. Lying by its side was a VHS video recorder with blank cassettes and loose cases spilled over its lid. They were all labelled. Stacked next to them were three pre-recorded movies in their actual boxes. The top one was Last Tango in Paris.

Dave couldn’t see the titles of the others as they were shrouded by the art porn. They were probably The Godfather and The French Connection.

Anyway, these cunts had some cash. But their priorities were out of wack. You could have a week in Harro82

gate for the cost of that Italian nudey flick. He remembered that his aunty had cleaned places like this awhile back and told him of the waste. This one was in desperate need of her services, but they probably didn’t use cleaners as a principle of some sort.

Dave felt a harsh stab of guilt for this cynicism. They had offered him refuge on the basis of a mutual friend being a fan of the band. Nothing indicated they were impressed with what they saw at the gig.

He turned over the damp-smelling cushion his head rested on and rolled onto his back like a sick pet. The poison settled on his stomach. It was safe there. Social etiquette prevented him from puking it out. He pulled his parka up to his chin but had to edge it away from his throat when the pressure felt too much.

Everyone else would sleep through the worst of their misery. Probably through to the afternoon. They were used to wasted time. Wasted time was the reason Dave liked to limit his drinking. But a place to sleep had meant sticking around with generous strangers. If you didn’t drink till you were ill, it was a serious snub. His mate, Phil the hippy, had once claimed he was nursing a cold when faced with a similar session. He was nursing a legacy of suspicion from that night on. Phil became a vegetarian a year later. He had no reason not to be. Isolation was his new drug of choice.

Dave could see a digital clock peeking from the top of a pile of magazines. 06.34. Taken as fact, even though he didn’t trust neon. So, an hour till the first train. Thank Christ. There had been plenty of restlessness throughout the night. But the alcohol had subdued him at regular intervals. Maybe only for half an hour at a time, but it had added up to daylight.

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He pulled himself up onto his elbows. Acidic bile rushed to his throat, but a few deep breaths forced it back down. Then with a second of focused will he was up and moving. One step, then a stumble, then a step. One of the figures grunted at this mild disturbance. There was a question that fell away. What or why or when. His answer, ‘heading off’, was acknowledged by the embryo of a snore.

He swayed into the cluttered landing, hall, or whatever these one-floored fuckers called the gaps between their rooms. The bathroom was marked with a stupid ceramic joke about pissing. Inside was a mix of the decayed and spruced, with a few pubic hairs sprinkled around the tub for modernity. He subdued another retch, and then the bones of a morning routine were pieced together.

He had got used to brushing his teeth with his finger, and there was always communal toothpaste. His feet were freshened up while perched near the bath taps. A good wash in the sink for everywhere else. He had a long sleeve shirt worn over an expendable t-shirt. The outer layer now became the main feature, and it looked the same crumpled as ironed. Drying was the bigger problem. The towel intended for guests to share would have collected more bacteria than a biochemist, so he used the outside of the t-shirt to dry his feet, under his arms, and around his crotch. The Y-fronts wouldn’t be on display, so they went back on after he washed. A pair of socks had been hoarded in his parka pocket. The used ones were left with the t-shirt.

Out onto the street. He was looking decent but the sickness in his stomach was sharper. It was a well-maintained bit of town, considering how close it was to the 84

centre. There were untended green patches and a few crumpled flyers, but no shattered glass or discarded cartons, and everyone had waited to get indoors before throwing their chips and curry back up.

He could walk to the train. Collect a sandwich on the way. And tea. He liked sweet tea when he was journeying in a strange land. He only took half a spoon at home.

The town gathered slowly. A few extra shops per street until it was just shops. Then there were large stores, and the station was filed away behind them. Nothing had been open in town, so he missed out on the sweet tea, but the train station had a kiosk. He could have a ham sandwich or a Kit Kat. Maybe both. No hot drinks but they had Coke and Pepsi. In a can or a bottle. The woman serving called him ‘love’. Probably didn’t call everyone that, so Dave smiled. The sandwich was soggy with a hard crust. It went down well. But it was the sugary drink that changed his mood. He felt refreshed and nervous. Stupid to be nervous. This wasn’t a date. And he could decide not to go. Get the train back home. But that would mean defeat.

Standing at the ticket booth he felt more exposed than he had on stage the night before. The gig had been poor.

He was convinced he’d done his part well enough, but he might have been fooling himself. The band put it down to a lack of spiritual synergy. Or in non-wanker language, they hadn’t worked as a team. But it was probably him.

The big cog.

Anyway, that was gone. Nobody had died. Today mattered more to him than last night. The band hadn’t interrogated his reason for staying over and had agreed to take his gear back. Everything was fine. He sucked in stale industrial air. Then he was buying a ticket the oppo85

site way from home.

There was a choice of two levels and four platforms.

Nobody at the barrier to guide you at this hour, but his stop was included as ‘via’ the only destination platform 3 knew. Linked to the main section by forty feet of pissdrenched, foul-mouthed tunnel, it was deserted when he found it, but there were signs of a work day on the platform opposite. There were only men. All going wherever they were going far too early. All of them had worked wherever they worked for far too long. His train pulled in before theirs did.

The train was quiet enough for him to choose his speck and not disturb anyone. He slumped down on a double seat facing away from the direction of travel, and they moved out as soon as he settled. He forced his eyes wide to stay awake. An attractive middle-aged woman a little further down the carriage smiled whenever his gaze fell in that direction. Dave wasn’t good looking or unsightly, neither of which were acceptable for a bass player. Not as engagingly bony as most males who had just parted with their teens, but thin and tallish enough to have a stage presence. His mousy short hair was kept neat enough, and he avoided styles on principle. He could make himself presentable when the need arose. Presentable might be this woman’s thing. People get weird about that stuff as they get older.

But it soon became clear she wanted to pass the time with chat. Dave knew it would be more strenuous to avoid it than indulge it. And so, he expanded his answers when he could. She moved over to the adjacent seat because she couldn’t quite hear his strained responses. And there was chat.

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The woman missed her older kid who was at uni. Her other kid was a handful. Husband was supportive. She was lucky to have him. Dave told her that he was in a band. She wanted to know if she should recognise any of their songs. He told her he doubted it. They were far from famous. He had her labelled as a Jimmy Young fan.

Then she asked about his destination. And for some stupid bloody reason he told her. Her face creased with concentration the more he spoke. Nothing judgmental there. Something like concern. But not concern.

He told her it wasn’t easy to explain. But then he was explaining. Explaining something that he hadn’t explained to anyone else. Not even to himself. She nodded through it all. Then wished him well as she got off several stations before his. He sank back into his seat. The Kit Kat had melted.

9.07 AM There were green fields plastered over the English landscape, presented as scenery for any train that shuffled past. Dave had nothing to distract him from this relentless patchwork. He hated those Sony Walkmans. And reading when travelling made him ill. He liked to watch people reading though. People reading on the train were making a statement. He could never define what the statement was. Which made it feel like a very strong statement.

He admired the men in suits, tailored for the belly they had bloody well earned, reading tabloid newspapers laid flat on the table. When they turned to the page featuring a dolly bird with monochrome breasts they would stay there for an impressive length of time. Neither leering 87

nor ashamed. The picture examined like a racing result.

He was also impressed with the women in high shouldered blazers, who flicked with restrained impatience through a series of real life stories and provocative advice. When they found something of interest they settled back and balanced the magazine on their sternly crossed legs. They never looked up until the announcement of their station. A quick glance out to confirm, then pages were turned quickly as though accounting for them. And the magazine was abandoned.

His idols, however, were the people reading novels on the train. Women and men. Young and old. He had never got a real sense of these people. But his respect for them was massive. These people were not set to anything.

When they chose to engage with the world beyond their literature, their presence was intimidating. Intimidating in the way that things should be.

Dave had read novels. He had read several. In carefree childhood days he had stayed with characters on their troubled journeys, and then forgotten all of it as he tuned into the charts. These melodic stories he was being told by girly looking males, or sweet smiling blondes in hot pants, made more sense to him. It was no big deal or failure on his part. But he dealt in real life now.

Nobody had been reading on this train for the last hour. Nobody had been doing much of anything. The heaters were off, and the carriage was exposed to the countryside. He was using his parka like a blanket again and banging the side of his right knee against the metal leg of the table for entertainment. There were six people in the carriage now. All staring out of the window without smiles, or the expectation of smiles. Only one of 88

them had boarded after Dave. A tall but hunched man of around sixty in a docker’s jacket with scuffed elbow patches. As he boarded he had sneered with crafty recognition. Maybe of other passengers. But nobody had greeted him. His choice of seat seemed random but had taken time. Then he had fidgeted in several pockets with a commentary of agitated sighs and expletives. Once settled he had become as silent as the carriage around him.

Twenty minutes now of this monastic silence. A woman coughed. A loose rattle. Then she shuddered. Shaking out the despair the sound had unearthed. On the horizon Dave could pick out a twinkle of urban infrastructure. Too distant to know if this was a settlement or exiled industry. His imagination allowed a destructive mushroom cloud to be cast upwards from its basin. This wasn’t a sinister or ominous daydream. Just something to do.

Dave sat back and forced himself to reflect on something with meaning. He’d had a blow job. Not on the train. But recently. And for the first time. After the gig in the South.

His first shag had been a couple of years earlier. His partner was three weeks older and had downed one more can of cider. Expectations had been so low that only items of clothing that created an insurmountable hazard were removed. Once it was over they had discussed trigonometry. More useful to him than her. But the prospect of a blow job. He had imagined an event. An occasion even. ‘Your ever-loving grandmother congratulates you on the occasion of...’

And as the band’s fame grew, the odds on the act occurring had shortened. But when it did, backstage at a mid89

range venue ten minutes after the final drum flourish, it soon became clear that it would be something else he just needed to get done.

His partner had been prettier than he had a right to.

Maybe five years older and skilled. She had been with them backstage a few times, and although cooler than others who hung around, she had an inclusive laugh which Dave liked. They hadn’t spoken but he was sure there had been one or two ‘we’re a bit different than this’ glances between them. Her attention had not been on him that evening, but she had taken sudden charge of the situation after a word from another member of the band. Some sort of band bonding ritual had been agreed with a degree of complicity from the woman.

This could still have been a wonderful memory. Maybe if he had showered after the gig. Or if the setting had been more romantic. Or not a toilet.

Dave had placed both hands on the flimsy Formica walls for balance, and the texture had been gritty. Although he sensed, as his partner’s momentum grew, that touching her head would be the traditional sign of gratitude, in the circumstances this would have been disrespectful, bordering on assault. So, he had kept them by his side. Like a chastised child. His back had been straight, propped slightly forward to prevent it touching the wall behind. Not lost to bliss, but he concentrated, and it was soon over.

She had helped him clean up with less enthusiasm than she had shown in the act. That was fine. He knew he had been third choice, but she had been kind enough to wait till the conclusion before her body language confirmed this.

And the only reason this was being recalled was be90

cause it didn’t even matter. The nervous euphoria he had been expecting to swamp him that evening, he felt that now. On this cold, dull train journey. Counting the stations down. Providing his fellow passengers with back stories. Comparing them with his own.

There was one more stop.

Two Years Later Tuesday 12th October 1982 8.20pm Dave had told the band to fuck off and wait. Wait for how long. The tone of the letter was clear. But he needed to find something. He needed to balance. He read through it again. And it became more over. More final. More and more like nothing would ever matter ever again.

I am writing this letter to break your heart. If I tell you this from the start, then I believe what follows will be clearer.

Firstly, I care for you. Sadly, we are not meant to be together.

Also, thank you for the way you made me feel. But now I need to feel more. And you can’t offer me this.

It isn’t easy to write this letter knowing how much it will crush you. There is no joy in this for me. But it would be wrong to continue, knowing what I can find elsewhere.

Don’t let this make you feel less of a man. You have helped me find clarity. You can be proud of that.

When you first wrote to me you told me that you didn’t believe I was a monster, I was charmed. But there are no real monsters.

Nothing supernatural. No heaven or hell.

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Imagine if we all fell from the heavens at the same time. Angels and demons all drowning in a bottomless mud. Those angels will dwell on who they can save. And sink deeper with those already lost. But the demons will save themselves. They would suffocate those wasted instincts.

Can you make any sense of this? You shouldn’t worry if it leaves you confused. Remember not everything is meant to be understood by men like you.

I said one day I could repay all the gifts you have sent. And this is how I want to end this. Young man, take your life back.

I present it to you.

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Stephanie McGill

Stephanie McGill trained as an actor at Manchester Metropolitan University School of Theatre. Her career includes acting, writing and facilitating creative arts workshops for youth theatres and charities, support worker, comedian, and care management. Living on the Wirral with her partner and two children, she currently runs music and movement classes for pre-school children.

Past Forward After receiving the news that she can’t have children Sylvie starts to examine her life, the paths she’s chosen and the decisions made for her, hoping clarity can be found by confronting the whispers and confusion of her formative years. mcgillsteph@hotmail.com

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Past Forward Stephanie McGill I’m driving. Fast. The sun dropped from the sky with a thud, replaced by a backdrop of reliable black, punctuated with unwelcome streetlights. The car, usually filled with music, is quiet. Tyres whir on the wet tarmac like cogs in a clock that require the attention of a horologist; this is the soundtrack I travel to now, the notes and lyrics somehow erased. Generally, to steer a car you use your hands. Not your elbows. I need to steer with my elbows; my hands are making a repeated sequence of movements on my cheeks, clearing the tears. If they don’t, I can’t see to drive. Neither option is ideal.

The car is going at ninety; and abruptly breaking the unusual silence so is my mouth.

I’m telling my partner we should split up; that he’ll be fine, it’s not fair if we stay together, he can find someone else, I’m going to leave my job and go travelling, that I don’t even know why we’re together, it’s not like we fell madly head over heels, fireworks in love, we ended up together, we ended up apart and then ended up together again because he didn’t find anyone else and the blokes I went on dates with were dicks, it’s hard when you’re older all the good ones are taken so I’m going to leave and you can find someone else. Someone that can have kids.

I’ve just been told I can’t have children.

‘Can you slow down? Your driving is usually pretty scary but this is terrifying!’

We continue the journey in silence.

I have a recurring dream. I am fourteen and lying on top of an air raid shelter that we’ve found in the woods 95

behind our park. We are the local kids. None of us would choose to be with each other; we live in the same area and transport is sporadic at best. If none of us have made plans with people we actually want to spend time with, we end up together. So like an odd, dysfunctional family we spend our days just being around each other. Because of that we are tight. We find common ground in having nothing in common. I’m gazing at the sky, the trees around the clearing are nature’s skyscrapers and so, so, green that the blue is a welcome break in the emerald city of leaves. I see myself from above, zooming in and out on my own image, my ego a cameraman who can’t quite find the right focus. Auburn hair flecked with gold, eyes to match, the sun has flicked its paintbrush at my ghostly skin leaving a splattering of freckles. Shorts and a vest, DM boots. Stoned. Knowing that soon we’ll disband and return to the respective places we call home. How do our adults never realise that for the most part their kids are off their tits? We walk back, hazy, floating and howling with laughter.

This isn’t actually a dream. Well it is, in as much as it comes to me at night time while I’m sleeping. But I can summon this when I’m awake too. I rub it between my fingers like a comfort blanket.

‘Sylvie, you’ve driven past your exit’ The memory bubble bursts. I’m taking him home; I want to be on my own. He doesn’t want either of us to be alone. I shrug. I pull up on the drive, keep the engine running. He tries to speak to me. We sit in silence. He sighs and like a reluctantly released hostage, exits the car. We don’t live together. He owns a neat two bed room newbuild house. Magnolia throughout. Neat, clean, pressed.

He turns back to face me. The headlights create a spot96

light; he looks like he could be about to burst in to song.

Or tears.

I hit reverse and pull away.

He can’t sing and I don’t want to see him cry.

Nicknamed ‘Heartbreak Heights’ by the landlord; my flat is consistently occupied by people who have been through a break up. The kitchen needs replacing. So does the bathroom, which hasn’t got any flooring, I ripped it up when I moved in three years ago and have never got round to fitting a new one. There’s no hot water, I blew something in the boiler and never got it fixed. The shower is electric though so I can wash myself and I boil a kettle to do the dishes. So I don’t smell and if I eat, I eat off clean plates.

If I was a character in a film I think I’d be referred to as a ‘hot mess’. Except I’m not hot. So I suppose that just makes me a mess.

When I was a little girl I used to sit in the bathroom when my Mum was bathing. She’d say to me, ‘Who’s the most beautiful girl in the world?’ I’d scowl at her and she’d say, ‘You are!’ Baby-face furrowed, ‘No I’m not,’ was my standard reply as soon as I could understand the question and respond appropriately. She’d shake her head and disappear under the bubbles. She could stay under for ages. I’d hop off the toilet lid and slowly creep through the blinding fog of steam, over to the bath. Was she dead? Sometimes I’d be greeted by large, unfeeling eyes, staring through the mirrored water. Cracking the surface she’d rise up, seven years bad luck. Did she know that frightened me; how, much of what she did terrified me? How confusing it was?

I undress in the hall observing my reflection. I’ve lost weight, although the ripples in my skin and folds when I 97

bend inform me I am still tubbier than is probably acceptable. The skin is pale, veins are visible, mottled thighs have never lost the ability to resemble corned beef: a skill honed long ago on the school netball pitch.

I’m quite the catch.

Shaking hands flick the switch on the heater in my room; my grandparents have loaned it to me. I don’t know how old it is, but it looks older than me, the control can be moved left or right between the two settings ‘hotter’ and ‘colder’, if Elmer Thud had a heater made

by Acme then this would be it. On goes a vest, pyjamas, dressing gown, socks, climbing into bed under one duvet, then another. The air is filled with the scent of burning dust. A sudden awareness of how still I am shocks me, my core cemented into place. Attempting to move, I shatter. A volcano erupting. I cry for who I am, where I am and what I’ve been told. I cry for me. I don’t cry for the children I’ve been told I can’t have. Being completely honest, they’ve had a fucking lucky escape.

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Trisha McKeon

Trisha McKeon was born and raised in the west of Ireland and has lived in Liverpool since 2014. She started writing short stories seven years ago. She has had work published in two Writing on the Wall publications, and in a Merseyside LGBTQ, anthology titled Made Up. ‘Twister’ is her first novel.

Twister Dawn, Michelle, Louise; three generations of women taking us from 1960s Oklahoma to current day West of Ireland. We encounter the intricacies and challenges of mother/daughter relationships, love and mental illhealth. Amid obstacles of fantastical beginnings, traumatic secrets, troubled souls and a longing to belong, the women struggle to find peace. trishinthesun@hotmail.com

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Twister Trisha McKeon Oklahoma 1961 In the wake of the twister the small girl sat unmoving with her eyes closed and mouth open, as though a misplaced sculpture of a sleeping child had come to rest on the pile of rubble. Buildings had toppled around the area where she sat and random debris from people’s lives were scattered at her feet. Jed glanced at the townsfolk who were scurrying about the streets like iron filings following a random magnet. He could see that the rescue services were under pressure, but he wondered how they had not seen this small bedraggled creature. He wondered if she was dead. As he moved towards her he heard growling and was confronted by three bedraggled dogs. They were in an attack stance, hackles risen, teeth bared, and he figured that maybe he knew now why no one had come to rescue the girl. But without any apparent signal, the dogs stopped growling and surrounded the girl sniffing her and muttering amongst themselves.

Jed bent down to pick up a brick to throw at them and was astonished when he saw that they were now lying serenely at the child’s feet. One of them stood and licked her face. Like a bitch with a nursing puppy the dog delicately ran her tongue from chin to forehead. And with fluttering eyelids and sudden inhalation, the girl sucked deeply at the canine flavoured air and opened her eyes.

Jed clambered over bricks and boards and as he neared the child he could have sworn he felt the airy brush of an indigo wing above his head. He was almost relieved 101

when he saw that a stocky looking black crow had landed on the rubble pile behind the girl.

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Jed muttered. He rubbed his eyes vigorously, thinking he must be having some kind of strange turn. As the girl stretched and rose from sitting to standing she started to spin around on the spot, skinny brown arms and freckled face raised to the sky. He watched, transfixed as light seemed to emanate from her small body. Twirling, whirling she rose, and lifted by the breeze the girl pirouetted gracefully like a ballerina. And like the twister that had dropped her in this place.

Gobsmacked, Jed quickly looked around. ‘How had no-one else seen that?’ Shaking his head as though this would help him to un-see what he had seen, he looked down at the scrawny little girl that now stood before him, holding her hand up to his as though nothing peculiar had happened.

Jeez I don’t know what Alice is going to say when she hears about this, he thought.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked the child gently, but she just looked through him with glazed eyes. ‘Do you know where your folks are?’ Still no response. He wondered if her hearing or her brain or something was damaged.

‘Will we look for them?’ Jed asked, looking around, but everyone was so busy he didn’t know who he could ask.

‘Do you want to come home with me and we’ll fix you something to eat. You must be hungry… and thirsty I guess?’ She tugged his hand, looked up and smiled at him and it was as though a shower of blessings tumbled down on him like shards of light. He knew then he could not leave her there.

Jed wasn’t one to chatter or waste words and was glad 102

of the silent journey home in the truck. It gave him time to rack his brains as to what he would say to Alice and Michael. He had no answers. Or at least none that didn’t make him sound like he’d lost his mind.

As they walked through the kitchen door, Jed felt the girl’s fingernails scratching the callouses on his rough square thumb. He squeezed the bony little hand and she stared up at the great height of him with such trust in her eyes that he felt a stab of fear.

‘Well?’ Alice asked, ‘how bad is it?’

She was busy at the stove and the warming smell of a skillet full of cornbread and eggs shimmied about the kitchen.

‘It’s bad enough,’ Jed spoke quickly, ‘bad enough Alice. Downtown is flattened and there’s police and firemen running around like rats in a woodpile. Teddie Manley’s house is a complete goner. He told me he nearly didn’t get Doris down to the cellar in time, with her delaying and looking for the cat.’

‘Well that’s typical Doris, isn’t it?’ Alice grimaced.

‘You know I’m not a religious woman, but I’ll say “thank you Lord” or whatever was looking out for us; we’re blessed it missed us.’

A shiver skated down Alice’s spine. She had been so afraid when the tornado was coming, and the clouds of darkness swallowed all before them. She still imagined she could hear the rumbling thunder and hellish screeching of the twister when it was a few miles away. She saw the forks of lightening prodding the earth, like a bully’s finger goading its victim. The family had been well prepared and were safely in the cellar as the tornado passed miles from their house and shattered the town and surrounding area. They’d been through many tornadoes, 103

but it never got easier.

Sighing now, she wiped her hands on her apron and turned from the stove with plates of breakfast eggs glowing yellow, ready for the table.

It took a few moments for Alice to register the scruffy creature that Jed had led into the kitchen. But Michael had been staring at the girl and she had stared back.

Suddenly she let go of Jed’s warm, comforting hand and crossed the kitchen to sit beside the boy. It was an awkward scene, wherein nobody knew what to say or do next.

‘Jed, what on earth…? Who’s this?’ Alice asked eventually. She recoiled as she took in the wild, matted hair, eyes of raw umber and filthy, tattered clothing.

‘I found her in the town,’ Jed answered, ‘I reckon she’s been living in the rubble since the tornado. That’s Friday Alice, Friday, and it’s now Sunday.’

‘But why have you brought her here?’ she spoke quietly and the air in the kitchen became rarefied, as though they were in church or a library.

‘I couldn’t leave her there, could I? My conscience wouldn’t let me and when I tried to find help, everyone was so busy, it just seemed easier to bring her home until we can get help for her. And I don’t ask much Alice, I do not ask much but I figured she could stay here ‘til we find her folks.’

Alice couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard her placid husband sound so riled up.

‘Alright Jed, if that’s what you want. She can stay here tonight. But tomorrow we’ll have to try to find out where she’s come from.’

They looked at the silent girl with their son, who were now sitting side by side at the table as he carefully fed 104

her a spoonful of peanut butter and jelly.

‘What’s your name?’ Alice asked the girl, who didn’t even acknowledge her.

‘Do you think she’s gone deaf from the tornado?’ Michael wondered.

‘I think we should call her Dawn,’ Jed mumbled.

‘Dawn?’ Alice raised an eyebrow.

‘There’s just something about her that reminds me of the sunrise.’ Jed’s face reddened. He couldn’t tell about the dancing or she’d think he had gone mad.

‘I don’t know what it is Alice, there’s something special about her and I don’t know what. She’s like a little ray of sunshine that brings light into the new day.’

‘Well that ray of sunshine sure does stink,’ Alice muttered as she placed another plate of eggs on the table.

‘I think Dawn’s a great name Mom,’ Michael smiled, ‘it suits her. She reminds me of a fairy creature like in the books you used to read me when I was a kid.’ He fed Dawn another spoonful of peanut butter and jelly and laughed as she shoved it into her mouth. The girl smiled a jammy smile at Michael and as she held out her hand to touch him, a flitting sunbeam bounced gently between their fingers.

‘There’s nothing wrong with her appetite.’ Alice chuckled as the little girl shovelled eggs and cornbread into her mouth.

‘She must be starving, poor child,’ she fussed, refilling the cup of milk that Dawn had gulped down. Michael and Jed spooned some of their own breakfasts onto her plate until Alice warned that the child would be sick if she didn’t stop eating.

When they’d finished breakfast, Alice held out her hand to lead the girl to the bathroom. But Dawn was re105

luctant to go with her and, in that moment, Alice experienced the first of many hurts caused by Dawn’s preference for the men of the family and at their fascination with her.

‘Michael, take her to the bathroom and run the bath,’ she spoke more sharply than she intended, ‘I’ll see to her after that.’ He did as he was told, and she could hear him talking to Dawn in a soothing voice.

‘Mom’s a kind lady,’ she heard, ‘you gotta let her help you. I’ll be right downstairs waiting for you.’ Alice wondered at the protectiveness shown by her son. ‘He’s only just met her for god’s sake.’

Dawn wore a dirty, colourless cotton dress and some random garments that she must have picked up in town.

She removed the dirty old cardigan and t-shirt and the sandals 2 sizes too big. Her undergarments were soiled, and along with the other clothes, fit only for the fire. Dust and mortar were caked on her skin where there was evidence of bruises and scratches.

‘You unfortunate little thing,’ she said to the waiting child as her sympathy grew.

‘Goddam bible thumpers in that town, so busy singing gospel songs, they didn’t even notice a small, lost child,’ Alice muttered through unexpected tears. She wondered why the child had been abandoned. It bugged her: she knew there were good people in the town and surely the police or the firemen should have noticed her amongst the rubble. Alice was really puzzled. But, she thought, there are people not ten miles from here who believe that human wolves killed that poor Cross girl, when it was clear to anyone with a brain that it was a botched abortion. And there was no doubt that there was something feral about Dawn that might have kept people 106

away from her. She speculated if it was possible the girl had been hiding on purpose; making herself invisible amongst the ruins.

Dawn climbed into the bath and looked intently at Alice. The atmosphere in the room changed, as it had downstairs, and Alice felt a wave of an emotion she could neither identify nor describe. Shrugging her shoulders, she gestured to the jug and indicated that she wanted to wash the child’s hair. Dawn sat quietly and allowed Alice to soap her hair and as the jugs of water washed the dirt away, a colour emerged that Alice could swear she had never seen on a human head. Maybe it’s just because it’s wet, she thought. She handed the girl a cloth and some of her own special rose-scented soap that Michael had got her for her birthday. Dawn inhaled the soap and quivered as her body relaxed. She began to wash and when the brackish colour left her skin it exposed a translucency that showed an intricate motif of indigo blue. It was as though her veins and arteries created visible maps that ran throughout her scrawny body. Alice silently left the room to find some clothes that she could alter to fit the child. When she returned Dawn was still sitting in the bath that was now cold and once again barely acknowledged Alice’s presence. Alice held the towel for her and, at last, Dawn smiled at her and sniffed the rose-scented skin on her own arms. Dawn dried herself vigorously and Alice helped her to dress, handing her underwear and a pair of jeans held up with a scarf looped around the waist and a blouse that didn’t fit Alice anymore. Despite her lankiness, Dawn had a childish physique, and Alice estimated her to be a tall ten-year-old. Alice, herself had a petite frame and looked diminutive standing beside her enormous husband and growing son. With some simple 107

adjustments her clothes fitted the child quite well.

Leading Dawn downstairs and sitting her on a kitchen chair she set about untangling the matted hair.

‘Well’ said a smiling Jed who was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, ‘don’t you look bright as a silver dollar after your bath? As shiny as a silver dollar.’

Dawn grinned and Alice set about disentangling her matted hair.

‘I may have to cut off some of this hair,’ she warned.

‘That would be a right shame, so it would’ Jed said quietly.

‘It really would Mom’ Michael echoed, ‘Her hair is a bit weird, isn’t it? I don’t know anyone else with hair like that.’

Alice sighed. ‘I didn’t say I want to cut it off, but I might have to.’

She worked the long, curls carefully with her fingers and comb. As it began to dry she could see that she was right about the colour and she became engrossed in the myriad shades that were emerging.

‘Never seen the like of this,’ she mumbled, ‘I feel like I’m picking a bunch of flowers.’

She was put in mind of the Indian Blankets flowering in her garden with their dark brown centres with copper and yellow petals; she could see the bright orange of tiger lilies and the many tones of yarrow and butterfly milkweed. And within it all she saw and smelt the deep, deep reddish brown of the darkest rose.

‘Alice!’ She started as she heard Jed calling to her. ‘I think she’s had enough of the combing.’

Alice hadn’t noticed the child squirming in the chair.

She couldn’t explain to them that she could smell each flower as she named it. You’re becoming fanciful in your 108

old age Alice, she thought.

Michael returned from his bedroom with a gift for Dawn. As he handed her the desert rose, and their hands met again there was static in the atmosphere and a quiet buzzing, as though a fly had been trapped in a jar. Dawn’s eyes widened as she examined the piece of ochre rock that had formed, almost miraculously, into the shape of a perfect rose. Rubbing its roughness against her face, she sniffed and then carefully licked the salty stone. She beamed at the boy and pressed it against her heart. Alice could see that it was a beautiful specimen of a gypsum rose and suspected that Michael had been saving it to give to herself.

She didn’t know how she was feeling about all the strangeness that was happening in her kitchen and Alice needed to break whatever ridiculous spell had been cast.

She had ambivalent feelings about this child, but no matter what, this kitchen was her territory. She had invested years creating this cosy, golden yellow homeliness. It was her favourite room in the house, with its solid oak table and chairs, matching cushions and curtains she had lovingly sewn and intricate floral hangings she had embroidered. The dresser, that had stood in that nook since Jed was a boy was now home to her best dishes, her special jugs and coffee pots. There were photos of Jed’s parents and of her and Jed’s wedding day. There were many photos of Michael from when he was a baby right up until last summer and a collection of little handmade crafts that Michael had produced at school. Her dresser stood witness to her family.

Although Alice had agreed to keep the girl for the night, she still worried.

‘Jed, when you found her, did you think she was hid109

ing from people? It’s strange that nobody took her in.

Do you think that maybe nobody knew she was there at all? Do you think that’s possible Jed? I don’t like to think so ill of our neighbours that they’d leave a child out like that.’ Alice enquired.

‘To be honest there’s so much devastation in town people might have seen her and not realised she was on her own.’

‘That must be it,’ Alice relaxed, her mind grasping at the reassurance that they were doing a good deed by looking after the girl and that they’d find her family tomorrow.

Jed had never kept anything from Alice before, but he knew she would react badly to talk of dogs or birds and definitely ballerina dancing. He didn’t understand his need to protect this child, but he knew he had to keep her safe.

‘I know it sounds like I’m going a bit loopy, but it felt like we recognised each other. Like we knew each other before and she was waiting for me to take care of her,’ he stuttered.

‘Well you’re right, you do sound a bit loopy. You know we must bring her to the police tomorrow Jed. You know that don’t you? Her parents must be out of their minds with worry. We’ll keep her tonight and bring her to the station tomorrow,’ Alice spoke firmly, bewildered

by Jed’s whimsical statement.

‘Yea well now there’s not a whole lot of the station left but I’m sure we’ll find Bill Findler somewhere in the town. But mind now Alice, she’s not going to be taken to some orphanage in the city or anywhere else. I won’t allow it,’ Jed spoke equally firmly.

The remainder of this Sunday passed as restfully as 110

the Elliot family’s Sundays always did. The only variance being Dawn’s presence as she sat dozing and observing the family from the comfort of Granny Elliot’s old rocking chair in the corner of the kitchen.

Alice and Michael led Dawn to Alice’s sewing room where she had fixed the daybed for Dawn to sleep.

Climbing the stairs, the girl hung onto Michael with one hand, held the desert rose against her heart with the other. When they got to the room she immediately lay on the daybed and ignoring the night clothes Alice left for her she closed her eyes as though she was dismissing them.

When Jed and Alice, went to check on her they found Dawn lying on the floor snuggled up in Alice’s quilt; wrapped in a cocoon of copper curls and rose-scented dreams.

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Kalvin Hunt

A proud geek with a BA in Creative Writing, stories became a major part of who I am from a young age. They imparted vital lessons, I met nuanced characters and helped me grow more confident in myself. Now I want to give back and inspire people the same way I was.

Elemental Rising Elle’s already difficult life is made worse when she finds herself at the centre of a plot that could mean renewed war between humans and Elementals. Elle must face assassins, rogue Elementals and betrayal on her journey to discover her place and uncover the conspiracy at the heart of the city. kalvinhunt@btinternet.com

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Elemental Rising Kalvin Hunt Drones sored with the birds around two of the city’s great solar towers, pillars of gold in the daylight, while the occasional Wind Signatory blurred past, high above the city centre. Elle sighed, what she wouldn’t give to be on the other side of the plate glass window. Emeran was a beautiful city, from the gardens that grew atop and down skyscrapers, the canals and the rails that crisscrossed the city, even the architecture was something that inspired. It was a shame it felt more like a prison.

‘Miss Paterson!’

Elle’s attention snapped back from the view and into the marble floored corridor of Ovaldine Industries, her classmates and professor stood watching her.

The professor glared at her above his wireframe glasses. ‘Miss Paterson, am I boring you?’

Elle felt her cheeks warm. ‘No, Professor Stone, not at all.’

Most of the group sniggered or laughed at her discomfort.

‘Enough!’

Stone slammed his walking stick down on the floor and the group fell silent. The same disapproving stare now passed over each of them. ‘Do I have to remind you that the eyes of the world scrutinise everything we do here? You are adults, so act like it and pay attention.’

Professor Stone turned and carried on down the corridor the lecture he had been giving picked back up as the others followed. Elle waited until last and joined the back of the procession.

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A warm familiar voice whispered in her ear, ‘Busted

by Stone again?’

‘Not my fault the views are amazing,’ she whispered back.

Talion stepped up alongside her shaking his head and trying not to grin.

Elle thumped him on the shoulder. ‘It’s not funny, it’s like he’s got something against me.’

He put up his hands in mock surrender. ‘Argh, okay okay, I give’ Elle stepped into the next room with Talion and her jaw dropped. It had to be the size of a small cathedral, and across the vaulted ceiling a mosaic showed the earth but made of forms that could only be Elementals. Immense onyx statues loomed alongside the walls and Elle recognised the animals they were meant to represent, even with the scales, horns and fur they wouldn’t normally have had, there were even creatures from myth.

The holoscreen popped up from her bangle, and she snapped some pictures like the others were doing for a souvenir. That a room like this could exist in a skyscraper, something that wouldn’t have looked out of place somewhere in Rome, of course she was going to take pictures.

‘Beautiful isn’t it?’

Elle looked back down from the statues and tried to hold in her inner fan girl. The speaker stood a little taller than Elle, her red hair short on one side, in a black power suit with scale details. Her reply died on her lips as Stone walked over and greeted a legend like they were old friends. She had so many questions ‘Thank you for having us, it’s quite the honour.’ They shook hands and Stone turned back to the group.

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‘For those of you who don’t know, allow me to introduce-’ ‘Oh my god, you’re Kaitlyn Wilson! The World’s first Signatory.’

The reaction was immediate and Talion leaned in as they joined the others rushing around Stone and Ms Wilson. ‘She was the first person to ever get a Contract right, from Terran?’

Terran. Elle glanced at one of the onyx statues. A great bear sculpted to have scales instead of fur.

‘Yeah, I can’t believe that’s really her.’

Stone had to bang his walking stick a couple of times before the chatter died down.

‘Thank you. Ms Wilson has been gracious enough to offer us the opportunity to showcase some of the work Ovaldine, and perhaps you all will be able to accomplish one day. Ms Wilson?’

‘Kaitlyn please, and I’m happy that you are all enthusiastic, I know this life that found you isn’t easy. Welcome to you all. I’m not one for long speeches so how about we head down to the labs, and show you what we’re all about here?’

There were positive calls from the class as Kaitlyn and Stone led them across the grand hall. Elle nudged Talion.

‘Told you this would be worth it.’

‘Yeah you were right,’ he replied, distracted. His eyes burned into one of the statues. ‘You and Luke usually are.’

Elle followed his gaze to a winged horse with a dragon’s head. She threaded their fingers together and squeezed his hand. ‘You can’t let Surtur get to you. You can control it now.’

Talion dragged his eyes away to meet hers. ‘I know.

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The next time it will be different.’ He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, and they hurried to catch up to the rest of the group.

Stone split them all into a pair of lifts and Elle pulled Talion past the others, bumping out Yu and Fei and into the one shepherd by Kaitlyn. The twins shot her a look of disbelief as the doors closed and they started to descend. A ball of frizzy strawberry blond hair and the overwhelming scent of vanilla elbowed them further into the corner and past them to get to Kaitlyn.

‘Ms Wilson, I’m a huge fan. If you don’t mind me asking, what was it like, to be the first person to talk to an Elemental?’

Elle choked on the vanilla hair spray and narrowed her eyes at the back of the purple bedazzled jacket. Why did she have to get stuck in a lift with Sam? Kaitlyn was quiet for a moment, her expression thoughtful. ‘Surprising, shocking and not a little bit surreal.’ she answered. ‘Tensions between us and Elementals were nothing like they were now. It didn’t really set in that I’d spoken to a bear of living stone until the FBI showed up.’

Sam was practically dancing, for what room there was, she had her Gauntlet recording the whole moment, and though Elle couldn’t see it she didn’t doubt that Sam was smiling like an idiot.

‘I think you’re so amazing, I’ve read all the articles about you; your time in the Crisis Relief Corp during the Elemental’s first appearance, the work you did in shaping the accords after you were Contracted. You saved hundreds of lives, that’s just so amazing.’

Elle almost gagged. Sam could have at least played it cool. Kaitlyn took it in stride. Probably not the first time 118

she’d had crazed fans, Elle thought.

‘That’s very nice of you to say, I didn’t really keep track but with Ovaldine I hope to continue that work today.’

The lift came to a gentle stop. The doors opened and those nearest the doors spilled out. Elle was glad to be free from the confines of the mirrored sardine tin and breathing in clean air. A large pair of heavy metal doors bore the Ovaldine logo at the end of the white walled corridor and Kaitlyn led them to a security desk between them and the doors, two guards in uniform stood as they approached.

‘Down here we do research on the cutting edge of Elemental technology. But before we go any further, I have to ask you to all hand in any Gauntlets, Iris’ or even phones to security here.’

‘Don’t complain just hand them over,’ Stone spoke over the group’s grumblings, ‘You’ll get them back at the end.’

Elle pressed the clasp of the black bangle on her wrist, and the device let out a small chirp and clicked apart. She placed it inside one of the two plastic trays the guards had placed on the desk. Across Talion’s forearm, the holographic screen shone from his own Gauntlet. She gave him an inquisitive eye.

‘Telling Luke what he’s missing.’ He finished typing and handed his in with the rest.

‘Thank you all for cooperating,’ Kaitlyn said, ‘As the professor said you will get them back once we take you back up to the public floors. But for now,’ she grinned as she gestured to the large metal doors, ‘Welcome to the heart of Ovaldine.’

Talion whistled as the doors receded into the walls.

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‘That is beyond impressive.’

On the other side of the doors the future was being invented. They stepped out onto a glass walkway suspended above a room as large as the cathedral, only it was filled with men and women who tended to a vast array of gadgets, machines and desks.

‘What are they?’

Sam pointed toward an area where several dummies had been lined up with advanced looking police vests.

Kaitlyn looked over and nodded ‘The next generation of E.C.M’s, Elemental Combat Harnesses for the Brigade’s non-contracted members, though here we’re adapting them to help paralysis victims.’

Elle crossed her arms and looked away. Everyone knew about the Brigade, the task force that protected the city and watched Signatory and Elemental alike across the world in case they went mad, or something worse.

The plastic badge around the arm of her jacket crinkled under her fingers, a constant reminder to everyone just who and what she was.

Kaitlyn walked them around the walkway and down into the labs. She stopped before a large table that seemed to have been set up just for them, out of the way of the really interesting stuff going on around them. She picked up a strange looking cylinder about the size of her fist and passed it around the group.

‘Essence Batteries provide roughly sixty-four percent of the world’s power needs. The one you’re holding is capable of powering your average car for over a year and a half without the need to replace it.’

The battery hummed in Elle’s hand, and she felt the hairs on her head begin to stand on end as she passed it on to Talion.

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Sam raised her hand. ‘I heard that the Essences feel pain when we use them, is that true?’

‘No,’ Kaitlyn accepted the battery back. ‘All our research and that of accounts from the Elementals themselves, tell us that Essences are manifestations of an Elemental’s presence, like the static that builds up around a carpet. A-‘ The explosion threw them all sideways. One moment, Elle was stood among the group. Next thing she knew, she was staring at the ceiling in pitch black, a ringing in her ears and blinking water out of her eyes as the sprinklers kicked in. Above the whine a muffled alarm bellowed from somewhere.

‘WARNING! ESSENCE REACTOR BREACH. EMERGENCY POWER COMING ONLINE. FIRE DETECTED IN R&D.’ Elle picked herself up from the ground, not easy with the floor already slick with water. Red emergency lights kicked in and she could make out Stone, his lips moving and gesturing as he checked on the others. Her ears popped and she held her hands over them as the sound of a wailing klaxon came with it.

Stone was shouting, ‘Everyone stay calm, make your way to back to the entrance!’

‘What’s going on?’ Sam asked. Not a second followed and a torrent of pressured water threw her back into one of the desks. Her head struck the edge of one and she crumpled beside it.

One of the technicians stood with his arm outstretched toward them in a dark grey bodysuit, a red eye on his chest and glowing blue markings shone over his face.

‘Her Eyes see your atrocities, Ovaldine! For her to be free, Gaia demands your destruction!’ The markings 121

around his hand swirled as he curled the fingers of his hands. The rain came together drawn by his command and shot toward the group again. The group scattered.

Elle lost sight of everyone as she took shelter behind the desk where Sam had been flung and lay covered in computer debris. Her frizzy hair stuck to her scalp and tangled with blood from a large wound on her head.

Kaitlyn and Stone slid behind the desk alongside her.

Stone and Kaitlyn hauled Sam to their side of the desk and Elle removed her jacket and tucked it under Sam’s head. Stone placed two fingers on Sam’s neck feeling for a pulse.

‘Professor, is she okay? No one should be that pale.’

Sam may have annoyed her at times but she didn’t deserve this.

‘Her pulse is strong, but I don’t know what damage might have been done.’ Stone glared at Kaitlyn. ‘Why in the hell is one of your employees attacking us?’

Kaitlyn shook head. ‘I don’t know, I don’t recognise him.’

They ducked as another explosion, this time back near the security entrance, shook the room and more jets of water destroyed several desks around them.

Kaitlyn poked her head out from the desk.

‘If he’s an actual employee then I can find out who his Patron is, maybe we have another on staff and get them to cancel each other’s Contract. But I need to get to that Terminal.’ She pointed to one of the desks that hadn’t been destroyed, its screen flickering with the company logo.

‘I’ll make an opening but move quickly.’ Stone turned back to Elle and Sam. ‘Stay with her and keep your head down.’

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Elle nodded as Stone unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt sleeves, turned his palms upwards and closed his eyes.

‘Anemos, grant me a Contract.’

A moment or two later markings shone on his arms like ribbons of light and ran under his shirt and up over his face. He frowned, ‘Not a lot but it will have to do.’

Elle kept pressure on Sam’s wound and watched as Stone rolled out of cover and threw his hands forward.

Her clothes and hair flared as an intense gust blew the water and fires back. Kaitlyn ran and vanished into the chaos around them. A second gust blew around Stone, lifting him up off of the floor and launched him out of sight.

Small explosions and shouting rose up in the distance, the Klaxon died and Elle could hear her own thoughts again. This trip had gotten way out of control.

Sam groaned and began to stir.

‘What happened?’

‘Something bad, don’t move alright, you hit your head hard.’

Sam murmured something but did as she was told.

Elle peeked out behind the desk. Apart from the one station Kaitlyn worked at the lab was trashed, the floor slick with water. Kaitlyn grinned.

‘You found something?’ Elle whispered over.

‘William Jacques. Joined R&D last year.’ Kaitlyn said in answer, ‘No country sponsor listed but his Patron is the Elemental Nerien.’

Elle felt her own smile tug at her lips. ‘Then we’re in luck.’

She turned back to Sam. ‘I need you to put pressure on this okay?’ Elle guided Sam’s hands over to the wound on her head.

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Sam winced, ‘Why? What are you doing?’

‘As my Dad would say, something really stupid or something really brave.’

Elle placed her hands into the puddles of water that had built up and focused on her breathing. She ignored the trickle of water that ran down her neck, the clothes that stuck to her skin and the chaos around her.

When she was ready she called out. ‘Nerien, I ask for a Contract.’

Blue marks appeared and shone in the water. They encircled Elle and she felt the presence in her mind immediately.

‘Eleanor Paterson, I sense fear, sadness and pain, what is wrong? What help may I provide?’ the voice gurgled in her mind, ancient and warm.

‘A friend of mine is hurt and a lot of us are trapped in here with someone trying to kill us, and a lot of people are without elements. I need to help them.’

She could feel the Elemental thinking, the shifting thoughts like tides going in an out. A pained shout reached her from inside the lab. Talion’s.

‘For a worthy reason my power is yours. In exchange you must give back to the oceans, in Emeran work alongside those who study my home for one week.’

Elle didn’t have time to argue or think over the strange request. Even if the conversation had taken less than a minute, she needed to find Talion and Stone.

‘Okay, done, I agree!’

The circle of marks vanished as her own markings lit up and ran over her face. A surge of power fell over her like a tsunami, almost knocking the wind out of her. Nerien had given her too much; she shook with the effort to control it like a damn about to burst.

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‘First things first.’ She placed a hand on Sam’s head.

With the other, she reached out toward the rivulets that ran along the floor. The water flow drew up and ran around her hand as she directed it across and towards Sam’s wounds. The water washed away the blood and begun to glow around the wound itself, the gash shrank and the skin began to knit back together.

‘That feels nice.’ Sam sighed and Elle could see the pain and tension leave her shoulders.

She hadn’t tried to heal the wound completely but Nerien’s power had just poured out, and that had hardly tapped it. Elle looked toward a giant cloud of steam rising from the far end of the lab.

Kaitlyn looked over to her, ‘Good luck and be safe.’

Elle stood and ran toward the fighting.

Stone was drowning and Talion was on fire when she found them amid clouds of heated steam The scientist, terrorist, whatever he was had Stone trapped in an orb of water. He was using his own power to create air pockets to breathe, only each one he created filled with water as quickly as he made them, and the glow to his markings was almost none existent. He didn’t have much time. Elle reached out toward the sphere, but even with Nerien’s immense gift it refused to respond to her power. She grimaced and hurried past him. The only way she was going to be able to set him free was to cut the technician’s control.

She ran past a partly melted machine, the edges still glowing and through the mists until she found them.

William, or whatever his real name was, had his back to her as she turned the corner. He was holding off the twin streams of fire that erupted from Talion’s hands with streams of his own. They were locked in a stale125

mate, if either one stopped the other would win. Where the streams clashed, the steam billowed and surrounded them. They hadn’t noticed her yet and Elle reached for her power.

She channelled all that Nerien had given her and fed it her anger. The water in the air, on the ground even the steam caused by the fighting answered to her will. They condensed into a coiling mass and Elle shaped it into a spear. The pair turned their heads at her efforts, and William’s marks flared brighter as he turned, still fighting off Talion with one hand. Elle thrust out a fist in his direction and sent the spear flying as another stream burst from William’s other hand.

The two attacks met and all at once her spear and William’s twin streams splashed to the floor as Nerien’s anger filled her mind.

‘My Signatories shall not use my gifts to kill each other! I take back my power from both of you!’

Elle slumped to the floor, all of Nerien’s strength and her own drained away in an instant. The technician’s screams were piercing. Without his power, Talion’s flames consumed him, burning clothes and flash-boiling the water covering him. Talion tore his hands back and the fires died. His markings faded and he ran over and hugged Elle tight.

He smelled of damp, cherry wood and smoke.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine, are you?’ He had small cuts all over his face and he held his left arm down by his side.

‘Good enough.’ He helped her back to her feet. ‘Have I ever said how much I love your sense of timing?’

‘Maybe once or twice.’ She smiled and kissed him.

‘That was exceedingly well done the both of you.’

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They turned to see Stone limping toward them, his glasses were gone and he had left his walking stick by Sam. ‘It does not matter.’ A voice rasped. They turned toward the heavily burned technician, his eyes burned with hatred as he lay there. ‘You can..not escape the Eyes.

Emeran shall be but the beg...in…ing’

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Patricia Kelly

My background is in fashion, which I teach, but my love affair has always been with writing. Recently equipped with a MA in Creative Writing, I am testing out my new found skills and loving the encouragement and permission that writing gives me to explore everyday people and their environments.

Wrong Side Relentlessly bullied at school and losing his Nan and best friend to Alzheimer’s, Donnie Burns sets out to gain both popularity and build a machine that can reverse his Nan’s illness. But when his new ‘friends’ turn against him he is forced to realise that the only person who he can truly save is himself. pkbegincouture@aol.com

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Wrong Side Patricia Kelly Never shit in yer own back yard, or anyone else’s for that matter. They were Nan’s famous words and right now what some random’s doing in the garden next to Mr T’s. It’s a total jungle in there; not seen a mower since the millennium. And there, squatting in the nook of the hedges is an actual woman tramp. Her dirty knees akimbo, poking out with her elbows propped up on them and cradling her head amongst the fluffy dandelions. It’s hard to tell where her pants are or if she’s even wearing any, but there’s no other reason why she’d be crouched down like that.

Another thing Nan used to say is that your eyes can play tricks on you and they totally can. But that’s only when you want something real bad so you actually believe it’s true. That’s definitely not the case now. It’s the grossest thing Donnie’s ever seen and there’s no way he’d ever, ever wish to see it.

Donnie’s already delivered the Daily Mirror and he’s halfway down the path. Her head’s hung, swaying and her hair’s muddy brown and tied up in a top-knot the same way that every girl in Donnie’s school wears theirs lately. There’s no grey so she can’t be that old and her skin isn’t wrinkled, just the colour of powdery clouds, right before it rains. Her eyelids are closed and her mind’s in another place, like when people meditate, but they don’t sway their heads and they do it sat down with their legs folded. There’s a constant drip hitting one of the metal sheets that’s bolted to the windows and porch. It must have rained through the night or there’s a leak inside the 131

empty house. Either way it’s whipping up the smell of burning wood from when it was last set on fire. A shriek from a bird that Donnie has no idea of its type makes his upper body jump and he realises that he’s literally planted to the spot, totally staring – perving. So, he shoots to the bottom of the path and pulls the gate behind him, careful not to let the latch click. All the while his heart’s ticking like a hummingbird.

Donnie’s paper route’s programmed in his brain the same way in which the order of every single Marvel movie or comic series ever made is. But this has freaked him out and he’s forgotten what he’s supposed to do next. There’s rustling, like a plastic carrier being emptied. Donnie edges his way to the exact spot behind the hedge to where she’s crouched. Silence, but now he can hear her breathe, slow and thick, like an old person’s. She croaks, like there’s air bubbles clogging her throat and stopping any louder sound escaping. There’s not a single gap in the leaves, so Donnie leans forward to see past where the hedge ends and her knees are still poking out.

She’s shaking and between the weedy grass he glimpses what looks like a trail of acne on the side of her thigh.

He’s so close and it’s gross, but he has to keep looking.

Running between the scabs are purple-red lines like the thread veins on Nan’s legs, only longer. She’s no way as old as Nan, but then Nan’s had hers forever and she got them through standing on her feet for eighteen hours a day.

He reaches the end of the road, but there’s no sign of her and the whole street’s got an eeriness about it that it’s never had before, just like in the weird films that dad watches with old ghost towns, manned petrol pumps and creaky hanging signs.

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His bike’s where he left it, leaning against the green cable box. He jumps on and takes a detour back down the street, coasting past the empty house and craning his neck to get a proper look past the hedge. She’s gone – Houdini-ed. The only evidence she was ever there is a patch of leaning grass where she was crouched. There’s not even the smell of shit, just wet grass and geraniums.

If he thought it was possible for just one minute, he’d be tempted to look for a hidden wormhole, but there’s no way they can exist on earth. It’s a fact.

Some of the streetlights are still on, but the sun’s totally risen and the pink sky’s turning blue. The sun doesn’t get high enough this time of year to warm everything up, so mornings are always cold. On the outskirts of the estate is the main road and there’s more cars than usual humming past. It’s 06.49 and Donnie’s usually on the other side of the estate by now. But the alarm on his phone decided to go on strike this morning and he slept in for the first time ever. This is strange because it’s permanently set to vibration (so no-one except him can hear it), not that he even needs it, his inner-clock’s programed and he’s usually awake even before the first current of electricity’s transmitted to the speaker. But this morning – nothing, not even Mum’s flip-flop’s slap-slapping the laminate floor before leaving for work woke him. Gary was sound about it. As soon as Donnie woke up he texted him and Gary replied: Just get yer lazy arse in now. Gary must be nearly as old as Nan, but he’s got all his wits about him. He even calls Donnie, ‘Speedy Gonzales’, cos he can do his round faster than anyone he’s ever known.

The pensioner flats are his next stop. When Donnie started his paper-round it was winter and there was a sign on the wall at the bottom of the stairs saying: Warn133

ing Neighbourhood Watch Area. It had a picture of a bizzy stood with some family and they were all smiling. It was the same picture that’s on the metal signs that’re screwed to all the lamp-posts round the estate. But this one looked like someone had actually printed it onto a normal piece of paper. It’s been gone for ages, but now someone’s torn a piece of A4 paper from a normal writing pad and cello-taped it in the same place, saying: STAY OUT OR YOU WILL BE PROSECUTED. It wasn’t there yesterday and already, someone’s crossed through, OUT and PROSECUTED with a thick red marker and replaced with, IN and EXECUTED. Gary’s system of following street names is military, but ever since Donnie told him that the streets on his route are actually laid out in a weird, spirally shape and after Gary said that he’d stopped feeling, fuckin’ dizzy, he let him re-route and start from the inside streets, working outwards. That was three months ago and he’s got even faster now, lessening the delivery time by thirteen full minutes. Also, it means that he can leave the dreaded house until last – number twenty five Formosa Crescent.

It backs onto the Olla, part of the River Alt where all the older lads from the estate hang round and there’s no way anyone who isn’t in their firm can step foot there, not unless they want to die.

The non-lethal type of letterboxes are the old ones that open wide with no hidden contraptions lurking behind them. Most people have the new lethal type, including this house. This, along with the fact that Gnasher the Pitbull lives on the other side means that the risk of harm is heightened by times one thousand. As ever, using one hand to lift the cover, Donnie shoves the rolled up paper between the two strips of stiff brushes. Gnasher’s getting 134

louder, his grunting breath closer to the door. It’s a close shave – just as he pulls his hand away, he feels Gnasher’s weight hit the back of the door. Once he actually felt its teeth against his fingertips. This was before Donnie figured out how to get the paper through without using his fingers to prise the brushes apart. It was so close to biting him that he literally had to check for blood, just in case the shock of it had numbed the pain. People can actually get stabbed or shot and not feel it due to shock, so it was only right that he made sure. Lucy starts screaming which is cue for the last domino to fall and prompts Donnie to whisper in his Captain America voice: ‘control your animal, Lucy and get some WD40 on yer gate.’

Lucy’s really fat, like one of them people on the documentary shows who can’t leave the house. It’s no wonder the dog’s psycho, there’s no way she ever takes it out for walks and it’s a wonder how she even bends down to feed it. She doesn’t suit her name. Lucy’s a dainty name, like it belongs in a nursery rhyme. But she’s sound and she’s Donnie’s best tipper; always gives him a guaranteed two-pound every pay day. It’s just as well he doesn’t have to tell Mum about it cos all she’d say is that it’s social money and that they end up better off than the people who go out and work, and that’s the only reason why she can afford to do it. Either way it all goes towards Donnie’s plan and at least he’s working hard for it.

It’s 07.48 which means he’s finished his round two minutes later than his fastest time, but that’s including the detour, so doesn’t really count. He picks up speed and his sleeves flap like wings as he goes faster and faster over the bumps in the ground where the roots of the trees have cracked through the tarmac; each time staying longer in the air. The burn in his thighs heightens as he 135

touches ground and takes control of the spinning peddles, pushing his feet down harder and harder while his body seems weightless. Everything’s making sense now and once he puts all the necessary parts together he will reach maximum speed and he will bring the real Nan back.

Donnie circles his neck and checks the whole sky for rain clouds. There’s none, so he takes off his jacket, rolls it up and slides it into his paper-bag. Then he climbs along the flattened roll of carpet that Mum still hasn’t phoned Bulky Bob’s to come and collect and he shoves the bag between the wall at the side of the house and the tyres that are now rusting from Dad’s old Focus. He peeks over the fence for Dad’s car. It’s not parked in the layby so he must’ve stayed out again. It’s 07.56 which means that he’s still got time for breakfast.

The back door’s always jamming and there’s a knack to opening it: you have to lift the handle at the same time that you pull the door towards you. Donnie pulls, but the handle doesn’t move, it’s unlocked and Mum’s home, stood by the cooker with her back to him fiddling with her mobile phone. Her head moves towards him and Donnie drops below the window and about turns.

He’s halfway down the path when the door creaks open and Mum shouts in her forced happy voice: ‘Hey, Don, where yer goin’?’

‘Nowhere, just to fix me bike.’ He’s left it leaning against the shed and hopefully she’ll believe him.

‘Yer takin’ it to school then?’ Her tone has got even chirpier now. He never takes his bike to school and she knows that.

‘I–’ 136

‘Get in ‘ere…Now.’ Mum’s stood in the doorway with her thumb pointing like a missile to inside the house. She’s not moving to let him pass easy, but he manages to slink past, dodging contact. She smells of eucalyptus and soap and there’s a ring of fresh blood around her thumbnail. She’s wearing normal clothes and even without looking at her he knows she’s giving him the eyeballs.

Jodie’s sat at the table munching on a banana and Thorn’s sprawled next to the fridge. His tail’s slapping the floor, but he doesn’t jump up like he usually does to say hello. Dogs can sense tension and know when to stay low. Donnie sits on the chair opposite Jodie and she pulls her lips tight and gives him the eyes as if to say: ‘sorry, she made me tell her.’ Then Thorn decides to jump up and heads towards Donnie, but Mum snaps, ‘lie down’ and bangs the door shut. He obeys and Jodie makes her escape avoiding any eye contact on her way.

Mum drags out the chair opposite to Donnie and its wooden legs squeal against the granite tiles. When Mum means business her stare alone can assassinate the truth out of you and she’s doing it right now without even using eye contact. ‘Why didn’t yer tell me, Donnie?’

‘Tell yer what?’

‘You know what…’ Mum snatches a takeaway leaflet which he’s folding its edges and slaps it on the table. ‘… delivering papers on that estate. That’s what.’

Mum’s voice is a mixture of quivery and high-pitch squeals. It vibrates in his eardrum and it doesn’t matter if he looks her in the eye now. She knows. He glares up, keeping his head low and she looks actually sad more than angry; her eyes all puffy and red like when she can’t sleep or has been crying.

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Donnie stares at the knot in the pine table, the one that’s cracked right down the middle and wishes he was the Vanisher. That way he could transport himself to a different family, one that had loads of money in the bank and wasn’t always fighting.

‘Donnie–’ A heaviness in his chest rises up into his throat. He has to tell her now. There’s no choice. ‘I’m fed up with gettin’ skitted, Mum.’ As soon as the words leave his mouth, a dull pain starts in his ear followed by a ticking heartbeat.

‘Skitted for what?’ Her voice is lower now but still shaky.

There’s a tap, tapping when the pulley chain hits the blinds. Through them, blades of sunlight flicker over the woody crack emphasising the peeling varnish. Donnie digs his thumbnail under and sends flakes, like shrapnel up into the air.

‘Donnie…’ She’s mega agitated now.

‘For everything, that’s what. For wearing Dunlop trainees–’ Mum dives off the chair and yanks Donnie’s hand. ‘For God’s sake, it’s already wrecked. Will yer stop doin’ that.’

Everything in the house is wrecked. That’s all she’s forever saying. ‘I’m making me own money, Mum. Yer should be glad.’

‘Glad...’ Her voice has reached full screaming pitch now. ‘…glad yer over on that estate.’ She takes off her cardie as if she’s entered a boxing ring. ‘They’re all wannabe gangsters.’ Her black bra strap’s hanging across her arm and she pushes it back up under her top. ‘Yer Dad works all the hours God sends so we can live in a nice area.’ She picks up her mobile from the worktop and strokes the screen, then plonks it back down and huffs.

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‘I’m fed up, Donnie. Nothin’ I say matters in this house.

Yers all do as yers please.’

The landing floorboards are creaking, which means Jodie’s probably leaning over the bannister earwigging everything that’s being said.

‘Mum, it does matter what yer say, but it’s extra money and I’ve been doin’ it for ages now and nothin’s happened.’

‘What yer mean, ages?’ Her voice can’t get any louder than it is right now and it hurts his ears. He can’t take back the words, but if he could turn back time right at this second he would and he’d take back the words with him.

Last night’s dishes are piled high next to the sink. She snatches a plate from the top and scrapes the curdled gravy and peas into the bin. Donnie gets up and collects dirty glasses from the table, careful not to let them clink – create some calm. ‘Mum–’ ‘You’ve been doin’ it since I told yer, haven’t yer?’ She doesn’t look at him, just shakes her head and clings to the worktop edge of the sink. ‘Look at the time, Donnie.

You need to get to school.’

‘Mum, yer don’t know what it’s like–’ ‘Donnie, why else have I gone back to work?’ She’s talking at a normal pitch now, but back to banging plates.

‘Yer need yer money for other things. I’m really good at it, Mum and I’ve saved loads already.’

A bin wagon’s reverse siren sounds, followed by the clatter of bottles falling into its tank.

The new wooden placemats and matching coasters Mum bought from TK Maxx are thrown across the table, so Donnie stands up and starts re-arranging them into a neat stack. ‘Mum, please. I’ve even bought meself new 139

trainees and a jacket.’

She shakes her head harder and turns on the hot tap letting the water splash up onto the windowsill. The boiler’s broke and it takes forever to heat up. It’s been there since the house was built and they’re saving for a new one. ‘I’ve told yer, I’ll buy yer new clothes.’

Mum’d have a fit if she knew how much he paid for his jacket and there’s no way she’d pay that much for it even if she won the lottery.

Donnie flings Jodie’s banana skin into the bin, folds two kitchen towels off the table and the one that’s hanging over the back of the chair. ‘We both can. I love it, Mum. Please don’t make me stop.’

‘I wish I hadn’t gone back to work, Don. I don’t know anything that’s goin’ on in me own house anymore.’ She sinks her hand into the steaming bowl of water and pulls out a cloth, her freckly hands turning bright pink. She wrings out the cloth and her knuckles transform back to white.

‘Mum, I promise I’d never get mixed up with lads like that.’ He gathers the rest of the dirty glasses from around the worktops and passes them to her. Glasses always get washed first.

She plunges them one by one under the fizzing bubbles. Mum’s got asbestos hands and she’s always bragging about how they never ever get burnt. If Nan was here she’d remind her that it’s the wounds that you can’t see that do the worst damage. If Nan was really here she’d tell her that without trust there’s no way of ever changing what happens next.

‘I don’t know, Donnie. I just don’t know anymore,’ she says.

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Matthew McKeown

Matthew McKeown is an English undergraduate and Writing postgraduate, and co-founder of the Liverpool Editing Company. In addition to his work as a fiction editor, he also writes web copy and feature articles on a freelance basis.

Writing for Thompson With religious and political institutions now redundant, influence is exerted through the modern-day opium of the British masses: football. Thompson realises this, but in desiring to wield the transcendent power of sport, he faces the dilemma of how to avoid corrupting the very purity on which its appeal is built. mckeownwritingediting@gmail.com

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Writing for Thompson Matthew McKeown A Queer Lie for a Straight Guy. It wasn’t uncommon for me to wake up to several missed calls from Thompson, as he often worked through the night. However, four hundred and seven was an eyebrow-raising number even by his standard.

‘The son of a bitch has done it,’ began the grumbled first voicemail. ‘He’s gone broken arrow. Repeat. Bragovic has gone broken arrow.’ The rest of the messages carried on in much the same vein; the only variables being the regularity and severity of threats levelled at both Bragovic and myself. By the fiftieth call, he had surmised that I was in cahoots with the Bosnian. ‘I don’t care where you go,’ he warned. ‘There is no distance too great, no border too secure. I will find you both, and I will murder you in cold blood.’

I called the office and let Marie know that I was on my way. She kept me on the line a little longer than necessary, asking intrusive questions about my father’s health, and so I knew that Thompson was either listening in or sitting at reception, feeding her lines. A muffled, disgusted grunt in response to a brief description of how a heart stent works suggested the former.

‘Well, Marie, I better go,’ I said cheerily. ‘Or else I won’t make it in by eight.’

‘He better make it in by eight, or else-’ I caught Thompson telling her as I was hanging up.

He would have wanted me to hear it, to make sure I knew that he knew that I knew he was onto me, because 143

according to the Thompson Group employee handbook, pretence, being the great hinderer of confrontation, should always be abandoned at the first opportunity. It is Thompson’s firm belief that confrontation is the key to success in business.

I showered and dressed and made my way downstairs, where I found my father eating breakfast in the kitchen. Although effectively retired, he was determined to hang on to as much of his long-followed routine as possible, even if it was limited to getting up at seven o’clock and only allowing himself thirty minutes for lunch. He looked tired.

‘Why don’t you go back to bed?’ I asked, searching the fridge.

Mouth full of cereal, he shook his head no in response.

‘You’ll be asleep on the couch by ten,’ I went on. ‘You’d be better off getting up whenever your body tells you to.

You look ready to drop.’

He bristled momentarily, but then returned to his bowl and resumed poking at its congealing contents. ‘It’s all the tablets they’ve got me on,’ he said. ‘I can hardly keep my eyes open half the time. I live like a baby.’

I laughed. The one thing he had gained from his recent heart attack was a sense of humour – something he’d never had time for in the past. At first it had been strange sharing a house with him again, but I was enjoying getting to know him as a man, rather than the frazzled component that would often return home after a twelve-hour shift. Most people in his position would have been forced to return to work after a week or two, but thanks to the surprisingly generous terms of my Thompson Group health insurance plan, he was free to convalesce almost indefinitely. Not that he was grateful or anything.

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‘I need to go back to work,’ he complained between bites. ‘I don’t know what to do with myself.’

‘I thought you were going to start walking with Mum?’ I said, recalling a conversation that the two of them had, after watching an advert about dying.

‘Walking,’ he scoffed. ‘I’m sixty, not ninety. Besides, she doesn’t get home from work until after five.’

Out of both solutions and time, I left him to another day of naps and rolling sports news. The roads were generally clear at the time of morning when I would make the short trip to Thompson Towers, so it was barely quarter-to eight when I collected my day phone from the security booth and landed at my desk. There I found a white post-it note waiting for me. It read simply, ‘NOW!’ By the time I arrived at Thompson’s office, he was practically frothing at the mouth. The long wall opposite the patio doors was filled with head shots of brooding young men, each marked with either a pink or yellow highlighter. He was pacing back and forth between them, stopping at seemingly random intervals to closely study a set of features. I exchanged furtive smiles with his daughter Catherine, who was dutifully recording her father’s every word on a stenotype, before making my presence known with a forced cough. Thompson turned with a start.

‘What? Are you sick?’ he asked, covering his mouth and nose with a disproportionately large hand. ‘You better go home if you’re sick. I’m not ending up in a medical facility because of you.’

He would never so much as say the word hospital.

‘I’m fine,’ I assured him. ‘I just wanted to get your attention.’

He looked furious. ‘Don’t you ever-’ he barked, before 145

taking a deep breath and collecting himself. Whatever he had summoned me for was even more serious than faking a cough.

‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘Just take a look at these for me.’

He beckoned me over to the wall, where I beheld his night’s work. The men appeared to be mostly in their early to middle twenties, and were of varying ethnicities and handsomeness. He appeared to have organised them according to colour, with complexions becoming increasingly darker from left to right.

‘Well,’ he asked earnestly. ‘What do you think?’

‘What exactly am I looking at?’ I replied.

‘What the hell do you think you’re looking at?’

‘I don’t know.’

He huffed and let out a long sigh, shaking his head at my ignorance. ‘Which of these do you think would be a suitable replacement for Bragovic?’ He guided me along the line with a pointed finger.

‘What do the highlighters mean?’ There were fourteen pictures in total. Five were marked with a pink X, four with a yellow X, and five with both pink and yellow question marks. I dared not guess what they indicated.

‘Pink,’ he said. ‘Means I don’t think he looks very gay.

At least not in the traditional sense anyway.’

‘I see,’ I said with a nod.

‘Whereas yellow,’ he drew my attention to a quite striking young black man on the far right. ‘Means I could easily imagine him offering base pleasures to another fellow. Understand?’

‘Yes. What about the question marks?’

‘Question marks mean that it’s still in question,’ he said, fixing me with a look of contempt. ‘I thought that was obvious.’

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It was, but I had learned the hard way the folly of taking anything for granted in this job. I watched as he made his way over to an A3 picture of Bragovic, which was tacked up on the secret door to the gym. It had been thoroughly vandalised, presumably with the same pink and yellow pens used to judge its subject’s potential successors. The crudely scrawled insults, threats and phallic amendments to his chiselled visage do not bear repeating.

‘The bastard,’ he spat. ‘I gave him everything. Fame, fortune, public sympathy – and how does he repay me?

By running off to America and selling me out to the first con man who flashes a few dollars his way. What price is loyalty, I ask?’

Realising that something major must have happened, I took out my phone and opened a news app. There, right at the top of the page, was Bragovic, standing before a gaggle of journalists, having his hand raised in triumph by a balding, effeminate middle-aged man. The headline was as follows: Footballer ‘Cured’ of Homosexuality by Texas Pastor. For once, Thompson’s histrionics were entirely justified. This was bad.

Some years ago, when Bragovic was just another young hopeful looking to make a career for himself in England, he was offered the opportunity of a lifetime.

Ever perceptive of the cultural zeitgeist, Thompson knew what a PR jackpot it would be for Norton Town Football Club to have an openly gay player before any of its more prestigious rivals; and as a footballer of limited ability and lengthening odds of landing a full-time contract, Bragovic jumped at the chance to go from trialist to highly-paid professional. After several months of forgettable first team cameos, broken up by carefully contrived 147

spells of injury-enforced absence, he took to Twitter and announced to his twenty thousand followers that he was a practising homosexual. The tweet was sent at six o’clock on a quiet Sunday evening, and by noon the next day there were more than two million people subscribed to his every utterance.

I could hear Thompson’s teeth grinding over the hum of the projector screen as it lowered in front of us, covering the blank faces of the young men whose fates were no longer in their own hands.

‘I see you,’ he told Bragovic, as the now-former Norton Town goalkeeper took his place at the front of what would be the first of many, many press conferences.

A jowly man who I didn’t recognise as a member of Bragovic’s usual entourage appeared to be coordinating the event. He placed a fluorescent energy drink bottle – no doubt filled with water – in front of the microphone, and whispered something into his ear while motioning towards it. The two shared a laugh as they watched the room fill up with representatives from all of the major American media outlets, further darkening Thompson’s mood.

‘All of this should be mine,’ Thompson said, wincing at every camera flash. ‘I’m the real fake face of gay football.’

When I came to Norton Town as a staff writer, I was shocked to learn that Bragovic was as straight as he was racist.

‘That’s why we always take into account ethnicity when planning future storylines,’ Mezger explained, barely an hour after I had set foot in the door for the first time. ‘At the moment we’re focusing on blacks, but these 148

things can change from one day to the next. We’ve been kicking around the idea of making the next one Chinese or maybe even Indian, depending on how focus groups react.’

Murphy nodded. Unlike Mezger, who departed from the company just a few months after bringing me in, she remains in her role as a casting agent to this day.

‘As you all know,’ she said. ‘The spectre of an unfortunate Facebook rant is causing a few of the usual hacks to question Bragovic’s suitability as a progressive icon.

Obviously, we can’t just shack him up with a Muslim boyfriend,’ she grinned momentarily. ‘That would open up a whole other can of fatwa, wouldn’t it?’

We all laughed as her lips closed and her emerald eyes did a quick, searching lap of the long rectangular table.

‘So, we need to be subtle,’ she said flatly. ‘Any suggestions?’

Russell raised a hand, apparently oblivious to the fact that it was sheathed in a packet of pickled onion flavoured Monster Munch. ‘Shit,’ he muttered, as pungent little claws began tumbling down his forearm. The room waited silently while he recovered them. ‘Why don’t we have him visit a mosque? Maybe he could present the preacher with a signed shirt?’

Wong rolled her eyes and tutted her disapproval.

‘You idiot,’ she said, in a tone I had not yet become accustomed to. ‘What self-respecting imam is going to be photographed receiving a gift from not just a kafir, but a gay one at that? As far as they’re concerned, he’s the king of the infidels.’

‘Or the queen,’ I sheepishly offered, and then immediately wished that I hadn’t.

Russell laughed, but I’m not sure it if was because of 149

the joke or the foul look that Wong sent my way before presenting her own idea.

‘I think we should find out which religion people most commonly associate or confuse with Islam,’ she said.

‘And pair him with someone from that background.’

Murphy bobbed her head up and down, exaggerating a look of deep contemplation. ‘I love it,’ she eventually announced, triumphant. ‘What are we thinking here?

Sikhs? Hindus? Who else is brown?’

I was surprised, and a little bit ashamed, at the speed with which my desire to be accepted by these dissident thinkers overtook the innate sense of right and wrong that I’d spent almost thirty-two years cultivating. I had yet to finish my first free drink as a Thompson Group employee, and already I was racking my brain for faces I could put to the colour of the instant coffee which was idling at the bottom of the glistening white cup in front of me. Soon enough, we had settled on casting a Sikh, thanks in no small part to a short test prepared by Wong, which to a man we all failed. As someone who considered himself to be more tolerant and urbane than your average Joe, it hurt me to realise that just five minutes of Googling was enough to expose my complete lack of knowledge of the history, culture and customs of around thirty million people worldwide (I had suggested that their number stood at no more than five million when answering question eight).

Russell was feeling less contrite, judging by his response to being chastised by Murphy for scoring one correct answer out of twenty. ‘You didn’t even take the test,’ he said. ‘So who are you to judge us?’ His supplementary pointing suggested that he felt he and I were in the same ignorant boat, and I struggled to think of a way to make 150

it known that I had actually scored seven, but without sounding proud of it.

‘Pah!’ she half-laughed, half-shouted, all the while waving his answer sheet about, like a prosecutor might wield a decisive piece of evidence. ‘I think I’m well qualified to judge any man who admits to his first thought upon encountering a Sikh being, “bomb-proof umbrellas”.’

‘You said there were no wrong answers,’ he gestured accusingly at Mezger.

‘No I didn’t,’ he replied calmly, not looking up from his phone. ‘There are always wrong answers – especially in creative environments.’

Russell turned back to Murphy, his face red with frustration. ‘Are you saying you wouldn’t buy a bomb-proof umbrella? It’s a brilliant idea.’

‘It is impossible!’ Her Drogheda accent became thicker with anger. ‘How would it even work? It would be too heavy to carry around all day.’

‘You use short, narrow steel fibres. They made wallpaper out of it.’

‘Who did?’

‘The Americans.’

They were both on their feet now, lending weight to their respective arguments with wildly flailing limbs.

Mezger was still smirking at his phone, while Wong appeared to be taking notes; neither of them willing to offer so much as a reassuring smile in response to my nervous glances.

‘I don’t need this,’ Russell declared, stuffing his belongings into a filthy old rucksack, which looked as though it might have once been green.

‘Yeah, that’s right.’ Murphy jabbed her finger across the table. ‘Take your sack of chocolate and get out of my 151

sight, you fat slob.’

‘I don’t have any chocolate, see?’ He held the bag open, displaying a truly impressive selection of lesser spotted brands of crisps. ‘Not as clever as you think, are you?’

‘Get out!’

He did get out, but then just as quickly his head popped back around the door frame, aiming a parting shot. ‘I am leaving,’ he said. ‘And I’m going to patent that umbrella, and none of you wankers will be allowed to buy one.’

He disappeared again, and not a moment too soon, as Murphy’s cup went hurtling through the same space that his greasy dome had occupied seconds earlier. We fell into a state of stasis for what seemed a very long time, until Murphy finally picked up her laptop and headed for the door.

‘Where are you going?’ Wong asked.

‘To find a gay Sikh,’ she answered, not breaking stride as she stormed off down the corridor.

Seconds later, Wong was gone too, leaving me alone with Mezger and whoever he was texting. I couldn’t say how many minutes, or even hours, passed before he finally got up and indicated noiselessly for me to follow, but I do know that it wasn’t nearly enough time for me to properly process what had just happened. On the way out, I picked up the largest piece of Murphy’s former cup, and for some reason decided to take it with me as I slipped away to a nearby bathroom.

Once inside, I realised that I didn’t need the toilet, nor did I wish to face myself in the mirror. Instead, I leaned against a large frosted window, studying the cheap crockery in my palm. Its outer side was painted bright red, and the message it had been carrying remained in152

tact beneath a small white crown.

Keep calm and have a cup of tea, it said.

That’s when the tears came.

‘Does Deepak know?’ I asked.

‘Who?’ Thompson said, eyes still glued to the news.

They had been repeating the exact same clip of Bragovic and his new preacher addressing the media in Austin, Texas, all morning, but still he watched.

‘Deepak is the gentleman who we cast as Bragovic’s boyfriend last year.’

‘Oh, the Muslim guy?’

‘He’s actually a Sikh, but yeah, you know who I mean.’

‘So, what about him?’

‘He’ll have almost certainly been getting harassed by the press all morning. Someone needs to make sure he’s OK.’ ‘Oh, don’t you worry about that.’

His subsequent chuckle unnerved me, as did the soft squeeze that I felt on my shoulder.

‘Deepak is just fine,’ Catherine cooed down my ear.

She had sneaked up behind me, stealthy in her bare feet.

‘We had him picked up before the story went live. He’s in the gym, waiting to be debriefed.’

Seeing what little this did to quash my fears, she signalled for me to follow her through the barely visible door where Bragovic’s desecrated image hung. At the end of a short, claustrophobic walkway, we came to a steel door which opened out into Thompson’s private gym. There, I was mortified to see Deepak slumped over an exercise bike, wrists bound to the handlebars, and with a bio-degradable shopping bag covering his head.

Were it not for the listless pedalling of his slippered feet, 153

I might have thought him dead.

‘Oh my God,’ was all I could muster.

That was when Dragon shuffled into view from behind an elliptical cross trainer. Hands tucked into the sleeves of his floral embroidered kimono, he flicked his thin, grey plaited ponytail around his head and attempted to stare me out. When that didn’t work he switched to a fighting stance, which, if I remember correctly, he referred to as ‘Bath Salts Beaver’. He was a fairly atypical fifty-year-old white man from Leeds, who had somehow conned his way into becoming the head of Thompson’s personal guard.

‘Do you wish to die today, biro jockey?’ he asked.

‘Why is this man prepped for torture?’ I said.

‘I am merely following Mr Thompson’s orders.’

‘And what orders were those?’

‘To transport the target safely and securely.’

‘To Guantanamo Bay?’ Dragon let out a strange nasally battle cry and bared his beaver claws, but he could only watch in horror as Catherine then proceeded to pad across the royal blue carpet and lift the bag off Deepak’s head, revealing that he had also been gagged using a child’s karate belt. The poor man could barely find strength to thank her as she untied the knot with one hand, while using the fingers of the other to comb strands of sweat-soaked hair back from his forehead.

With Thompson’s goon subdued by Catherine’s presence, I went over and helped free Deepak’s hands. ‘Is he all right?’ I asked, concerned by the faraway look in his eyes.

‘He’s just dehydrated,’ she said with reassuring conviction. ‘Go grab a bottle of water.’

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I walked to the back of the room, where a large refrigerator sat just behind a matted free weights area. I opened the door and reached inside, only to be stopped in my tracks by the sound of an unmistakable gruff voice.

‘Hey man, I know you ain’t stealing my lunch,’ Jackson cautioned. He was filling the open doorway of a small but luxurious bathroom suite, with that day’s newspaper tucked under his arm. ‘Don’t go touching anything on that second shelf now.’

Turning to inspect the contents of the fridge, I wondered why he felt the need to issue a warning. The varied selection of half-eaten takeaway boxes, interspersed with bright, shiny cans of fizzy soda drinks, were quite enough to tell anyone who knows Jackson that this was where he kept his food. Judging by how much of this fried bounty had already been part-consumed, and noting the lack of flushing water to accompany his emergence from the toilet, I shuddered to think of what he’d left for the cleaner to find.

My heart skipped more beats than it struck when the enormous American began lumbering towards me, like some great sentient mountain, and sent the flawless ebony skin of his arm – skin which belied what must have been one of the worst diets in human history – grazing softly, and probably intentionally, across my face, as he leaned in to grab a pizza box from the forbidden shelf.

‘I’m just playing with you, dawg,’ he laughed, clasping my shoulder with enough force to send a brief tremor down through my legs. He consumed an entire slice of pizza in one bite, save for the crust, which he now employed as a pointer. ‘You want a chicken strip? Maybe a little mac and cheese? I think there might be some onion rings in there too, somewhere.’

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‘I-uh, I just need-’ Suddenly Catherine appeared, visibly annoyed. ‘How long does it take to get a bottle of water?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘I thought you were all super-worried about this guy? He’s about to collapse.’

Without waiting for a reply, she shoved past the pair of us, snatched a bottle of spring water and took off back the way she came. Jackson released my shoulder with a light shove and stalked after her, making no attempt to disguise the visual assessment he was performing.

‘What’s up, girl,’ he called, as she hopped over a rowing machine which he couldn’t navigate so easily. ‘You want some French fries?’

Ignoring him, she passed the water to Deepak, who gratefully drained it in seconds. He had moved into a recovery position on the floor, but the sight of Jackson approaching gave him enough of an adrenaline rush to pull himself back up to his feet using a treadmill and take cover behind Catherine.

‘What’s wrong?’ she looked at Deepak, who had dropped back to one knee. ‘Did this man hurt you?’

‘I didn’t touch him,’ Jackson said, incredulous. ‘We just went and picked him up, like the old man told us to.’

‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ she snapped. ‘Deepak, did either of these men harm you in any way?’

Deepak shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘But they could have told me what was going on, instead of just emptying a shopping bag onto the kitchen table and sticking it over my head.’

‘Hey, we don’t tell you how to do your job,’ Dragon interrupted.

‘Is it your job to make people prisoners in their own home, while you and your friend raid their cupboards 156

and make omelettes?’ Deepak momentarily rose in angry defiance, but then quickly remembered himself and went back to cowering.

After being involved in the decision to cast him as Bragovic’s boyfriend, and having then worked with him on a number of public appearances, I felt a real sense of culpability as I watched him hide behind the legs of an eight-stone woman.

‘Maybe we should get Thompson in here,’ I said.

‘I think it’s about time we got this over with and sent Deepak on his way.’

‘I’m already here,’ Thompson announced, emerging from behind a curling bench, where I can only assume he’d been crouching out of sight for some time. ‘Dragon, Jackson, that will be all for now.’

He gave his security team an approving nod as they left through the gym’s main entrance, and once they were gone he hobbled over to the same bench where he’d been hiding and sat down, motioning for our guest to join him. Deepak proceeded with caution, but eventually gathered up the courage to sit alongside his captor and look him in the eye.

‘First of all, Deepak, I’d like to thank you for coming in today,’ Thompson said, as he aggressively kneaded the cramp from his thighs with tightly-clenched knuckles. ‘As I’m sure you’re already aware, your “boyfriend” Bragovic has absconded to America, where he has shacked up with some preacher conman-type, who he is claiming has completely cured him of all homosexual desires and tendencies.’

Deepak pressed his lips together and nodded his head.

His legs shook and spasmed until Thompson reached over and calmed them with a firm squeeze.

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‘Now the thing is, pal,’ Thompson continued. ‘I know that for the benefit of the press, you and Bragovic spent a fair amount of time together. Would it be fair to say that you two became friends? I certainly think it would. And even if there wasn’t exactly pillow talk going on, I also believe it stands to reason that he’d have given his friend some indication of his plans.’ He leaned in so close that the tips of their noses touched, compelling me to interject.

‘Actually, that wasn’t the case at all,’ I said, causing Thompson to pull back and give me the Medusa eyes.

‘The brief clearly states that Bragovic was an enormous bigot, who absolutely hated Deepak on a variety of levels.’

‘That’s right,’ Deepak finally managed to blurt out, head nodding furiously. His usually measured speech had become a frantic, quivering shell of its former self.

‘He used to say I’d scored the perfect hat-trick of evil – gay, not white and Muslim. He has never heard of Sikhism, and accused me of making it up to lure people into a false sense of security, so that I could blow up a school when they least expected it. He is an awful man.’

Thompson chewed on this for a few moments, before deciding to exercise one of his most commonly used negotiating techniques: exercise. Without a word, and with eyes trained on Deepak the whole time, he stood and removed his jacket, letting it fall to the floor. He then yanked his tie up over his head and began slowly unbuttoning his shirt. Now naked from the waist up, the predator shifted away from its prey and backed over to where an impressively heavy Olympic bench press was set up.

Still not breaking the stare, he lowered himself beneath the barbell, flexed a pair of pectoral muscles that were 158

quite remarkable for a man of his age, and then banged out rapid sets of ten, with Catherine counting out one minute intervals in between.

After the fourth and final set, he returned to sit alongside Deepak, looking into his eyes once again, and let out a deep, contemplative sigh. ‘You wouldn’t lie to me would you, Deepak?’

Deepak shook his head with gusto.

‘I gave you a good life, didn’t I?’ This time he didn’t bother waiting for a response. ‘I never asked much of you. All you had to do was be a trophy boyfriend for a trophy athlete, showing up at awards ceremonies and gala dinners, and maybe doing the occasional magazine cover shoot. You know, some people that thought I should have had the two of you film a sex tape – really make you earn it, but I refused, which is a shame, because it probably would have come in handy right about now.’

An awkward silence hung in the air, until Deepak eventually cleared his throat to speak. ‘How could it have made a difference,’ he said. ‘If Bragovic is saying he was cured of homosexuality, rather than claiming he was straight all along?’

Thompson laughed, patted Deepak on the thigh again and pushed himself up to his feet. ‘It would make a difference because if nothing else, I would know that I forced that arrogant son of a bitch to submit to what he believes to be the lowest form of debasement.’ Again, he laughed, shaking his head and looking wistfully into space. ‘I honestly thought that I had him,’ he said. ‘I was certain his soul was irretrievably mine, but it seems he has more testicular fortitude than I realised.’ He smiled upon Deepak once more. ‘I very much appreciate the les159

son that you and Bragovic taught me today.’

‘The lesson?’

‘That’s right. Today I learned that even the best carrot is only as good as its stick.’

Before Deepak had a chance to process those words, Thompson swung an uppercut towards his chin with such velocity that it lifted him off the bench and left him sprawled unconscious on the floor. I tried to speak, but nothing came out. All I could do was watch Thompson march back towards his office, with Catherine following close behind.

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Congratulations to the Pulp Idol writers for creating such brilliant first chapters and good luck - we hope to be reading your novels in the future.

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