‘Sometimes I wish I was someone else.’
Bob, having finally got Edna to talk about herself, hesitated then asked: ‘Do you feel…?’
‘Unwanted?’
They were in a pub in Peckham, both sipping warm beer, the nineteen-fifties three days from ending.
‘The next decade’s going to be better,’ Bob said. ‘Attitudes are going to change.’
Continue readingFor three years, the paintings had been stacking up against the walls of Rhys’s studio. Mostly landscapes: the Preseli Hills under lowering skies, the Teifi estuary at low tide, the Pembrokeshire cliffs captured in thick, honest brushstrokes. Everyone agreed they were beautiful. The bank statements confirmed they were unsellable.
The Bwthn Colony had eight members left. There had been twenty, once.
She walked in on a Tuesday in March, her bright American accent cutting through the warm, sharp smell of linseed oil.
Continue readingMrs Jane Hastings, aged fifty-three, felt nothing but childish envy for Ms. Julia Parkhurst. Ms. Parkhurst’s cardinal sin was being pretty. Very pretty actually. She was (to hell with delicacy) a bosomy, twenty-three-year-old, who’s bright smile and cheerful disposition made the acne encrusted boys of Roverbank Comprehensive grunt with longing.
Still professionalism had to be maintained, because today. something alarming had been brought to Hastings’ attention. And when she called Ms. Parkhurst into her office, (resenting how gracefully the young woman sat down) she coughed and said “Julia, we don’t pry into the staff’s personal lives, it’s just when a sex tape is leaked to the public, you may have to resign.”
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Alyria stood, tears pricking the corners of her eyes.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
All the sacrifices she’d made to get to this point, all the favours traded, the coin expended, the hard graft… it was all for nothing. Before her, the ruins of the gateway taunted, its rubble strewn over twenty square metres. With a wordless, throat-ripping howl, she sank to her knees.
Even the breeze through the dusty ravine seemed to mock her, whispering “too late, too late, too late” over and over until it became almost torturous.
Three long Earth years she’d travelled to get here, following rumours and sotto voce conversations in bars she thought she’d never get out of. The laser pistol at her hip had seen more use than she’d hoped – slavers, kidnappers, and perverts had all stared down the barrel, and more than once she’d barely escaped with her life.
And all for this. For nothing.
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“Three ruins at an older ruin.”
At Jane’s gesticulation, Shelley lifted her gaze to the hilltop. The forlorn skeleton of the banqueting hall had once pulsated with bacchanalian pleasures. Then rescanning the high-tide line, “At least we’re more than these empty shells”
“Some of us not much more” Jane batted back acidly.
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The novel, set in an indeterminate ‘past’, concerns love across the social divide. The hero is a wealthy (en)titled gentleman in love with a serving girl from a local tavern. The girl’s mother opposes the match. Chapter three, where the plot thickens, was the point at which the novel had been set aside, mainly for lack of a discernible plot.
Unfortunately, the planets were not fully in alignment for Melinda Thistlethwaite’ s most recent flirtation with the arts. She was confident, however, that she would eventually achieve success, once her talents had coupled with artistic destiny.
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The university park stumbled down to the sea, imitating the crazy lurching of the terraced houses on the same giddy hill. Sam scuffed about the paths round the flower beds, vaguely aware of daffodils in bloom.
He had a sharp, stabbing pain at the side of his stomach that wouldn’t go away. He was utterly miserable. Three years he’d stayed away from the town, but as soon as he’d entered the park – following the route he and Nicola had often walked – the sense of oppression had just welled up from within him. Memories from the past pushed up a bit like bulbs in the soil.
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