The Christmas Present

Susan was already sat up in bed and had her arm outstretched when the alarm went off. She rose quickly and, checking her house keys were in her pocket, she clipped the lead to the dog’s collar. Christmas morning, but still she stuck to the routine. Usually on these walks she relished the silence which electrified the morning air with the thrill of being the only person awake in a slumbering street. Today, there was a hum of activity, lights on in usually dark houses like the newly opened eyes of puppies. She felt the chill metal of keys in her hand as she closed the door behind her.

Early rising children wobbled past on new bicycles still trailing ribbons and bright paper scraps while parents watched from windows, clutching large mugs and each other. In some houses, the hysteria had already given way to tantrums and Susan heard the echoes of her own chaotic childhood through the windows opened to let out the smoke of a rare but necessary cigarette. Susan stuck to her usual morning route.

Back at home – and back in her pyjamas as a little gift to herself – she put a large cushion on the floor and sat in front of the tree to open presents. They had accumulated over the last month and no compulsion other than her own ensured she waited until today to open them. She worked her way through the presents from siblings and well-meaning in-laws with a sigh. Three of those teapot-for-one sets with an impractical, oversized cup and saucer. As if a life lived on your own meant a destiny of tea for one, and the only kind thing is to make the best of it by drinking from a novelty cup. In her mind, she already saw these gifts in the box headed for the charity shop. There were homemade gifts from nieces and nephews, the double helping of glitter and crayoned kisses marking her out as a favourite. Luxury hair treatments from her best friend, who ran the salon she went to every six weeks.  A brightly coloured, blank-paged journal from her friend in the writing group. Panettone from her Italian tutor. A book about local pub walks from the man who ran the kennels where her dog stayed when she went on her weekends away; she hadn’t bought him a gift, and felt uncomfortable by the gesture and what it might mean.

She should have finished, but one present remained under the tree. She looked across to the pile of opened gifts – everyone she knew, every present she’d collected from pre-Christmas gatherings and placed under the tree was already there. This was new, unexpected. A box wrapped in glossy red paper with white ribbon; she checked the label which bore her name, written in an old-fashioned script in gold ink. Rather than recalling the magic of Christmas, her first thought was of those unopened presents under the tree that year he never came to see her, the year she found out about his wife and children. But this wasn’t a gift she’d bought and wrapped for someone else, it was for her. She walked around the house, checked the windows and tested the lock on the back door. She left the gift under the tree while she put the other presents away, the glint of gold ink under the coloured lights catching her eye.

She asked her family when they called, but no one admitted to sending it. Her friend knew her well enough to not plan such a surprise. No one else came to the house to have been able to hide it. From time to time, she picked it up to test the weight as if that would hold some clue, and then she’d replace it under the tree. After an afternoon walk with the dog, passing along the same early-rising streets now muted with a bloated exhaustion, she placed the parcel in front of him. If it was edible, he would know, but he sniffed it once and walked disinterested back to the fire to curl up and sleep. She remembered something she’d heard at the police station at work, and carefully carried the box to the kitchen table and balanced it on the edge. Bombs could never balance from every angle, but this box didn’t fall. She shook it, but there was no sound. She poured herself a glass of wine. A present still unopened on Christmas afternoon. It nagged away at her and the feeling of intrusion stopped her from opening it. She thought about her childhood, and wondered when Father Christmas had become a monster under the bed.

Sweet - first draft

Open your paper, pick up your pencil –

Baton of silence.

Numbers now secrets you can’t calculate;

Can’t get an angle.

Pencil and tooth tick a rabbit rhythm,

Puts lead in your head.

Try sugar in place of inspiration

While the clock eats time.

A hard boiled help, a saccharine saviour;

But a noisy choice.

Wait for a chair to scrape above the sighs,

Crackle one open

Then be still. The gradient of your face

Acute. Suck silence,

Calculate your crunches and be careful:

The approaching click

Of the examiner: heels on gym floors

Echo in rows. Eat. Work.  

Solutions take a shape, taste of lemons,

A burst of sherbert.

Sweet inspiration, with a citrus doubt.

Rub out the errors:

All you have to do is fill in the small squares

With the right answer.

Murder Gloves

They didn’t all know each other that well. It had started as just Louise and her boyfriend Phil, but as they’d mentioned their plans to more people, everyone wanted to go to the fireworks display in a village outside the town. There were too many of them to go in one car, so they shuffled awkwardly outside the pub while they worked out the best configuration of passengers. There was no obvious solution, no clear alignments of friendship and so it took some time. Louise had wanted to get there early and was impatient to leave, edging slowly towards the car park while they talked. She had her camera equipment packed in the boot and was keen to test the settings on her camera before the display started.

Eventually they worked it out and half an hour later than planned, set off in a short convoy of two down the dark winding lanes towards the display. They parked in the field next to the event and pulled on scarves and gloves as they made their way to the entrance. There was a small fairground, children screaming in delight under neon colours and the smell of overcooked meat from a burger van. They all stood around being polite for a while, no one wanted to take the lead. Louise fidgeted with her camera bag while Phil went off to get tickets for the bumper cars with his friend Matt from work. Louise’s friend Kate had brought another girl, Jo, from her office and they were both queueing for a coffee while Phil and Louise’s neighbours Ben and Jamie dragged a thermos from a rucksack. Anyone standing nearby – and there seemed to be several girls trying to do just that - would have smelt the whiskey laced into the coffee. They joined the other boys on the bumper cars and Louise tried to find a spot to set up her tripod. She had come for the fireworks, but perhaps she could get some good shots of the fairground ride, create stripes of coloured light across the smiling faces. To the side of her, Jo and Kate were speaking quietly. Louise had heard Kate mention Jo before, said she was a bit quiet but a really nice girl and new to the area; another of Kate’s projects. Jo looked cold in a denim jacket and a long slender scarf which looked elegant but did little against the autumn chill slicing through the air.

Louise lifted her camera off the tripod to catch a shot of her friend Kate laughing, her short dark hair poking out of a woolly hat in disarray, stretching out the arms of her parka jacket with bulging pockets. Kate turned towards a shout of laughter on the bumper cars. As usual, the boys had got competitive and while Ben and Jamie careened around the track together – they shared a car to save money - bumping into anyone that got in their way, Phil and Matt had started to circle the track avoiding everyone so they could build some momentum and ram each other as hard as possible. Phil was wedged into the edge for a while, until Ben and Jamie managed to get behind him and nudge him out of the corner. Suddenly, Matt turned sharply and whizzed across the track and knocked into Ben and Jamie so hard that Jamie nearly fell out of the car. The girls had all watched it happen and were silent with shock at the vehemence of Matt’s actions, but the boys were all laughing as the cars all ground to a halt and they got off the ride. She saw Phil accept some coffee from the boys, and noticed that Matt refused. He was driving.

Louise went to find a good spot for taking photographs; Jo and Phil came with her and the others all went off and promised to find them before the fireworks started. When Phil went off to get her a tea, Jo asked Louise about what she was doing.

“That looks like a lovely camera. You must be really good at it – can you even get fireworks on camera? Any time I’ve tried they just come out a blur.”

“Oh yes, you can if you have the right settings on the camera. I’ve not done many night shots before but I thought I’d give it a try. There’s a competition at the gallery in town at the end of the month and I thought maybe if I could get a good picture here...” Louise had entered the competition last year, and her careful deliate shots of flowers hadn’t even placed; this year her tutor suggested she tried something more dramatic.

“Good luck with that, I’ll let you get on. I just came because I like fireworks, really, no clever reason like you.”

Kate walked up behind them.

“Lou doesn’t have a clever reason either, she just wanted to come and be a kid so she brought her camera so she looks legit. I managed to get some sparklers too, so once the display has finished we could have a go with them. All in the name of art, obviously.”

“I’m not sure that you writing rude words is going to count as art, Kate,” said Phil as he joined them and handed Louise her tea.

The firework display was better than they had all expected, and they stood spellbound as the colours boomed and flashed across the dark night. Soon after the music started and the fireworks began, the boys rejoined them; Louise noticed that Matt quickly separated himself from the other two and stood near Jo, the collar of jhis coat turned up against the cold. She saw most of the display from through the screen of her camera until Phil had tugged insistently at her hand; she moved closer to him and looked up at the sky. A row of red catherine wheels angry like a burn whirred on the ground while lines of gold shot into the sky and resonated with a boom. Louise kissed Phil lightly and took the camera off the tripod, handing it to him with her bag.

“I want to get some shots of the people watching it all. Back in a minute.” She moved through the crowd, capturing children’s faces upturned in wonder, couples cuddling into each other as they blew out white clouds of breath and teenagers working hard not to look impressed. She stopped just before she made it back to the group and took some of her friends as they stood together. Kate was laughing with Jamie and Ben; she couldn’t tell from that distance whether she was just standing close or whether she had her hand in Ben’s. Phil and Jo stood still and quiet to watch the dying embers of the display and Matt stood just a little behind them. She saw him watching as Jo leaned into Phil to say something, and she called out as she made her way over to them. She wound her arm around Phil and kissed him possessively.

“Right then, which of you willing volunteers wants to be in my next work of art? Kate’s got some sparklers and I want you all to draw things which I will capture for all time.”

Jamie and Ben both had lighters, and they waited for the crowd to disperse before they lit the sparklers against the backdrop of a dying bonfire and plumes of coloured smoke from where the fireworks had been. Kate was already leaping about with hers and Jo stood nervously making small circles when Jamie handed a sparkler to Matt.

“Hey mate, check it out! Look at you standing there all quiet in your murder gloves.”

“I was just thinking that, too!” laughed Ben as he handed Phil a sparkler. Matt gave them a small smile, always so self contained, and stood still in his smart woolen coat and brown leather gloves and held the sparkler at arm’s length.

They ran around the field like children and Louise tried to capture it all; bright slashes of light, fizzing circles and rollercoaster loops against the darkness. Jo carefully drew a flower and Louise tried not to think of last year’s failed entry as she held her finger against the shutter to capture it. Phil drew a heart for her, and Kate wrote all the swear words she could think of before the sparklers ran out. Louise looked back at the small screen on her camera and smiled at Phil as he walked towards her.

“Got anything good?” he stood behind her and wound his arms around her waist, breathing into her hair.

“Think so. Maybe.”

A silence fell amongst the group again; they weren’t accustomed to being together and without an activity to keep them together they ran out of things to talk about.

“So, time to head off?” asked Louise as she folded the tripod into her bag and Phil took it on his shoulders.

“We were thinking pub, actually. You guys go, the last bus isn’t for ages yet.” Louise saw that Kate was already standing with Ben and Jamie, who were confirming the bus times on their phone, so it appeared she’d made her decision.

“I wouldn’t mind getting a lift if you’re going?”

“I’m going your way, Jo. I can drop you.” Matt once again gave his small smile and offered her his arm.

“Well, I came with Louise and Phil, I don’t know...” Jo seemed reluctant to go with him, and Louise thought of her whispering to Phil during the firework display.

“No, that’s fine. Makes more sense anyway, it’s on Matt’s way so we can all go straight home.” She knew it was rude to make it sound like giving her a lift was an inconvenience, but she didn’t want her in the car again.

“Right then, Lou. We’re off to get battered, see you sensible grown ups later.”

“Bye Kate. Have fun.” Louise looked pointedly at Kate’s hand in the jacket of Ben’s coat and he pretended not to notice as Kate raised an eyebrow back at her.

They walked back to their cars quietly. Thankfully Matt had remembered where they had parked, Louise had been too preoccupied with her plans for the evening when they got there. From the impression she got tonight, Matt never did anything without control or consideration and his immaculate black car beeped as he opened the doors. She was still trying to demist the windscreen as she saw Jo look nervously back at he from the passenger window and his car bumped across the field and joined the queue of cars leaving.

“Bit quiet your mate Matt, isn’t he?” she asked while she wiped at the windscreen with her scarf.

“A bit. Good bloke though, been with us for six months contracting and he hasn’t got renewed so not sure what’s happening now. Took it really well, to be honest. I’d have wanted to hit someone if I were him, but he’s always cool. I’ll miss him. Looks like I’ll be stuck doing overtime again, as well, unless we can convince them that he should stay.”

“Overtime makes it sound like they pay you for it.” It was a familiar fight, and Louise decided it was better to change the subject.

“That Jo girl is pretty quiet too, maybe they’ll get on.” She watched his face while she mentioned Jo’s name but she didn’t react.

“And speaking of getting on,” said Phil as she started the car, “What was Kate doing with Ben? I didn’t know there was anything going on there.”

“As far as I know, they haven’t seen each other since we had that barbeque, but they all go out to the same places so I don’t know.” Louise shoved through the gears and thought about how she should do better to keep up with her friend. It was difficult, though, with work and the photography and of course she had Phil. Kate being single put a distance between them, and they didn’t seem to care about the same things any more. Louise missed her sometimes, but thought it would change back again when Kate settled down, so maybe her going off with Ben was a good thing.

It was another week before Louise had a chance to load her photographs onto the computer to look at them. She and Phil were meant to go to the cinema but he’d made plans to watch the football at the pub and Louise didn’t think it was worth reminding him of his earlier promise. While the files were transferring, the phone rang.

“Hello. What are you doing inside on a lovely autumn day?” Kate.

“Hiya. I was just going through my photos from last weekend. And speaking of last weekend –“

Kate laughed.

“Oh, no photos of that, I promise you. Good fun, though. Did you know Jamie and Ben’s house has exactly the same layout as yours? Made it less traumatic when I woke up with a hangover in the morning.”

“So?”

“So, what?”

“So, are you going out with Ben now?” Louise thought she sounded like a gossiping schoolgirl and it irritated her, and made her miss the old days when it had been her and Kate against the world.

“No, no. Nothing like that. It was just a bit of fun. I mean, he’s nice and everything but I don’t think he’s looking for anything serious. Said he might teach me to surf, though. That would be cool.”

Louise didn’t know what to say, she didn’t understand Kate’s attitude to men, and she was impatient for her to grow up a bit so they could be proper friends again. She changed the subject.

“Did Jo enjoy herself? She seemed a bit quiet...”

“Well, it’s funny you mention Jo. I was ringing just to ask if you’ve heard from her. She’s not been at work all week, and we were all talking about going to that film this weekend, so I thought maybe she’d texted you or something?”

“Me? No, I didn’t give her our number, I never thought.” Jo had asked for the number, but Louise had hesitated, thinking of her whispering earlier in the evening to Phil.

“Maybe she got a cold or something after last weekend. Are you still thinking of going to the film? There’s a showing in about an hour I think.” Louise didn’t want to think about Jo any more, she was getting in the way of everything.

“Sure, see you down there. Look forward to seeing your photos, too. I like to think I might be in a work of art.”

Louise moved steadily through the images she’d taken. Not all of them had turned out well, but some had really captured the evening and she started filing some away as potential entries for the competition. There were a couple on the bumper cars, Phil looking so handsome as he laughed – that smile – and then one of the moment Matt had smashed into Ben and Jamie. Because she’d been trying to capture the lights, most of the photos were blurred but in this one she must have been surprised and forgotten to hold down the shutter. Matt’s face looked pale with fury, his eyes red with the flash and Jamie’s mouth a perfect O as he fell towards the ground. She thought she could call it Boys.

The photos of the fireworks were better than she expected, and she filed several for consideration. The colours came out bright and clear, and the camera had captured the trails of smoke along with the fireworks themselves; certainly more dramatic than flowers thought Louise. Then there was the series of photos of the crowd. There was one she loved of a small boy on his Dad’s shoulders, both weaaring matching expressions of contentment. She thought it was beautiful, but could already hear her tutor sneering that it was obvious and sentimental. At the end of these was the photo of her friends when she’d gone back to find them. Kate and Ben were not just holding hands, but kissing while Jamie pretended not to notice – how had she missed that before? She saw Phil with Jo and remembered why she hadn’t been watching Kate. She zoomed in. Jo looked nervous, and Phil looked to be reassuring her; perhaps it wasn’t what she had thought, after all. As she zoomed back out, Matt came into shot and she moved away from the screen in surprise. Again, his pale face stood out and there was that same look of fury she had seen on the bumper cars. His hands, encased in his sleek gloves, were curled into leather fists.

She moved quickly onto the pictures from when they played with sparklers. The people were blurred against the light, but it still captured the feeling of the night. Ben and Jamie having a mock Jedi battle like children, Kate’s obscenties a spiky antidote to the child’s game. She printed the picture of Phil with the heart, it would look nice on her desk at work. Jo’s flower had come out better than expected, maybe that could be one for the competition. The problem was that everyone had been moving around while she drew it, and Matt’s blurred features loomed as he appeared to be in several places surrounding Jo. There was a sharpness to his expression despite the blur. She moved on, and saw another photo. In this one, Jo’s flower was fading and still Matt appeared to surround her, his hands angry fists as he drew a slash of light which blazed against the blur of her bare throat.

Louise moved away from the computer, thinking about what Kate had said about Jo going missing. She couldn’t stop staring at the screen, but in her mind’s eye she could see the terror in Jo’s eyes as Matt had driven away. She picked up the phone. These photos were dramatic, but they were not the exhibit she had been hoping to produce.

Get away from him, you bitch

Boys don’t know, when that push becomes shove

How to deal with the vagaries of the ending of love

Girls consult the canon, John Cusack DVDs

To find some meaning and hope to appease

Black despair lodged in a sucker-punched heart

And blocks to rebuild a life torn apart.

The average boy sits with nowt but Con Air

And in the war of the sexes it hardly seems fair

While girls perform triage with Sex and the City

Boys have Rambo and a surfeit of self pity.

Take heart, dear chaps, your healing can find traction

In movies that are filled with cars guns and action

Let me show you the hope and solace I see

In your movies, which aren’t meant to mean much to me.



To start - yippee-kie-ay motherfucker

That girl she played you for an absolute sucker

She twists salted blades where you’re already raw

She’s a predator, the heat of your heart now a flaw

Your anger, your need to call back and berate her

Will make you Agent Dillon, not the Terminator.

Be the good guy, remember you’re John Connor

You have a fight on your hands, but don’t lose your honour

(You may think this inactive silence a fail

Don’t forget how hot he is played by Christian Bale

When the battle’s done and she’s somewhere in the distance

You’ll be the man, and glad of my insistence.)

Think like Rocky and train to get back in the ring

Because although right now you’re hurt and everything

And you think that you’ll never find another love that’s equal

Let me remind you – there’s always a sequel.

Untitled

They gave him the call out because it was a joke; broken windows at the university digs on Hallowe’en. He knew they sent him because it was going to turn out to be a waste of time - nothing more than a creation of paperwork - and he was the new boy. He wonders if they would have sent anyone at all that night if he hadn’t been there, it was coming to the end of the shift and they could have handed it over to uniform in the morning. They could have sent a couple of stern-faced coppers to ask some cursory questions and lecture the students on wasting police time, but they didn’t. It was something that the press made a lot of later, when it all came out. The inexperienced DC – ink on his detective exams still wet to hear them tell it – missing the signs. The PR department did what they could to improve his image, but the dismissal didn’t matter to him – he didn’t want the press looking any closer. Steven Miller could write a book on all the aspects of both his own experience and the case that the press missed but he kept his silence, made his simple statement in court without emotion and waits for the day when they move him on from this place. His time in court complete, he looks across at the boxes piled in the corner of his flat, still unpacked after all this time, and now unlikely to ever be.


* * * *

“Here you go, Miller, here’s one for you. Someone’s broken some windows over at the university – probably just a bunch of students mucking about, but you’d better go, the girl sounded a bit scared on the phone.”

DC Miller wrote down the details before picking up his radio and his car keys.

“Take a uniform with you in case you need any help nicking the ghosts.”

“OK boss,” he said mildly before deciding to risk a joke, “If you could get the ducking stool ready in case I have to interrogate any witches, that would be great.” He left to the sound of laughter and the DI muttering “cheeky sod” and knew it had been the right thing to do. Fitting in here was all about getting deference and defiance in the right balance. He went downstairs to ask the desk sergeant who was free to help him on the call out.

“Bloody Hallowe’en, all the nutters come out. Most of them are out closing down drunken parties, and most of the bloody lads have got dragged nto a fight outside The Crown.

“Julie, fancy some ghost busting down the university tonight with DC Handsome here?”

PC Julie Galloway called out that she’d meet him in the car and he went outside to wait for her. He didn’t like Julie; didn’t know her either, but that didn’t stop the feeling of unease he had around her. It wasn’t just that she was so pretty, it was that he couldn’t work out what she was doing there. From what he knew, she’d been at the station three years as a PC and shown no ambition to progress. He knew that a beautiful and ruthlessly ambitious female detective was probably a cliche best left in fiction, but a beautiful one who was happy to blend in seemed worse. When she got in the car he could smell her perfume and the lipgloss she wore looked freshly applied. He told her what he knew about the incident while they drove out to the university campus.

“So, it’s probably just a prank but the girl on the phone was a bit freaked out apparently. They were having some sort of movie night, watching old horror films so I think we’re looking at teenage stupidity combined with hysteria but the boss wanted it checked out just in case.”

“I went to that University you know,” said Julie, “I slept in the same Halls. There were always stories about ghosts and stuff, but it was all a load of bollocks. Lads would tell ghost stories to get the girls to move in closer to them.” She spoke about the lads and the girls as if she hadn’t been one of them, Steven thought, but maybe it was just a way of keeping things at a distance. Steven never said much about his life outside work either, not that there was much to tell these days. He liked it that way.

“Was there ever much trouble up here when you were a student?” he asked as they pulled into the long drive which would take them to the student halls.

“Not really. Lots of drinking, a few people on drugs, no more than any other university. I think there might have been some rumours about some guy in the Maths department losing it, but it was probably just another one of those stories the lads told.”

“Any big place, there’s always gossip and rumour,” Steven said mildly. He was hoping to find out what was being said about him; being the new guy from a different patch always brought with it some speculation.

“Tell me about it. The station is the worst place in the world for gossip – you’ll find out soon enough. If you’re not married they’ll have you sleeping with everyone in the station. Are you, by the way? Married?”

“Nope, not married,” he said as he pulled up in front of the halls. “Right, room 4c, let’s try to find out what’s what.”

Julie trailed behind him as he walked through the entrance, and after her brief animation in the car, seemed disinterested by her current surroundings.

“Excuse me, I think you might be looking for me. I’m Joanne – Joanne Downham. I called you.”

“I’m DC Miller, Ms Downham, and this is PC Galloway. Can you take us to the room where the incident took place?”

“Well, I feel a bit silly now. It’s probably nothing, I probably just scared myself – Hallowe’en you know. I waited here to apologise, really. I hope I haven’t wasted your time.”

Galloway looked around at the cheap decorations around the halls and gave her a look of scorn. This was why he didn’t like her, he thought. She had no interest in people, and no patience. Perhaps that’s what kept her as a PC, but it didn’t really explain why she joined the force in the first place.

“That’s OK Ms Galloway –“

“Oh, Joanne – or Jo – is fine.”

“OK Jo, well there really is nothing to apologise for. You can’t be too careful, and this is exactly what we’re here for. Perhaps there’s a place where we can go for a chat first, so you can explain what happened?”

She lead them towards an office along the corridor, and Steven saw her force a weak smile as she turned back to them.

“Tea, coffee?” she offered with a weak smile, and it was clear that behind her good manners, there was real fear in her eyes. Whatever had happened here, it wasn’t nothing to her.

“Tea would be lovely thanks – Milk, no sugar.”

“Actually PC Galloway, perhaps you could make us all some tea while I talk to Jo here and find out more about what’s happened. Make it sweet tea, I know it’s a cliche but it’s always good for a shock.”

He saw Jo move to protest, and then instead sank into an uncomfortable-looking armchair in a corner of the office and pull a tattered blanket that had been resting on the top of it around her.

“Well, there was a fright night thing on in the common room – you know, horror films, spooky cocktails, all that stuff. I don’t know why I went really, I hate those kind of films but it’s difficult sometimes and when I was invited I didn’t really know how to say no.”

“Do you often get invited to student events?”

“Oh, I am a student. A mature one obviously, I’ve got nearly ten years on most of the kids here. I’ve got the keys to this office because I do some admin work for a bit of extra money, but I live in halls like the rest of them. I know, must be mad!” The line sounded rehearsed, like she was trying to craft it into a joke before anyone else did. Steven didn’t interupt, but took his tea from Julie and nodded for her to take a seat and looked at Jo until she started talking again.

“So anyway, yes, I live here and it’s not always easy being so much older than everyone else around here, and so when I was invited to this fright night thing, I thought I should go. I can’t believe I got so wound up by it – the kids in there were laughing most of the time, but it really freaked me out. We were watching Carrie, and they’s gone a bit quieter during that, I don’t think so many of them had seen it. It wasn’t the – what do they call it? Torture porn? – it wasn’t what they were used to. Anyway, then there was this crash from the kitchen, and of course we all jumped out of our skin. I turned all the lights on and went to call you. I thought it was vandalism or someone trying to break in or something but –“

She went silent, and looked as if she was weighing her words. Steven sat back to let her think, but Julie jumped in, irritated.

“But?”

“Well, the kids said that there was nothing there. I mean, broken glass all over the place but there was nothing there that could have broken it – no brick or anything. That’s when I came down to reception to wait for you, but then I started thinking it was probably a joke. I didn’t see it, and I think perhaps the films and the dark and everything...”

She shrugged, her long dark hair fell across her face and made her look even more apologetic.

“Are you OK to come with us while we go and take a look?” Julie was already on her feet and at the door of the office, but Steven waited until she’d taken the blanket from her shoulders, shivered, and raised herself with a sigh. Then he smiled and walked with her down the corridor to the common room.

Quiet

The routine changed three months ago. It’s ten years since I was brought to this house, years strung together in regular loops of habit like the paper chain I once tore from a Christmas tree so I could run with colours streaming behind me. That was a good day (and then it was a bad one, sat in the cold garden for hours while the boy snuck out with strips of turkey from his dinner). The days are stuck together and repeated in a comforting cycle. It makes me think of what the woman says sometimes; “a lick and a promise.” I don’t know what it means, but I remember the children stringing together those colourful paper chains, and I think that’s what my time is made of. The children don’t come any more. One day there was shouting in the garden and tears in the kitchen. They never came again, and I still miss playing with them. It takes a child to really appreciate a dog. Even on that day the routine remained unbroken. The early morning walk to get the paper, reaching the shop just as the metal shutters creaked open, the woman there always having a biscuit to spare. The longer walk to the allotment after lunch and the chance to sniff out adventure, although in recent times I stayed closer to the shed. Dinner under the kitchen table while they sat above me talking in flat tones about their day, making plans for the next. An evening sat by their feet while they watched the televsion, and the final walk round the block to close out the day. I slept each night in a nest of blankets in the corner.


It’s better than the life I started with - a starved and cowering beginning. My first owners used their feet like angry fists, and I came to fear the whisper and crack of a leather strap being pulled from their clothes. The whole house was scented with violence. One day people came with badges and vans and they were were taken away. Then came the noise of the shelter. They fed me there, and never hurt me, but still I waited for more boots and belts. I was safe but caged, and the noise stilled me. There was a concentration of pain there, however kind and happy the people were. The smell of uncertainty, desperation, anger, fear; I inhaled it all. Others yelped and danced, people came and took them and I never saw them again. I didn’t know what I know now, I thought all homes were like the one I’d been taken from, and I hid in corners when the people came. Then the woman of my new home came with the other woman who used to visit with the children. From where I sat in the shadows, I could hear them speaking.

“I think this is a good idea, Mum. Dad just needs something to do. Chris managed to find him an allotment near your house, and if he has a dog to walk he’ll have to get out of his chair again. He can’t just let this give him an excuse to sit and fester like a bitter old man. He’s 55 for gods’ sake, not 95.”

“I don’t know love, it seems quite soon after everything. I shouldn’t have said anything, he’s not that bad really. We muddle along, I just have to get used to him being under my feet.”

“But Mum, you’ve got to have a life too, you can’t let him drag you down. I know the redundancy was a shock, and the heart attack too, but life goes on. He got a good settlement, you don’t have to worry about money, you should both be enjoying yourselves.”

“We’ll see. Alright then, where do we start with these dogs?”

“I got some information from the website about each one. The terrier looks sweet, I think.”

“Mmmm, probably a bit excitable for your father. I think a quieter dog would suit him. How about this one, the spaniel. Quiet, it says. Placid temprament. I think that would suit him.”

“Quiet would suit him down to the ground, it’s his favourite word. The way he would thunder it at me for the smallest noise when I was a kid.”

“Now you know your Dad worked hard, and he got those headaches...”

“OK Mum. I think he’s just a miserable bugger personally but I don’t want to fight with you. You should call the dog Quiet! Then he can shout it out in the park, remember the old days and feel like he’s still in charge of something.” The women laughed as they walked closer to the cage. Later that week the woman came back, put me in her car and took me to my new home.

That first day there was a fight, the woman keeping her voice soft as the man shouted louder and louder and I could smell the familiar tension. I prepared myself to be beaten but the night ended with my first walk round the block. He walked slower then, and that first night he had to stop twice to rest. I don’t know if it was the walking or the talking that wore him out. I didn’t understand much of what he said, but I don’t think he was talking to me. He was just talking to have someone listen. I stayed quiet and kept by his side. Over the years, I came to hear about every greivance and although the details passed me by, I could feel his anger crackle as he walked with me. Seasons changed but his muttered fury was a constant. He wasn’t kind like the woman, who would feed me fresh strips of steak sometimes and warm my blankets in the winter, but he never was never unkind. I walked by his side year after year and kept to the corners.

You would think from all these years of watching I would have learned a lot about my owners. The truth is all I really have are baffling details – washing on a Tuesday, fish supper on Friday, Wednesdays and Saturdays the man visited the allotment only briefly before coming home and the woman worked in a shop, came home smelling like fresh bread. There seemed no sense in it, but you never can find sense if you ask why. Like me, perhaps they liked the comfort of the routine. Since the woman with the children stopped coming, you can sniff out the sadness. It stretches into each room of the house and lingers around the woman. There is a sigh in her step but she says nothing. She used to come along on the walks on nice days, and I liked it when she came. She would stop to smell lavender or watch a butterfly in the summer and I would have the chance to enjoy the spot she’d chosen. The man walks ahead, after those first nights he never stopped. All I’ve learned about him is that he is angry, and that he makes a lot of noise talking about how he needs his quiet. I don’t think he means me – It is my name and I do belong to him so I think I am his quiet in a way, but I don’t think he needs me. For the most part, he doesn’t seem to notice me at all; I can imagine he would still walk around the block each night even if I wasn’t there.

Three months ago the woman started going to a doctor; the man muttered a lot about shrinks and quacks but I don’t know what little ducks had to do with it. After a time, those Monday appointments became part of the routine, and then routine started to change.

“I think I’ll take the dog this morning, I fancy a walk down to that new sewing shop so I can pick up your paper on the way.”

The man was briefly silent, and the woman took this chance to clip a lead to my collar and walk out the door. I never needed a lead with the man, because he never gave me any choice but to follow, but she seemed to know I might need some guidance today. It was nice to be on this walk with her. The woman talked so long at the newsagents that I got two biscuits. I didn’t miss the creak of the shutters but the man was angry that he didn’t get his paper until later. Walking to the allotment, the man seemed angrier than normal, but I kept pace with him and took a nap by the cabbages while he attacked the earth with a measure of spite it had done nothing to deserve. I eyed the spade and kept my distance. In the evening, I ate my dinner under the kitchen table while they talked about their day and made plans for the next. Then came the hours by the television, and although the man kepting clicking to change the picture and the woman stared ahead unseeing, but it felt familiar enough. Over time, the walk around the block became longer than before and the man sipped from a metal flask. By the end of the second week the walk had stretched to an hour, walking in circles in the dark. A couple of times the man stumbled and I caught the sour heat of his breath as his face came closer to mine. He would stand up straight after each fall and slur about uneven pavements. I walked by his side, watching for these cracks, but I never saw them.

He stopped going to the allotment, and that changed things even more. I never knew who would be taking me on my morning walk, and during the day I would find a spot in the garden to provide some neutral ground. The man in his chair, the woman working in the kitchen; neither place seemed the right choice although if the woman made a stew the smell would bring me to her. After he hadn’t been to the allotment for some time despite her encouragement and his assurances, the woman went out even though it wasn’t a Wednesday or a Saturday. The night walks continued in their shambling fashion, but all the change unsettled me. My dinner continued to be placed under the kitchen table each night and I ate to the familiar sound of their voices, but I could sense a sourness that could only mean a fight. I started to keep a watchful eye out for the flash of a buckle and stayed far from their feet. Then the night came when there was no dinner, and I went to look for the woman. I found her standing over the man in his chair and I knew this was the start of a fight.

“I’m sorry Michael, but after forty years of your bullying I’ve had enough. I haven’t seen my daughter for a year because of that stupid fight about her going back to work after having the kids. I’m missing my grandchildren growing up, I’m scared to say anything in case I’m the next person to be shut out –“

“Now Victoria, you know very well why she shouldn’t go back to work. It’s in all the papers how the kids grow up to be thugs. I was right about that. If you’d listen –“

“All I do is listen, Michael.” She spoke so softly I had to move closer into the room to hear, and was overcome with memories of a little girl tenderly brushing my coat, the boy who threw a ball in the garden. All those times when the woman with the children had come to the house, she was wrapped in that happy aroma and I thought that meant they were here again. I barked; loud and clear for the first time since I whimpered out of my first home and started for the garden to find them.

“Now look what you’ve done, you’ve wound up the bloody dog with all your arguing. Quiet!” he roared.

“That bloody dog hasn’t made a noise since we brought him home. He’s like me, scared to be anything other than quiet and still in case it upsets you. Well I’ve had it. I’m leaving you Michael. I need some peace and quiet.”

I turned at my name. I never knew if they meant me or not, the man talked about needing quiet but when I barked in happiness he looked at me as if it was a betrayal. I had to wait to be invited, see who needed their quiet the most. The woman had a suitcase by her side and the lead in her hand, and when I saw that I knew. Once again she put me in her car and drove me to another new home. I barked happily as I ran towards the boy in the garden.

“Mum,” he yelled to the woman who used to visit, “Is he my Quiet now?”

She laughed as she shouted back, “Chance would be a thing, but yes love, he’s yours now.”

In this new home there is shouting and noise, and there isn’t much of a routine; but I never pick up the scent of violence and I feel safe enough to bark if I want to. At night I sleep at the foot of the boy’s bed and dream of the man walking round the block without me, still talking angrily about how he needs his quiet. I don’t know if he was ever talking about me.

The Way of Light on Water

It started the moment that they were alone in their room, but Catherine felt it coming earlier at the check-in desk when he smiled politely at the receptionist telling them about the hotel’s history. They’d gone straight to the bar, neat suitcases pulled behind them, to meet the bride and groom. For all his charm over coffee she knew that his mind was whirring, seeking out the best ways to puncture the magic woven into the weekend.

“Ghosts,” he said, “Probably just a way for them to justify the ridiculous prices they charge for being a hotel in the middle of nowhere. Here’s your bill Mr Hardy, there’s the three pounds for that bitter coffee you had when you arrived and you’ll see here the 50% surcharge for the haunting you received when we rattled a tin tray outside your door at four in the morning.”

“Mark, don’t start. I know this isn’t your thing, but this week isn’t about you. It’s about my baby brother and his future wife. They love all this stuff, and the place is beautiful. I don’t believe in ghosts any more than you do, but that’s no reason –“

“No reason is right.” As he carefully hangs his shirts in the old oak wardrobe and she has a sudden petulant desire to rush over and crumple them on the floor. Instead she lazily throws her own clothes onto a shelf and sits down to read the itinerary for the weekend. There is early morning yoga, craft sessions making decorations, music and writing workshops and a night time walk through the haunted forest to get through before the wedding by the lake. She holds on to the information, knowing that as soon as he sees it he will have something clever to say about it all. She loves his cleverness, from the day they met their relationship had crackled with challenge and debate, but at moments like this the belligerence of his logic was exhausting. She loves him, but she equally loves her brother who ambles gently through the world, trusting in magic and providence.

“I’m going for a run, I’ll be an hour or so.” Mark is in training for the marathon. He’s raising money for medical research and she’s proud of him for it, admires his adherence to the training. Catherine smiles as he stretches his lithe long legs in preparation for his run and plugs his iPod into his ears.

“I think I’ll just stay here and read for a bit, so we can sort out about dinner when you get in.” She knows Mark can’t hear her, knows the volume of his music is deliberately set to block out conversation, and so she sits back in the armchair, still clutching the wedding plans. Catherine reaches round to pull her long hair into a clip and picks up her book from the night table beside her. Cracking the spine but not looking at the pages, she thinks about her brother, Nick.

Nick is younger than her, enough distance between them for polite suburban circles to murmur about accidents, but her parents always laughed it off and said if that was the case, he was a happy accident. Catherine always thought that was a perfect description of her laid back brother. He bounced through school, neither popular nor unpopular, never distinguishing himself but never falling behind either. Catherine was at university by the time he started high school, and she would return home to see him still buoyant with smiles at a time when she herself had been plagued by bullies and weekend homework. She doesn’t remember feeling any bitterness, and remains glad he has kept his boundless energy and interest in the world.

Their lives took them in different directions; Catherine built a career, met Mark and married him ina tasteful ceremony on a beach in Costa Rica, a place where their paths forked. One of her favourite photos from the wedding is of Nick tugging at the collar of his suit, his thick dark hair falling in his eyes as he looked past the wedding party to the surf breaking on the beach. After the wedding, he left his suit with their parents and took off into the world. It was nearly three years before he returned, but through all that time he regularly sent Catherine postcards, filled with cramped writing detailing his latest revelation or inspiration. People never stopped marvelling that Catherine and Nick were brother and sister. Catherine would stand there, tailored clothes and sleek blonde hair pulled back, while they looked across at her brother with his faded jeans and riot of dark curls perpetually falling in his eyes and laugh. No one ever said anything unkind, but she felt like the butt of that joke. She let people laugh because she knew that underneath it all, he was still the little boy begging for more stories before bedtime to allay his fear of the dark, and she was still the one that wove the magic that protected him from monsters.

They went for dinner that night in a nearby country pub that Mark had found whilst out on his run. One of the things she always loved about him was his ability to charm anyone he met – his was not the easy grace of her brother, but he had an old fashioned air of good manners that made everyone warm to him. So it was in the pub, and before they’d finished their after-dinner coffees Mark had engaged the locals in conversation about the ghosts at the hotel.

“My Mum told me it was a young girl, worked as a servant back when it was a big country house, got seduced by Lord whatever-his-name-was and he knocked her up. She got kicked out in the middle of winter, gave birth in the woods and froze to death. She’s supposed to haunt the back stairs up to what was the Lord’s bedroom, trying to make him recognise his son.”

“No no, that’s not it. I heard it was two brothers both in love with the same woman who poisoned them both so she could run off with the butler –“

“No no, the butler was her brother and they killed him –“

“My guess,” said Mark as he paid the bill, “was that some poor unsuspecting tourist was driven mad by tales of love below stairs and died trying to prove them wrong.”

“That’s good,” the landlord said, “you could have some kind of mysterious ending to make you wonder if he was pushed.”

They left the pub laughing, and Catherine forgot her earlier irritation at Mark. She loved him best when she saw him in company; from a distance his expensive shirts and traditional short back and sides would make him seem - in Nick’s words - “too tucked in.” But his quick wit and unfailing good manners built a bridge and he belonged wherever he was. When they were close to the hotel and walking past the lake, she turned and kissed him. They were still kissing when they heard Nick somewhere in the darkness telling Susie all about a young man plucking the moon from the sky for his lover, only to lose his grasp and have it shatter as it hit the bed of the lake and then drown trying to collect the pieces.

“That brother of yours could do with a science lesson on what happens to light when it hits the water I think.” Catherine smiled, but dropped her hand from his as she walked back to the room.

Later, when she closed her eyes she saw the moonlight shimmering on the lake and drifted easily into sleep. She awoke hours later to the dark and unfamiliar room and sat up with a jolt. A chill pervaded the room and she pulled the blankets up to her chin. Mark didn’t stir as she sat, staring into the darkness. She felt a fear she couldn’t name, like a forgotten nightmare. She thought of Nick and all the nights when as a child he would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. The monsters would recede when he woke, but the terror would cling to him like his sweaty pyjamas and Catherine would be well into a story before he stopped shaking. She sat and shivered until eventually she got out of bed and crept over to the cupboard to find an extra blanket. The door opened with a whisper and she turned abruptly. From the moonlight seeping through a gap in the curtains she could see Mark sleeping and she laughed to herself. She thought of yesterday’s joke about hotel staff manufacturing ghosts with tin trays and knew what he would say about her jumping at shadows, but as she slowly closed the cupboard there it was again, the whisper.

“- has to go. Someone has to go.”

She returned to bed but now the blankets felt hot against her skin and eventually she gave up on sleep and sat in the armchair as the sun rose. When Mark awoke, she told him she was up early to attend the yoga class and handed him a coffee as she left.

Despite the early hour, there were plenty of people at the class.

“Morning Mum,” she smiled. Her Mum looked nervous, like many in the wedding party she’d come out of a sense of obligation to the bride and groom and she seemed self conscious in her new jogging bottoms.

“Morning love. I can’t say I’m sure about all this, but Susie and your brother swear by it, keep trying to get me to go with them to their class and telling me it will be good for my back. I’m not sure how tying myself in knots is supposed to help, but I thought since it was your brother’s wedding...”

He was always “your brother” when her mother talked to Catherine about Nick. She was never sure what that meant – if anything - or when she first noticed it.

“Don’t worry Mum, they won’t make you tie yourself in knots. You’ll like it.”

As the class progressed, Catherine relaxed and the tension of the night before left her. When she closed her eyes the image of the moonlight on the lake returned to her, and she smiled as she thought about her brother’s stories. Then it happened again, the whisper.

“Someone has to go. Someone –“ Catherine was face forward on the yoga mat and felt her neck click with tension as she looked around. She couldn’t make out where it had come from, or who had said it, and then the yoga teacher gently turned her head to the floor again.

“Face down, relax.” She said as she walked past and Catherine only felt the heat of tension rise in the cords of her neck and across her shoulders.

Mark was out running when she returned to the room, and she dressed quickly and went down to breakfast. She wasn’t hungry, but she wanted the noise and clatter of the dining room to surround her, insulate her against the whispering silence. When she got there, Susie was talking earnestly to her Mum about signing her up for yoga classes when they returned from their honeymoon and Nick was wolfing down a cooked breakfast. Catherine poured herself a coffee and sat beside him.

“Good class. You alright? Good time last night?” Catherine held her mug close to her chest and listened to her brother talk about the previous night, how he and Susie had smuggled food from the dining room to make a picnic and sat on a blanket by the lake.

“Weren’t you cold?” she asked.

“Nah. My wise old big sister always told me stories keep you safe and warm, we were fine. Plus it was really hot last night, didn’t you think?”

“Less of the old, Mister.” She smiled and laughed to cover her confusion. She remembered now the heat of the evening as she and Mark had walked back from the pub and wondered how she could have felt the chill undertones of the night at all.

Catherine threw herself into the day’s activities and over the course of the day, convinced herself that the night before had been nothing but a bad dream. She was stressed and tired from work, she thought - a bit run down, no wonder she felt the cold last night. The writing workshop had been all about the local legends, and Mark used it to embellish his tale of the doomed tourist. Even Nick and Susie, who she knew watched TV shows like Most Haunted with the terror of the most genuine believers, laughed easily at the joke. Catherine felt like the only person to see the spite in it, and she left him in the bar with her Dad and Susie’s brother while she changed for dinner.

The voice returned in the shower, and even the blast of her hairdryer couldn’t erase the goosebumps raised on her clammy skin. She could hear the sound of the band rehearsing downstairs filter through the window and she opened it wide to let the music fill the room. As soon as he entered, Mark closed the window and walked into the bathroom while she shakily put on her make up. The sound of the water hitting the tiles in the shower wasn’t enough - she knew it wouldn’t be - and she opened the window again.

There was a bonfire at the barbeque with enough heat and crackle to combat the frigid sigh that had been haunting her, and Catherine relaxed again. Mark told funny stories and people she’d never even met before congratulated her on what a handsome and charming husband she had. Later on in the night, she went to retrieve a cardigan and met Mark heading across the garden on her way back.

“They’re starting on their stories again, love. Ghosts and doomed lovers and all that crap. Fancy nipping back to that pub we went to last night for a drink?”

“But it’s Nick’s wedding. I told you, this is about him and Susie and if they want to sit around a fire telling ghost stories then that’s what we’ll do. He saved for a year to make it to our wedding, and the least you can do is –“

“The least I could do would be nothing, Cath. I think what you mean is that you want me to sit and smile and listen to all their crap. Just because it’s their wedding doesn’t mean I’ve checked my brain at the door, you know.”

“But we should be there for Nick, someone should go –“

There it was again, the cold passing through her this time in a rush to be gone. She turned at looked at him as he stood there – for all his sophistication, he was nothing more than a sulky teenager. Looking him in the eye she said,

“Someone has to go.”

She turned towards the party and shrugged off her cardigan as she walked – it really was a warm summer night – and smiled into the silence as she looked at the moonlight hitting the lake, imagining the stories she could share.

The Wall

Behind mind-made, cobwebbed bricks I cower

From an element beyond my power.

Through strip-lit office gossip I seethe –

Wire pulled shoulders make it so hard to breathe.

Does it help to talk? Spaces in between

Words fall through cracks, forgotten or unseen.

The whisper of a stopped secret unsaid;

Smiles smother screams that echo in your head.

Pour a cork-popped liberal glass; ease sorrow

Then, skull skin to porcelain tomorrow

That ruby release dances on eyes

Tired of tears. Grape and grain aren’t your allies.

Magazines say sport helps – they shriek upbeat

Advice, as if being quick on your feet

And running to stand still causes clouds to break.

It won’t. Your bones will match your heart and ache.

So, I watch movies where morals glisten

Like muscles; sweating seen evil. Listen:

In hard times we need heroes to hold us

And Mark Wahlberg has very broad shoulders.