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6

I fitted the lock on the bathroom door that evening. It took about twenty minutes. When I was finished I admired my handiwork, trying out the shiny gold-coloured lock a couple of times to make sure it worked, then I went to tell Gemma.

I knocked on her door and, when there was no immediate answer, pushed down on the handle to go in. The door would not open. I pushed a little harder and still it seemed it stuck. A few moments later I heard a little click and Gemma opened the door.

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5

I stood now in the café on the top floor of the big Waterstones in Guildford, waiting for a coffee. It was Sunday. I had been out to buy a lock for the bathroom door when I had remembered there was a book I wanted and may as well get while I was out.

It was not often that I actually got out of the house anywhere, except to the supermarket or Lucy’s school or to give Gemma lifts to places. I was going to buy the lock the day before, but Gemma had gone to town a little while after the bathroom incident and had not returned until after six, and with her out I had not wanted to leave Lucy alone. I thought as well that the town would be too busy on a Saturday, so I waited until today.

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Tracing a separate path between streams and puddles on the undulating concrete she passes in front of me, head down, water bouncing off the shiny gumdrop-green raincoat she wears. It suits her: It suits her scent: not the scent of perfume, or of shampoo, or washing powder, or even a body scent, but something more intangible and unexpected, like icing sugar or sherbet. Airy, aura-like, this scent was so distinctive that it would linger after she had left, like paper leaves fallen from a breeze-blown tree. If she fell, I might catch her, rather than poring over the lines on fallen paper leaves, but, inexplicably too tense, I never touched her, fearing always her delicacy, as if she were made of dust and dreams suspended on a wire skeleton.

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3

“What did you do at school today?” I asked Lucy, trying to drive through the obstacle course of primary school children with a loose grasp of road safety and parents in oversized SUVs with an even looser grasp of road courtesy.

“We did maths in the morning and we learned about cubes and cubic centimetres.”

“Oh, that sounds difficult,” I said, pulling into a gap to let a car with no intention of stopping for me go past, “could you do it alright?”

“Yes, daddy, I got a gold star. See” I glanced quickly at the little sticker on her red jumper.

“Well done, sweetie” I said.

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2

I dropped my keys into the little dish on the shelf by the side of the door, next to the waist-high rubber plant. Then I slipped off my shoes, pushing them with my toes side-by-side next to Gemma’s battered trainers, and Lucy’s shiny pink-and-white light-up ones next to Gemma’s, and then, on the other side of my shoes, my plain fleece slippers, a present from Lucy last Christmas, which I slipped on now.

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I realise I probably spend as much time apologising for not updating my site as I do actually updating it, but in an ideal world, it would be updated far more regularly. However, of late I have been busy, particularly with university work as deadlines loom (less than three weeks to finish a twenty page play of which I have (badly) written two pages, as well as co-write and perform a second play). Also, I have written little that I consider postworthy and so, delving into my back-catalogue, I found this piece I wrote about eighteen months ago. Perhaps I might change some of the phrasing were I to go through it now, but I feel it stands up pretty well and, being the longest piece I’ve ever finished (very nearly a novella), it’s one of my acheivements of writing. Here is the first chapter: (more…)

i think i mentioned it before but my bike got stolen – well they caught the guy who stole it – wouldnt you just know it – he was a chav – yeah – they showed me a picture of him – baseball cap and everything - it was this pixellated CCTV still – from like a cash converters or somewhere – cos the police had sent out the description of my bike to all the second-hand shops – silly bastard – he might have known the police would do that - so when they caught him they came round my house – to take a statement (more…)

It’s a boring Sunday. Rain beats against my windscreen, my bonnet, my roof, like a thousand fingers drumming a monotonous, impatient rhythm against the glass and the metal. The clouds it falls from have cast a twilight over the whole day, but I think now it finally must be dusk, because the streetlights have switched themselves on and are casting an orange glaze over the dark blue tarmac, under the dark blue sky.

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let me tell you about my day - i don’t actually say this but I will tell - it’s nice to have someone to tell this to - i like coming home and there’s someone waiting and i tell him about my day - it’s a monologue of course – i tend to do that with conversations – i have so much to say – i go into minute detail – it’s unnecessary but he listens – patiently – you though i’ll tell you about my yesterday – it was a sunday (more…)

“I think maybe we should take a break, from each other, just for a while,” he said, “then maybe things’ll go back to how they were before.” But they could never go back. Not once he said that, not once that one small seed of doubt was planted. Because even if we did get back together afterwards, after our break, it wouldn’t be the same, it wouldn’t ever be the same, because he had had doubts once, and he might well have them again, always afterwards I would live in fear of that, of the doubts he may have. And we would never be comfortable again, there would always be that tension. Long gone were the days of expectation, of sweet denial and hope that one day we would be properly together after those spring nights of dreaming about each other.

And so I walked away.