A short story about the benefits of growing up and discovering the joys of the elusive elixir: alcohol.

Dumped. Richard was flung from the car as it drove off, such that he barely managed to stand upright on the dusty pavement. His mother’s Mercedes roared off with a regal wave of her dainty hand. The cause of this desertion was another of his mother’s studio displays, another pre-exhibition drinks event no doubt, and yet another successful businessman at her hand. For the moment though, Richard was man of the house. He had just reached the dizzy heights of being a teenager and had been to celebrate this new found status with a trip to the cinema – temptation had got the better of him and far too many sweets had entered the fizzing metropolis that was his mouth. He loved sweets, being particularly partial to the little cola bottles. However at that specific moment in time he was poised outside of the Chelsea home waiting nervously for the door to be answered. Although when no answer came, or perhaps the chill got to his slender legs (for he was a timid boy) he ventured slowly into the tall ceilinged room. The long hall glared sinisterly at him. The crackle of the neglected fire sparkling their hissing tongues at the silhouetted figure. He felt encroached upon by the eerie house, even the hanging portraits rifled neutral stares upon him, malicious in their absence of a smile. He cursed silently at his mother’s impudence, leaving him here at her old friends address; nevertheless it seemed he would have to venture on alone. Advancing after this fleeting encounter with the hall, he heard some throbbing bass tunes from above, surmising that the source of this rude interruption must have been from the son, Charlie. “She’s got a son you know, could be your age” his mother had said wistfully, hastily grabbing her red leather jacket and carefully manipulating it to cover her ‘awful’ hips. Now it was clear that he had to in fact, visit Charlie. He could make out from the muffled cries and shrieks of laughter that there was more than one body in the room. Suddenly a hot flush of air seeped into the top of Richard’s chest, the nerves gnawing at his lungs. He’d always struggled with nerves, from his first (and incidentally, only) representation for a prep school sports team, batting at number eleven for the E team; it was the summit of his sporting career to date, even his first zero for the lads could not take that away from him. To the more morose, waiting to see if he’d made it into the much sought-after general knowledge quiz team (incidentally, he didn’t). Now though he trampled up the rugged staircase, handsomely accompanied by glistening brass lions at the head and feet of the stairway. He could now see shards of light escape from the closed door; this object had evidently been the property of the current son at a younger age, the innocent idlings of youth displayed in this case as dinosaurs, scratched into the grainy oak entrance.

After this careful examination of the door, it dawned upon Richard that he had delayed the meeting long enough; he now had to enter into the bristling room and conduct himself to Charlie and whatever other creatures lay within. He advanced shrinking into the ever expanding doorway, so much so that by the time the door was at forty-five degrees, the entire populous of the area had swivelled their heads to look upon their latest guest. What Richard saw created an immediate reaction to instantly return the way he had come; the room was actually quite small, although it was hard to tell with the swirling smoke, it crept into every crack and crumbling wall paper inlet, mercilessly distorting the boys vision. To his embarrassment it made tear drops appear in front of his eyes which he was desperate not to show. A small turn of the head displayed the old drinks cabinet flung open, presenting an array of exotic liquids: the oak brown Scotch whiskey, a bit like apple juice. Then upwards towards the Bombay Sapphire, the magnificent blue radiating through the glass bottle like something from the Caribbean Sea adverts so often found in The Telegraph. His eyes shot to the other corner of the room, there was a sofa there, decorated with elegant embroidery of red and blue. It had seen better days and at present had rips cutting throughout. As his eyes followed the trail of legs leading from the end, he came across the infamous Charlie. His aura came before him, coolness dripped and oozed from the pores of his very clothes. His hair was long, but not too long and he seemed quite tall from what Richard could make out, being sprawled across the carpet. He was a handsome young man to be truthful and this quality was evidently seen by the pretty blonde at his hip, her head lolling over his chest. She held fantastic brown eyes and swathes of rolling fair hair that ran down her arched back. To complete the slouched teenage circle came two other young men, who seemed not realise the entry of Richard, their senses were numb and void of any movement. The boy could not understand their apparent rudeness and was taken aback. The whole scene made his head swirl and he could only muster a mumble that he hoped would explain his name. Charlie replied with a low grunt that the boy struggled to understand and after his first few attempts of “sorry?” were ignored he resigned to sitting stiffly upon the vanquished sofa.

During the proceeding half hour he managed to acquire the information that could one day lead him to some conversation; the girl was called Lily and was Charlie’s girlfriend, she was interested in not only horses but also horse’s accessories, like saddles. She seemed not to have acquired any great passions in life that Richard’s father so encouraged, like playing the piano or cultivating a garden. She seemed a pleasant girl though and Richard was sure she would one day be interested in something other than equine pastimes. Not yet having talked to any other of the inhabitants, he took to the task of being the water boy, although this time the colourless liquid was replaced by vodka. After a certain amount of drinks he observed, the consumer would become and more overcome by a certain character that completely changed the victim, he or she would rapidly decrease in the ability to speak properly and undertake general conversation; it was if the liquid nibbled like a rat at parts of the brain so that the body gradually deceased into a deplorable mess.

As the night wore on, the inner embarrassment managed to scrape its way through Richard, the feeling of rejection ran rife throughout him and he began to realise that his presence was not needed. Any attempt at communication was flushed out with awkward silences that skewered Richard’s insides and continued to rummage around until he was left in tatters, embarrassed and confused. It had become clear that he had to penetrate the exclusive wall of bodies that kept him away from any type of contact. At last, he realised that possibly the only way to do this would have to be taking in the sharp liquid that lay before him; it seemed so passive yet so active in the other drinker’s minds. Gradually Richard began to steer away from his teacher’s principles that drinking was morally wrong. After all they seemed to be enjoying themselves, the liquor was liberating them. They were free from the stuttering mess that Richard’s tongue was creating within his parched mouth. Once again he took a steady stare at the glass bottle, shimmering, tottering as it was once again put down. The hard edges suddenly softened and the bottle became civil and appealing. Inching forward, Richard enquired quietly if he could possibly try a sip? After another agonising silence without a reply, he roved forward to hold the flask, wrapping his bony fingers around the neck. One more jerky action and it was at his feet, he looked nervously around as if some high standing adult was obligingly going to stop him, but none appeared. Having lifted it to his mouth, the boy received a gulp of the swirling vodka, immediately spitting out the fiery liquid. It had grabbed the back of the youngster’s throat and seemingly wrenched and scorched the searing skin layer, until he could take no more and swallowed. He felt the burning oil rip roar down his gullet and trickle without mercy into his dousing stomach. One deep breath later and Richard had survived. No difference. He felt no different, the circle had not budged and he was still left isolated on the edges of civilisation. However things began to change a few shots later; his head seemed to follow behind whenever sharp movements took place, his eyes were slow, he did hope that no-one could see them at that time but then again it didn’t matter anymore. His beleaguered eyes, their pupils like saucepans, struggled to make out the shimmering lights offering their twitching rays above the dense mist and fog of cigarette smoke. Trying to stand up, he found that his legs could not control his weight any more; he was a puppet, collapsing as his controller let parts of his anatomy go limp under the weight of his dense limbs. Suddenly his legs sagged underneath him as the breath was taken from him, he was seeing dots of red, blue, orange and purple that overcame his vision.  Blank for what seemed eternity he awoke to find almost nothing had changed, however one major action had taken place; the two faces of Charlie and his partner were lying perilously over Richard’s face, almost concerned, their hot breath glaring down upon his skin.

After a hefty glass of water and a lie-down he actually started to converse with them, he could talk flowingly, even with spices of wit thrown in. He was actually enjoying himself – it was amazing. He was Rich or Rickey now, one of them. He could now down gallons of the ‘elixir’ as Chaz like to call it. It suited the drink for he could entertain the group and he even threw his weight behind an attempt at singing; drowning miserably but it didn’t matter this time, he was amongst friends, thoroughly camped within the circle and he was not about to retreat to the abyss. The dramatic turnaround of personality was down solely to the consummation of the alcohol, he was now able to express his thoughts, his fears and wants without being held back by a bought of nerves so often brought back to haunt him. The anguished pangs had disappeared and he continued to become the self-proclaimed DJ, ostentatiously pumping out the tunes into the dark gusty skies of North London. He had become the beating heart of the party.

Later the next morning, having surpassed the blaring head-ache that Charlie explained as part of the parcel of having fun, Rich travelled home on the train having obtained all four of the groups phone numbers, he strode confidently to the ticket office but what made him most satisfied was the fact that the salesman enquired as to whether this gentleman was under the age of sixteen. After stating firmly that in fact he was under the age, he walked assuredly over to sit on the carpeted seat and the young man rolled happily home. He had grown up.

3 com

I’m dumbing down my senses

ears too much listening had;

tongue too much tasting

I like curry and

tea and

really minty toothpaste

now.

foreigners to infant tongues,

little baby tonsils long-gone;

rubbed off, rubbed up the wrong

way. and I don’t even mind loud

music or

headphones or

earphones, either. unless

they’re bad quality, in which case,

no.

and eyes too much seeing;

nose too much sniffing been

glue and well-worn drugs

cluttering up my airway, skimming

through the space between my lungs

and I don’t care. things that get stuck

at the back of your throat for

weeks, months.

words, phrases, clauses, sentences,

paragraphs,

stuck there like lime scale.

I’ve seen

horses having sex and wondered about

rape; seen grown adults arguing about

ingrown things. I am short-sighted

and didn’t see any of this coming. I

can’t even close my eyes at night anymore

without regretting something. I

don’t remember if I ever could.

and my fingers too much touching;

colours do not feel like they taste, smell, look or sound

and neither do boys’ hair,

door handles or

Latin textbooks. I’ve handled too

much, careful with the wrong things, like

cardboard boxes telling me what to do instead of

things like feelings – which,

by the way,

feel like veins, like motorways

with way too much speed in them.

I’ve felt bad, felt happiness, felt longing;

like putty between fingers or like an

allegory

but I think there’s more to it.

my senses are dumbing down;

I am growing up.

by Helen Bowell

none

Patience,

The word defies me with its sense,

I cannot wait,

The one enchained to my fate,

She calls,

But barred by those walls,

I stagnate,

Forever lost in love, I wait.

Cursed fear,

That holds us here,

Away,

Ever so far away, we stay,

I need,

To see you, to hear your every deed,

And embrace,

As we come together face to face.

Love,

Illnes without cure,

That drives me more and more,

All I ever needed was your love,

All I ever received – .

Now I need your heart,

Beating close to mine,

I’ll swear away my right,

I’ll watch as my power declines,

As hand and sword become one,

Till I fade away,

Nameless.

none

?By AC Thompson

Oppression creeps up on you, slowly, and when it arrives it is dark as night – but it is blacker when you have to look back on the rise of the oppressor and admit that you could have stopped it. That’s why I’m here, now, wandering these dark corridors in twilight, after the time when Shadows should be in their quarters for the night. Portraits, guilt frames, thick carpets, heavy wooden doors, golden sparkling handles, metal detectors; all the signs of riches, of the time before. I am here because I could have done something, then. I should have done something then, but I chose not to. So, now, I am saving my conscience, and I am saving them. My hand wraps around the small, perfect pistol in my pocket. Metal detectors – switched off. There are revolutionaries everywhere. Even in our Supreme Leader’s private staff.

I have to suppress a giggle at that thought. It’s almost ironic: in the time before, I was so much more to him than a Shadow, a member of staff, a woman, insignificant and unnoticed amongst hundreds of others. Thousands…

He saved me. He saved me, because he knew what he was going to do to Britain, to England, and he couldn’t see me in this new world… Three weeks before his regime began, after the election but before the Enabling Act, he packed me off to America, to New York City, and to my mother. The lights, the colours, the truth – the contrasts from dark, dreary, grey-tinted Britain – were startling. Britain, my father’s Britain, had become a photograph from the past; sepia-tinged, and faded; women in ‘proper’ skirts, and ‘traditional values’, and patriarch-ism to the very extreme… and he allowed me to escape. Looking back, now, I have to admit that I took the coward’s way out, because I saw through him. I saw through every little false promise, every lie. He took control with lies and charisma; but he keeps control by force…  And I should have done something about it; because I knew his plans, the plans for his Terror; but I didn’t do anything, because he is my father, and you don’t do that to family…

My mother’s apartment, watching the events unfold. He’s there, my father, smiling that charismatic smile into the television cameras, announcing the Enabling Act… and I am having second thoughts. “You don’t do that to family”… except… now, I think of my friends, watching and wondering. In times like those in Britain, nobody knows anything, except who is in control; the puppeteer, pulling the strings; but what will he do if his puppets rebel? Because they will rebel. Somebody will be stupid enough to cross the line.

Somebody was. And it is because of him that I am here, and that I am shaking with fear, my Shadow’s uniform of ‘proper-length’ skirt and blouse and apron dirtied with the stains of my labour. House-maiding my own father… This is because of Alex, and this is for the Greater Good. That is what I have to keep telling myself. What I will do, when I have reached the end of this corridor, and when I have rounded the corner, and when I have climbed the stairs and opened the door to the sleeping Leader’s bedroom, is so atrocious that I have to keep faith. I have to keep telling myself that I am doing it for Alex. And for everybody else. I have to keep strong. It’s not much for an eighteen-year-old ‘girl’ to have to deal with, is it? I have the fate of a nation on my shoulders, in my hands. They clasp once more around the pistol in my pocket, and I smile: I smile my thanks to the Lord; to my father’s Lord; for the fact that Alex found me. I have to thank someone.

My mother’s apartment again. Sitting on the couch. I don’t like that word. It falls wrongly on my lips. But in New York City, a British ‘refugee’ cannot pick and choose. She has to be thankful for her salvation, and hope that people are ignorant enough to let her walk by without questioning her mysterious escape from a country in which everyone is encased. A flower from a walled garden, mysteriously plucked out…Walls, fences, bleak, bleak seas; there is no escape, for them. They are trapped. But I am not. I am on my mother’s couch, and I am free… Free-er.

There is a knock on the door…. There is never a knock on the door. My mother made sure of that. No one knows I’m here, except, apparently, the knocker. My mother is out. And the knocker is persisting. In my mother’s apartment door, there is a magnifying spy-glass through which one might peek to see who is outside. I decide that it is my best option… Find out who’s outside; then make my decision.

I stand up and I head toward the door. I would like to say that “I wander”, but I don’t. “Wander” implies some degree of purposelessness. I have a purpose. Who is at the door? Nothing in my life is without purpose anymore… I reach the door, peer through the spy-glass… and… “Oh!” Someone is staring back at me. There is a hazelnut-coloured eye at the spy-glass, and The Eye is smiling at me. “Hope Lindynn?” The Eye asks, stepping backward a foot so that I can make out the slightly smiling face of a man, about four years older than me. His accent is British. London. How strange… But… what can I do? The man and The Eye seem to notice that I am uncomfortable, and they smile at me again. “Don’t worry.” The man says, The Eye fixed determinedly on mine, through the spy-glass. My eye must look bizarrely disproportionate to them. To him. They are one and the same, after all. “I’m not with your father.” The man smiles, tiny crinkles forming at the corner of The Eye. And the other eye. “I’m… I’m…” he stutters, before finally asking “Can I come in?”
“Yes.” I say, opening the door. Why did I say yes?

Because it was Alex. I didn’t know that, then, of course. Then, he was just The Man. Now? Now… now he is the closest thing that Hope has to hope… That’s what he says, and it makes me smile, and in turn that makes The Eye smile. Despite everything, it is so easy to smile around Alex…

They say that in times of struggle, the one thing that human nature subconsciously pulls us towards is love, and, until recently, that idea would have seemed ludicrous to me; Hope Lindynn, feminist, with no need of a man in her life… But then the world tipped upside down, and I was left hopeless… and Alex shifted the gravity in my world just that little bit… it moved it an iota closer to where it should be…

Months later, hidden in the Forest Of Dean. England has split; it is solo; and Churchill, my Father, is in charge. Churchill. That was what did it. Churchill…

Alex and I are hiding in Wales, until the time comes. And it will come. Soon. But I don’t think I want it to, because, in a morbid way, I am happy now; I am floating in a sort of tranquil bliss, but soon enough, this will all end. All of it. Even the good, even the friendships, even… It will all end, whether I want it to or not. And I have an obligation. I cannot forget that; I have an obligation to them, and to Alex, and to myself. I must do it. I must…

“I must…”, I murmur to myself, under my breath. Because it is true. I must. One foot falls in front of the other, delicately, as I have been taught. Women must be delicate, and I must blend in. Therefore, I must be delicate. Even when my heart is hammering in my chest, and there is a pistol enclosed in my hand, I must be delicate. My shoes, even, are delicate. Tiny, ballerina shoes of black leather, for sturdiness and delicacy. I like that word. Delicacy. It is the epitome of everything that I am not. That I was not. I am delicate, now. The first thing they taught me was delicacy.

Midnight, in my bedchamber, in my father’s house, with Alex in a room down the corridor, pretending to be my betrothed. Single women do not get far in this society, even if they are secretly the estranged daughter of the President. The woman I share this room with is an undercover member of the Revolutionary Ring. She is teaching me to be delicate, and she is teaching me to blend in. As if I cannot do that! I am serving in my father’s house as a Shadow, and he has not noticed my existence. I do not need to be taught to blend in. I do, however, need to be taught to be delicate. Everything in this room is delicate and feminine; lilacs, doilies, lace-trimmed aprons, the woman… and, soon enough, me. Women, in this society, are flowers… and soon I will have blossomed enough that I will be able to carry out my task without once being noticed. Soon.

“Soon” came too soon. I needed more time to prepare myself, mentally. I still do. And yet, here I am; I have reached the moment when I have to be braver than I have ever been in my life. Now, I have to open the door to my father’s bedchamber, and I have to be brave enough to do what I know I have to. I have to be brave enough to do something that I will always regret doing, to some degree. But, if I don’t… flowers. I have a choice, and yet, I know that I do not. Alex and I have not worked so very hard for so very long for me to fail, now. I couldn’t do that to him, at any rate. Not to Alex. No matter what: even if it means shooting my own father dead…

And so my right hand, steadiest in shooting practise, clasps tightly, for the final time, around the little pistol in my pocket. The pistol is warm now, from having been clutched so much, and my hands are clammy from clutching, and… and the pistol is lifted slightly, so that it is almost out of my pocket, and my left hand raises, to unlock the door, silently. Smile; you are on CCTV! But they won’t reach me until I have done the deed. Alex and the Ring are downstairs, blocking the stair-well, unseen by security cameras. Door unlocked, I clutch the handle, and take a long, deep breath.

I am doing what I have to do.

none

The letter, which sat comfortably in her delicate little hands, told her everything which she had hitherto only suspected. She had seen him, of course; she knew him, even. But she had never fully understood the true extent of what it had all meant, up until that moment, the moment of her small epiphany. For a child so young, she was very perceptive, and she had been hoarding the signs, burying them together in one small corner of her little mind as if they were genuine articles which might be held in the hand and buried beneath a floor-board. Evidently, they were not, and so she hoarded them in her mind, instead, locking them away, out of sight of the world, just as she would otherwise have liked to. They were the kind of signs that a thirteen-year-old girl should have found disturbing; they were proof, near enough, that when her father returned from the war in just over three hours time, he would not find his wife waiting for him as patiently as he might have hoped.

But, they were there none-the-less, and Myra was not the average thirteen-year-old girl. Instead of shying away, she revelled in them; she was the sort of child who craved a secret, having been brought up in a stable home, with never a hint of scandal to interest her overactive imagination.

And yet, there it was. At last. A letter from a lover – the promise of a kiss, a secret smile, reserved only for the recipient. Except that now, it was Myra who read it; and her secret smile was purely for herself, for her searching and digging and spy games that had eventually brought her something – and when her father returned, as his letter to her mother (which, incidentally, was never delivered either) indicated would happen sooner rather than later – it would come to head. She would be witness to it. This much, at least, she knew for certain.

She skim-read the lover’s letter once more, pausing over certain words as she tried to fathom out their meaning, the whole time running a series of scenarios through her mind – plays, she thought, depicting her father’s return. Each one was different, but for a few small details; her secret; a fight; a split. Because her parents would surely split, and when they did, she would always have a secret: that she could have prevented it.

This thought made her smile; her child’s mind did not think of consequences beyond those her imagination saw as immediate, and so the knock on the door, two hours later, which should surely have alarmed her, did not. It made her start, but only because her Mother’s call was so unexpected;

“Myra! Door!”

Her mother was intelligent, and usually spoke eloquently, with the grace of one of high social stature, but today she did not. She was short, and she was to-the-point. She was otherwise occupied.

Myra smiled slightly at this fact; all she could think was that her plan was coming together. She opened the door, turning the gold-tinged handle which glinted mirror-like in the candle-light, and saw her father standing there, the lawn flowing down behind him, with the gnarled, beautiful willow tree at the bottom of the hill. She caught his eye, and threw herself at him, looping her little arms around his neck and whispering “Daddy!”, cautiously, carefully.

“Myra…” her father whispered, spinning her around in the pink of the summer twilight; it felt good to be held there, in that one, short moment, in her father’s arms. It felt comfortable, and it felt right. As he lowered her to the floor, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head, she smiled, and clutched his hand, in the firm belief that from very soon onwards, she alone would hold her father’s heart. Her father, however, could not know of this, for she had hoarded her secrets so well. And so, he continued, completely ignorant, and so he took her hand, and pulled her in towards the house.

“Where’s your mother, Myra?” he asked, squeezing her hand as he looked around the hallway. Not much had changed in his absence; he noticed that. However, he also noticed that there were fresh roses in a vase on the table beside the ornately painted telephone, and the house-keeper, raised her eyebrows as she bustled past, hurrying, no doubt, to dust everything, before his return, upon his wife’s command. He noticed small things; the pair of shoes in the doorway which should not have been there, the fact that the gardener appeared to have been neglecting his duties somewhat recently, and the fact that his wife was nowhere to be found.

“Myra?” he whispered, again. “Where’s your mother?”

There was a distinct undertone in his voice that said he was suspicious. He was working things out; he was riddling out her private enigma, and she couldn’t permit that. She would take him down to the kitchens, and ask Cook to make him some tea. Or to pour him a whiskey. But if she left it too long, before allowing him to stumble upon her mother, her mother may not be so evidently self-incriminating…

He would have to go now.

She was a sly child; a cunning, calculating child; and she knew that her plan would fall to pieces soon enough. Instead of allowing all of her careful plotting to go to waste, she took him by the hand once more, and dragged him up the stairs, babbling all the while, under the assumed cover story of a little girl, excited by her father’s return.

Had she been asked, she would not have been able to state explicitly why she was so intent on ruining her parents’ relationship. It had something to do with the boredom of the summer, and the added stability of the end of the war, and the lack of other young girls to play with, and it had something to do with an over-active imagination, cultivated from far too many long hours spent in the library; but other than that, she could not have explained. It was not that she was evil, exactly, as one would assume, given the evidence. It was more to do with sheer mind-numbing boredom; the monotony of her life; and the incentive of a little excitement in her life.

Had she known, of course, that she would end up regretting what happened in those few minutes that evening in June 1945 for the rest of her life, she would probably have thought twice about smiling up at her father, and skipping down the carpeted hallway towards her own bedroom, leaving him standing there. She knew what he would find when he twisted the door knob, smiling, the posy of flowers he had picked from the garden hidden behind his back; and she knew that it would break his heart. What she couldn’t have foreseen, however, was what his reaction would be.

She watched from behind ‘a safe distance’ as her father opened the door; she saw the look of sheer horror on his face; she saw him step back out, mouth gaping, and close the door. She saw him lean back against it, his shoulders hunched over, and she watched as he pinched the bridge of his nose, in agony, as he tossed the flowers down the hall. The house-keeper would see them later, and she would know. What Myra didn’t see, of course, was her father’s thought process, and how through all of his heart break, the one thing that he considered above all else was her. What she didn’t see was how, when he forlornly padded down the stairs, to the drawing room, about ten minutes later, he collapsed into his chair, and drank that whiskey, and picked it up again, and drank, again. What she didn’t see was the pain – the pure, unadulterated pain etched across her father’s face, as he made the decision that he knew would make or break all of their lives.

Had she known this, perhaps her conscience would have felt something a little sooner, and perhaps she would have gone downstairs, and comforted her father, rather than curling up on her bed and wondering how long it would be before he fired the gardener and threw her mother from the house.

*

In the end, of course, he did neither of these things. The gardener resigned of his own accord, and my mother and father were to remain together for a further forty years, until they both succumbed to the pain of their strained relationship. She was to die of cancer of the liver in 1985, brought on by all of the whiskey consumed throughout the rest of her life; from that evening in June of 1945, when she finally realised that her betrayal had been noticed, until the cold winter morning in January 1985, when she passed away. It was a peaceful death, at least. It didn’t cause my father any unnecessary pain – unlike so much else.

He lived on, alone in the world but for me, the woman who, as a child, ruined his life, for another three years, until he finally gave up, and died quietly in his sleep, aged seventy-four. The doctors said it was old age that killed him in the end. Even the strongest fighters cannot stand the test of time.

He battled on for those extra three years, for me; the daughter who had ruined his life, and who now sits beneath the willow tree in the grounds of the stately home in which she grew up, a sepia-tone photograph of its former glory, and who now understands exactly the pain that he was going through, for all of those years. Except, of course, that I ruined my marriage for myself. My guilt seeped through the walls of my snug existence; to the point when I simply couldn’t hide it any longer… to the point when Jacob, dear, beloved Jacob, could simply not take it any longer.

And… nor could the children. They saw our pain; they felt our pain; and I sometimes think that they lived it with us too. And yet, we made the decision that the best course of action would be to stay together – for them.

It is raining, in the gardens, beneath the willow tree, as I gaze up across the lawns to the country house, which sits above it all, surveying the grounds, I realise that it has not been a home for a very long time; metaphorically, if not literally. All the warmth it held before the war vanished afterward, and I cannot help but wonder whether the grey skies all around, and the pitter-patter of rain on the ground will every truly fade from this place. We all look for escape, and yet the rain clouds still persist: looking around me, I peer into the corners of my own little world, and I see so many reflections of my parents’ lives; in every nook, and every cranny, a secret, a hidden desire to get out, a wish for something else; something purer; something more.

I saw what this very attitude did to my parents; I saw them both turn to whiskey for their answers, and I saw how it ate away at their lives, tearing from them the very joy for life which I know they once had… and yet I sit here, beneath the willow, watching the wind tug at the leaves, pulling them gently this way and that, and the way that the tiny shaft of sunlight, which has managed to evade capture, dances across the marble of their headstones. It is beautiful and it is peaceful. It is the kind of ending that they both deserved; the kind of ending that I took from them, all those years ago, in that one moment – that one ridiculous moment – in the summer of 1945.

I see this… I know this… and yet, I lay my flowers, and I stand up, and I turn, to walk away, back to my self-made broken home, for the ‘good’ of the children. I brush away any niggling doubts, by telling myself that it is for them. For them, always for them.

by AC Thompson

one

Slamming all the doors,

Kicking up a fuss,

Skipping all your chores,

Swearing on the bus.

Some affects of anger,

Some affects of hate,

You are your own master,

Don’t mess up your fate!

Try to understand more,

Step out from your spotlight,

Don’t act like it’s such a bore,

It’s time to fight ,

or run in flight.

See bullies aren’t all tough guys,

It’s really just an act,

You might not be all that wise,

But once your one there’s little way back.

by Paige Izquierdo

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