Author: Peter Coles

He’s awoken at dawn by snuffling on the blankets at the end of the bed. The room is dark, embers in the wood burner glowing iron red. But there’s no use lying there, not now. He can’t get back to sleep once he’s awake. Besides, there are things to do.

He pulls back the sheets. The air is cool. The embers from the stove don’t reach far, it’s nearly out. The cottage is always biting cold in the morning, with its stone walls, tiny windows and draughty doors. Rising in the morning is like taking an ice shower. He doesn’t like ice showers, although sometimes he and his wife jump in the harbour, when she’s there. It’s good for the soul, she says. It’d be too cold to jump in the harbour on a day like this and for a moment he’s glad she’s away. But only for a moment.

Pulling on slippers and a terry-towelling gown (also cold but quickly warm) he opens the back door. The morning is dewy and still, the western sky gloomy. Jessie streaks past him, a blur of white and black, racing back and forth through overgrown grass like a ricocheting bullet, hot breath coming in clouds. She finds a spot, does her business. He looks the other way. 

Afterwards, they return indoors. He gives the dog breakfast, puts the kettle on. Bread toasts. He checks the calendar. Wednesday. Three more sleeps until his wife comes home.

“She’s away too much,” his mother says when she calls, once a week on Tuesdays. “She should consider your needs more.”

“She’s not on holiday, Ma. She’s travelling for work.”

“So are you,” his mother replies.

Which is strictly true; although he’s not sure it counts. He travels between hotels, not continents. They travelled more together when they first met, when they were younger. Back then, their world was a stream of unfamiliar countries and shoe-string hostels, a blur of rickety train rides between music festivals and ayahuasca retreats. Now she travels alone. Her work takes her away. 

After breakfast (Marmite on toast, a hardboiled egg and a little fruit—two plums today; there are no apples) he takes a shower, pulls on his overalls and throws some coal on the wood burner to keep it ticking over throughout the day. He departs into a chilly morning, flask of tea in one hand, bundle of keys and tobacco in the other.

Out front, the sun creeps above a hilly horizon. Liquid gold lights his face. The grass is still dark with night. Dew clings to the grass. He can’t see it, but he knows it’s there; it crackles against his work boots as he walks to the van, soaks into flecks of plaster on the soles, dampens Jessie’s fur as she strides alongside him. She paces ahead, sniffs a rabbit hole, returns faithfully to his side.

An amber sun offers the only light.

As usual, the neighbours’ cottages are still dark. Still asleep. Still.

It takes an hour of bouncing through narrow country lanes, winding between hedgerows, up and over hills before he arrives at his first hotel of the day. By now it’s a beautiful morning. He wishes his wife was there to see it.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” says the girl on reception. She has nice hair. It’s not as nice as his wife’s, but his wife isn’t there. “Somebody flushed a tampon again,” she rolls her eyes knowingly. “They never read the sign, do they?” she says, as though he’d written the sign himself. “Anyway, it’s all backed up and stinks of sewage. Can you fix it?”

That’s what I’m here for, he says. 

He wonders why the girl thinks a sign will stop people flushing tampons. He knows from sore experience that people will flush whatever they like. But he doesn’t ask. People often laugh when he asks questions, they think he’s joking. Usually he’s not. 

The girl with the nice hair points him in the right direction. 

The toilet bowl is full of brown water and other unpleasant things. Semi-solid things. Returning to the van, he collects the proper tools, pausing to give Jessie a good scratch between the ears so she knows he won’t be long. She licks his face. He laughs a little in disgust, wipes his sleeve across his cheek.

When he’s done, he explains to the reception girl how he fixed the loo. It’s not important to tell her, but he wants someone to talk to, for a little while. 

“Oh, thank you!” she keeps saying, keeping her distance, keeping her shiny hair away. He wants to talk more, but she interrupts. “Well, I guess we’ll see you next time someone blocks the loo.” 

He takes his cue to leave.

Outside, the blue sky is patchy with fast-moving clouds that dapple the road as he drives, casting shadows on the cracked tarmac, leopard print grey. 

He wonders what his wife is doing. It’s 9.33am here. Before she left, she said she’d be six hours ahead… in case he wanted to keep her in mind. He isn’t good at sums, but he always keeps her in mind. 

He figures it must be around lunchtime wherever she is. Perhaps there’s a break in the conference. Perhaps she’s eating exotic cafeteria food in an exotic cafeteria, with other scientists. Good-looking men, probably. Scientists usually are. He wonders if any of them have wives who keep dog shit in the fridge.

“It’s for work,” she’d told him, when he’d asked what was in the Tupperware box. “I need a sample for the lab.”

She’d taken it fresh from the yard, explaining there was something special in Jessie’s shit. In all dog shit. If anyone could see beauty in a dog turd, he’d joked, it was her. She’d flashed a wry smile. It was a virus, she’d said—one she needed for work. He can’t recall the name and it’s bugging him. Toxo-something. He can remember that much because toxo sounds like toxic, and if dog shit in the fridge is anything, it’s toxic.

He tries to focus his thoughts, picturing a magnifying glass on a piece of paper, waiting for it to catch. What was the name? Something that made him think of Venice. Toxoplasma-something… Gondola! Yes, that was it. Toxoplasma gondola. 

He’s never been to Venice. 

His wife has. 

He arrives at the next hotel at just after ten. The day is bright and brisk but it won’t stay that way. The weather changes here so fast. The hotel manager is gruff and tired. She doesn’t speak much, except to say there’s a problem with one of the taps in the staff room. 

Most of the calls he gets are taps. Or toilets. Things that’re easy to fix. Sometimes he wonders why hotel staff can’t fix these things themselves. Of course, if they did, he’d be out of a job. It’s a quick task; the tap’s just dripping. Needs a new washer. It’s usually a new washer. Have you tried a new washer? He always asks first. It’s the plumbing equivalent of, Have you tried turning it off and on again? He probably replaces three or four washers a week. Even if he’s called for something entirely unrelated, if he’s near a tap, he’ll check if the washer needs replacing. Could save him another visit. 

He informs the hotel manager when he’s done. She’s not as friendly as the reception girl with the nice hair. And she’s got a big nose.

“Just needed a replacement washer,” he says. “That’s usually all it is.”

“Thanks,” she replies, but she doesn’t sound very thankful. Maybe she’s having a bad day. Still, he tells her to call him if there are any more problems but that replacing a washer is easy if she wants to do it herself? Or she could get one of her staff to do it, if they have a wrench? Could save him a visit, he says. But she doesn’t seem interested in washers, or taps, or wrenches. 

He leaves.

When he gets back out to the van, the clouds have completely blown away. The view from the car park is really nice. This particular hotel is on a clifftop between two towns, right alongside the coastal path. That’s what people come here for: to walk. But not so much at this time of year. Few hikers today. He decides to take a break, roll a cigarette, pour a cup of tea from the flask. 

Even with the windows up, he can hear the ocean battering the beach below. Slightly east from here, there’s a quiet cove. He and his wife spent the day there once. In summer. They sat on the beach. She read a book. He listened to music. They tried a little surfing but weren’t very good. Then they went for a walk, found a dead dolphin. He’d buried it in the sand, using a big flat rock for a spade. She’d sat on a boulder nearby, watching him. He’d thought it might be cool to come back in a year or two, once the flesh was all rotted away, see if he could collect the skull. It might make an interesting curiosity, he’d thought. 

That was a year or two ago. He thinks about going down to the beach, digging up the dolphin’s skull. But then he realises he can’t remember where he buried it. Besides, there’s a new blanket of cloud rolling in on the horizon. It might rain soon. He stubs out his cigarette, gulps down his tea and drives on.

The next hotel is in the centre of a nearby town. He’s got a bathroom tiling job that’s been in the calendar a while now. The assistant manager is a tall man, friendlier than the woman at the last place. The man reminds him of his brother, Stephen. The Stephen lookalike even remembers his name. Shakes his hand.

“Here you go, this is the one that needs tiling,” says the tall manager who reminds him of his brother. 

“It should only take a few hours,” he tells the man.

He decides to tile the bathroom in an overlapping brick pattern, which always looks nicer.

Mid-afternoon, the bathroom’s almost done. He’s not had lunch, so he takes Jessie to run around a nearby park. Children play in the playground, with their parents. They squeal on swings, chase each other up and down a metal slide. He likes kids. He’d like to have one of his own, one day.

“We wouldn’t be able to travel,” his wife says. She has a point, he supposes. Still, he’d like a kid someday. He’s getting older. He wouldn’t want to be too old of a father.

“You know what you married,” says his kid brother, Stephen. “If you wanted kids, you should have talked about it beforehand. She’s career-driven—you can’t hold her success against her. Expecting her to drop everything because you want kids is a bit sexist, isn’t it?”

That’s what Stephen says.

Thing is, he’s proud of his wife’s success. He sometimes wishes she wasn’t away so much, that’s all. It gets lonely with just the dog. But he doesn’t tell his family this. Not his mother, who would use it against his wife if she could. And not Stephen, who takes offence so easily. Every time he says something, Stephen finds a reason to jump down his throat.

 Stephen would never appreciate the reception girl with the nice hair. And not just because he prefers men. Judging people on looks isn’t right, he’d say. But that makes no sense. Doesn’t everyone judge people by how they look? 

Once Jessie has run round some, clouds are rumbling in and the playground is empty. It’s starting to rain. He drinks the last of the tea and finishes the tiling. By five o’clock it’s all done. 

“Well, it’s very neat,” the assistant manager says, arms crossed. “But the rest of the bathrooms are tiled straight, not with an overlapping pattern.”

Not again, he thinks.

“I’ll come back in the morning to redo it,” he tells the man.

“That’d be great,” the assistant manager says. He smiles, but his smile looks irritated. 

When he gets outside, rain is coming down in sheets.

By the time he gets home, it’s dark again. He feeds the dog, stokes the fire, makes some dinner. Just beans on toast. He hasn’t the energy to cook. He’ll save that for when his wife gets back.

He checks the calendar again. Tomorrow it’ll be two more sleeps before she’s home. She’ll only be back a few days, but he reminds himself how lucky he is to have her. Still, the thought makes him so tired that by eight o’clock, he’s in bed. By nine, he’s out.

Jack Petrubi is a European writer based in the UK and Germany. Prior to dabbling with words he worked as a furniture salesman, a glass collector and a welder. His favourite colour is pink and he enjoys romantic walks in heels at various hardware stores. His short story ‘Hearts and Minds’ won the 2021 Cambridge Short Story Prize. T: @jackpetrubi

It’s Sunday morning. The days are longer now and today there is the first real heat of summer in the air. I’m shopping in a market in the suburbs of London. I’m in the market shopping and I’m standing in front of oranges. Oranges from Seville. They’re piled high and they are spectacular and I realise I’d completely forgotten you, for all these years. And I remember now how Seville is oranges – oranges that are on trees and squeezed in cafes in metal machines. They roll down metal slides on these machines, one by one. Firm, waiting to be parted, clenched until dripping. Makes me wonder what I owe you. 

I’m twenty-two and I’m in Seville for a month and I’ve decided to be a different person. I’m here to do a course. I get allocated a shared apartment. I get a room right at the top of the apartment that leads out onto a roof-terrace. There’s a washing machine up there somehow and laundry hanging out in the dry heat. I share the apartment with two other guys who are also on the course. Older than me. Grey hair, divorce, cancer. They’re both starting out on a new life. A second existence for them too. We’re really all the same in what we want, what we’re striking out for. Newness. For something to happen to our lives. And we do well together and we get on. They understand one another and get close and I’m on the edge of that, which is what I want. But we still sit out at night together on the front steps of the apartment and we drink red wine and watch this residential street in Seville cooling in the dark.

And Seville is oranges. It really is. They actually hang from the trees around the city – these orange trees that are all over the place. And not even for the tourists, they’re just there. They’re not trying at all. And I’m here walking around this hot city in the early autumn and I decide I will be happy, open, I will say yes and I will forget all about that pathetic person I was. And the city is mine, it swallows me up. It’s there for me and I can turn down any of the winding streets I choose. I can turn down any street and no one knows me and I’m light on my feet and every street, every street is some possibility.

I’m popular with the other people on the course, this new person I am. They all seem to like me. Particularly the girls. Which doesn’t feel too bad, seeing as I’m not me. I’m into this. And the girls – it’s so hot in the city, even in October – they’re kind of on show. We’re all on show. We’re all in a foreign country with people we don’t know. In the first few days the girl with the strawberry-blond hair makes it so we’re walking together to the bar, or wherever it is we’re all going, and it’s a really warm evening and she’s wearing a white vest and she wants to walk with me and I don’t remember you yet, but this girl, she’s made sure it happened that we’re walking together like this and she’s asking questions. So, why are you here? This must be what it’s like, I think. It’s so easy and I can’t believe it. Although I don’t really care. Even though it’s warm and she’s beautiful and she’s kind of walking with her shoulders back.

We all go for the morning coffee break to this tiny bar where everyone’s standing and someone’s paying for a coffee and I hear how they say it and takes me a while but I piece it together into English. What is my debt to you? Or maybe it’s, What do I owe you? Anyway, I like that – what is my debt to you. The barmen are in white shirts and they have black hair that shines and there are mirrors all around the outside of the bar to make this small place feel so much bigger and even the counter of the bar is all chrome metal. We can see ourselves everywhere reflected all over the place. 

On the weekends I turn down invites to visit places and see the sights with the others. This just seems to make them like me more. I stay in my room and on my roof-terrace surrounded by terracotta tiles. I can see rooftops for miles around. All terracotta tiles. I read. I read books on religion. Dostoyevsky. An academic commentary on Mathew’s Gospel. I do stretching exercises in the sun. I’m obsessed with this – a thirty-minute routine. I hate it too though. It’s like a penance. But I’m convinced it will make me better, that it will make me a better person. I want to be lithe and flexible and achieve some sort of inner strength. I want my body to hide a coiled power – not to use it, but so I know it’s there. On hand. I want to be surprising to people. 

I wasn’t even thinking about you at this point, hardly at all. You are all edges is how I remember you though. Plimsolls, skinny jeans, tight long-sleeved tops. Your elbows pointing. All angles. Like your limbs have an extra hinge somewhere. Cutting too – no  bullshit – you say exactly what you mean and you’re not afraid of anything. This whole thing is a breeze for you. 

Then we have a party at our apartment for the end of the course and everyone comes over for it, even the tutors. Inside there’s music, lamps and everyone is arriving and everyone is talking and you are talking to Ian. 

‘So what does your girlfriend do?’ you ask him.

‘She’s a dancer.’

‘A dancer? That’s interesting. What kind of dance?’

Your tone. I don’t even know if I care. I go to the kitchen and in the kitchen there are wine bottles beer bottles red plastic cups ice in the sink blue plastic bags and it’s all everywhere. José is in there too. José is young and he has long black hair that he keeps tucking behind one ear and he wears a white V-neck t-shirt and a black necklace. He’s into jazz, plays jazz piano. He’s the real thing. He helps me to say it’s okay in Spanish. All I seem to want to say is it’s okay. 

‘I think you are not saying it right,’ he says. ‘You are saying you are good, which means you are always good. You are never always good.’

The kitchen spills out into the living room where everyone is and Joanna is wearing a dress of bright sharp colours. She’s tied her blonde hair on one side with a red flower in it and she looks very Spanish and like she’s standing in some extra light or something. The music gets louder and someone opens the door to let air in. The walls of the living room are all blurred edges and feel too close like they’re pressing us all in, and the next moment it’s like they’re not there at all. And Maria, in a long sand-coloured dress, is leaning against the open door, laughing.

Then I’m upstairs somehow showing you around, sparkling drunk now and we’re having such a good time and we’re drunk and everything’s so funny and I think it’s so good being someone else, it’s so good that we’re avoiding going back downstairs where we can hear everyone and the party that is ignoring us. But to go into a bedroom would feel too irreversible so we stay on the landing with all these doors around us and the stairs going down. I want to stay where everything is still possible all of the time, all of the time, before some blunt act shuts off all those other ways. But then we’re too close and it’s all going away going away fast now and you’re leaning against the wall and I’m leaning against the wall and then it’s just too late and your lips are parting and there’s no way back. And although I’m enjoying all of this – because I know this isn’t me, I’m so pleased with myself – it’s still all just about ruined because those other possibilities all those others things that are meant to happen or happen but not like this they’re all closing now like eyes shutting. 

Then it’s done – the course – and we’re finished and we have to move out. But we all hang around in Seville not knowing what’s next and we all go out drinking and me and you from the time on the landing carry on drinking together and the others kind of drift home. We’re really into each other and we’re all over each other and the bar closes and we walk out and around the streets. We walk for a long time around the dark streets of Seville. We’re walking aimlessly with no idea of where we’re going and we end up down by the river. It’s either really late or it’s really early. There’s no one around. Then I’m trying to tell you I’m not actually that into you and I’m a real prick about it and you get angry and somehow while we’re arguing we end up going back to the pensíon where I’m staying. It’s the cheapest place I could find to stay and the pillows are lumpy and the bed sheets are thin with all their colour washed out of them. 

Once we’re in the room there’s nothing else but the bed. It’s just the room and the bed. So it’s going to happen. It has to happen. The bed is flimsy and the sheets are so old and worn and it’s so hot and we do the best we can here and we actually manage to make it something – something more than just sex in a cheap room. And everything’s all orange, everything’s washed in an orange light. It’s early morning, the curtains are dark orange and the gathering light outside is coming through the curtains and the room and everything is washed in orange. Your skin is dark orange all over. Your arms, your shoulders, your thighs. And we’re holding each other clenched together just right there. 

The next morning when you’re gone and I’m clearing out of the room – because I want to get out of this place and get unknown again – I find a used condom on the floor behind the bed. It’s not ours. It’s been there the whole time. It’s behind the bed on the laminate floor. It looks cold. Something just cast aside. But then I pack and get out and outside the sunlight is everywhere and it’s hard and definite and that helps. 

I’m trying to tell you something. In Cadiz in a restaurant, I saw a woman having dinner alone. This was before all of this in Seville, before any of this had happened. She had dressed up. This was in a restaurant in Cadiz. It was a modern restaurant. Bright. Large white plates. She was alone and she’d dressed up and she’d brought a book with her to read but she wasn’t interested in the book at all. It was like a prop. She was having dinner alone but she wanted something. She kept looking around. She wanted something else. That pointless book. She was ready – ready for everything to happen. For a hand to be offered, and  all the ordinary days to fall to earth around her.

Jacob Parker lives in London and teaches in a sixth form college. His short fiction has also featured in Structo, Open Pen, MIR Online, Litro, The Interpreter’s House, and others.

She’d walked along the beach for an hour that afternoon in the sun and rested up on the pier to lick her vanilla and blackcurrant cookie ice cream in a waffle cone. On the next bench, two pink- and purple-plumed teens with tentacled H.P. Lovecraft creatures tattooed on shoulders and thighs were speaking rapidly in sing-along French, luinesavaitpasmemefairecac’estunvraicochon! She wanted to eavesdrop, to join in, to ask them if they’d seen the crocodile everyone was talking about, but knew no French so lick-licked the soft gold cream, before it ran down her arm and dripped between the cracks of the wooden planks into the water below.

The teens got up, drawn to the call of the bongo drums beating out across the esplanade, leaving her alone with the incinerated hulk of the west pier, staring across at its burnt bones falling away into the roiling silver, while squally gulls glided, their arched wings shaping eyebrows in the air, as frothy wavelets curled and splashed over long, stepped groynes, like the crested tails of large lizards. 

She wasn’t taking the escaped crocodile seriously, no one was. In the news reports, it was just one more mythical beast, not a razor-crunching reality. She wondered if the reptile would return to the sanctuary of the ocean, as its ancestors had in the dreamtime, when creatures that could fly flew up, and creatures that could swim swam down. The sea was a place where a crocodile could hide, where it could grow and shape-shift into whale or beaked turtle. 

She too had washed up here, breaking free from the silent civilised city of smooth glass and cream stone that had been her long-time home. A chance to start over, to change. Slowly, the crocodile shaped itself in her mind: its barnacled pebbly hide, rackety teeth and polished garnet eyes, hidden there, beneath the shimmery surface of the Channel. 

The multi-tongued sea taunted her with the impossibility of transformation, that her story, at forty, was already mapped out like a nautical chart, that she was settled in shape like a stone on the beach, that she could not shed her crabbed skin, that she would remain in hues of sandy orange, mottled grey, chalk white and charcoal, as far as the eye could see. 

“I’m hard and dry, as fixed as rock, when what I want most is the turquoise lightness of water.”

Sun further west, sea further in. It was a shock to find someone had sat down next to her. “That’s the sea for you. It’s slippery, it seeps into your cracks and takes you unawares.”

  A noble profile; skin the colour of kelp, eyes pale and glinting, like the albino fish she’d glimpsed once in a subterranean cave in Slovenia. Hair deep blond with a curl and carelessly pulled into a chignon on top of the head, eyebrows shaven, nails manicured, painted lavender. She wanted to look more closely at the torso wrapped in its cape but reluctant to stare, concentrated instead on the dark polished cane they were holding in front of them. On top was a small carved face like a netsuke, and as she studied it, saw it was not one face but two: the conjoined masks of leering comedy and cruel tragedy. 

She looked up and saw the pale eyes on her. “I’m new here. Moved down from London during… well, you know…”

They were nodding, “I know.” 

It seemed then  she fell into a trance, couldn’t describe afterwards whether they had talked an hour or sat in silence, hypnotised by the inning and outing of the tide, the slipping away of the sun, the pixilating shingle along the curve of the coast.

“The crocodile,” she said at last. “Has anyone found it? I mean a crocodile on the loose is a dangerous thing…”

“Oh yes,” they said. “No question.” A hesitation, a smile. “But I’ve got it. It’s safe in my special place. Like to see?”

She was astonished by the invitation, suspicious of it. “You’ve got the crocodile?”

“I have.” A whiff of humour, like the joke was on her. She glanced at the carved knob on the tip of the cane.

“…fractured my ankle and waiting to heal. Are you coming?”

She stood up and strode alongside her limping caped companion; had to run to keep up with them as they navigated the empty esplanade, the spaceship cars and troglodyte bicycles parked at Sea Life World, turning left then right, into the cheery lights of Kemp Town.

They stopped outside a low tavern with bow window where an upside-down naked doll hung, arms and legs all swapped around. The stranger knocked, with the twin-faced walking stick, on a door festooned in fairy lamps.

“So Harry Potter, isn’t it?”

The door opened. A shaven-headed carnival gull in feathers exclaimed “Janus!” then darted a sharp peck at the She.

“Soul mate, found adrift,” they replied.

“Come in, driftwood welcome here!”

They entered a narrow, condom-tight cabin, that extended back to cellar stairs; walls throat-red and mirrors somehow liquid, a bright tank next to the bar flashed with the round gulping mouths and disk-shaped eyes of silver fish. 

She felt mottled grey. An old stone you’d want to hurl into the flames of a fire. 

A crowd flooded in to hug and shake Janus and finding herself separated she went to where a crocodile stood on its hind legs behind the counter, a crocodile with long dreads and hoofs for feet, a crocodile wiping a dimpled glass into which it poured sea water.

She took the glass and stared. Were those tiny plankton shuddering about inside? She lifted the beaker up to the light to see.

“It’s not spiked,” grinned the crocodile.

 She sniffed, inwardly held her nose and swallowed, then looked around for Janus, saw them sucked down the throat into the cavern below. She followed, sank herself deep into its dark belly where the candles guttered and oddball chairs stood at mishmash tables, where the low ceiling dripped with fishing nets and swinging plastic lobsters; more mirrors, more fish tanks. She perched on a seat in front of a band of leathery pterodactyls as they struck up. Dream Tobacco sounded out.

Once I was a man and I loved a woman

Truly I believed that she loved me

Then some other woman came and stole my woman

Right away my life meant nothing to me…

The music, the dancing shadows, suggested the vast ancientness and newness of life; how she was floating in a bubble of time, then how time itself was stretching and spooling back to the pre-time, when crocs were dominant in the world drama, and then suddenly, she saw time flinging its tentacles up to the stars like a giant squid, up there, where one day spaceship arks would soar, seeking sanctuary, to build a home somewhere else, from which to watch the dying earth.

The pterodactyls played on.

Someone hand me down that opium pipe

Oh dream tobacco take me away

Where there ain’t no memories to lead me astray

Where I can hear sweet music the lived long day …

She sipped her drink, pausing to decide whether it was Elderflower or Kombucha. The dancers, some lean and lithe, others ponderous, were lurching and skidding on the froth of beer and seawater. There were tails; there were horns, and there was Janus, throwing off their cape, caught by a long-snouted toothless iguanodon in mulberry red who wrapped it about themselves. Janus had lost their cane, was dancing limp-free, healed by this flirtation with water.

“Who takes your fancy?” asked a proud stegosaurus in lazy drawl, wearing Lycra cyclist tights, not looking at her but lost in their own reflection in the mirror, gaze enchanted by what they saw.

“No one. I’m spoken for.”

A snort as they pulled away from the reflection, glancing at her. 

“Where is he, then?” Eyes working the room.

“It’s not a he.” 

Eyes returning, settling on her, like a surprise find.

“A she?” 

Heads spun, inquisitive glances, glitter ball fishes tapping their noses against glass aquarium walls. 

She shook her head again and took another sip of her drink. 

“It’s not a she, it’s a what.”

“A what?” Stegosaurus quizzical, wondering if she was meat.

“A croc.”

“A what?”

A whoop, as a shower of light and dead stuff fell from the ceiling, making the cavern snap and gurgle and laughter rippled out, catching Janus, her crocodile, swimming towards them in its current.

“I knew she’d fit right in,” they were saying.

In an instant, the cavern erupted into sprays of bubbles and she was paddling with Janus, singing the song of Dream Tobacco and everything boundless and boundary-less, and it was obvious that her shell was pierced.

Later, when she thought back, she remembered a tale from her childhood: the one about a Fairy Queen holding court in a big empty house, who invites two musicians from the human world to entertain her guests for the evening. They play their fiddles and stay 200 years, though they think they’ve been playing for only one night. When they leave, they catch up with human time and disintegrate, blown away by the wind. She worried that the same might happen to her, that finding herself so changed she might not survive in both worlds.

After the asteroid crash and the opening of the oceans, she crawled out of the cavern and along the esplanade, back to her own neat home, back to the cat waiting for her, and she knew she was diversified, changed from rock to croc. 

“I’ve found my tribe,” she thought. “I’ve found where I belong.”

But the next week, and every week, she tried to locate the bar in Kemp Town with the sea inside, but she never managed it. Perhaps they were all swept away by the outgoing tide, dissolved in the morning sun, perhaps they had been lost for eternity, like the escaped crocodile.

Deborah Nash is based in Brighton and has had an eclectic range of employments from fish n’ chip shop and factory floor shoe-picker to community artist, sub-editor and now writer. She has written 12 children’s books and is a regular contributor to The Wire, Selvedge, Londonist, and France magazine, among others. She was prize-winner in 2020 for the YPPT script-writing competition for a puppet play, longlisted for Emma Press picture-book call-out 2020 and her short stories appear in Litro, Stand magazine and Ambit.

“The swans on the river where we used to live have laid some eggs on a nest they made at the weir,” said Olive, who was waiting at the nursery door to collect her children, Nia and Mikey. The other mothers turned to look at Olive, but not in a good way. “I was just texting my friends to find out if they’d survived the high tide,” she continued, “and if any had hatched.” 

Olive had hoped that by saying something interesting she could engage them in conversation. And that she would have signalled that she was new, open the way to talk about moving. They might sympathise about missing friends and so on. 

“It’s a precarious place to build a nest,” she said, her voice tailing off. 

The only response from them was to move their sunglasses, as one, from the tops of their heads to cover their eyes, which was equivalent, Olive thought, to slamming a door shut.

They knew she was new anyway.

Trying to talk to them only served to precipitate the formation of the huddle that they formed every morning. Olive felt like a robot penguin that had been embedded in the huddle by the team from Frozen Planet to record their goings on. Only they’d worked out quite quickly that she may look like a penguin, but she didn’t smell like one. This was now the second week she had listened to their daily gakker about who was free for tea. By tea, they meant tea dates for the children. If the children were not available, the reasons were mostly sporty. Cricket, tennis, rowing.

Olive had chosen this school because she had liked the small classrooms set in the rooms of the old house that had been converted into a prep school. She thought the small class size of only twenty children would benefit Nia, who was a bit shy, when she started school in September. The lawns were used for games, the girls skipped across them in their straw boaters and striped summer dresses, white socks falling down around ballerina ankles. The boys kicked footballs in the timeless grey shorts of the English private school, their green woollen caps askew on their sweaty heads, all stuffed full of learning. 

Nia and Mikey had joined the nursery only a few weeks before the end of the summer term, so the timing was bad for finding some families to hang out with over the holidays. As each friendless day went by, Olive began to feel more desperate. There were two months of holidays to fill and she was going to have to spend them alone with the kids. What with all the renovations on the house, there was no money for holidays. Though no doubt Alex would manage to get abroad, Trieste or Budapest – conference season was in full swing.

Back at home she created a word document with her name and address on it, email and mobile number, plus the names of the children, imported a pretty flower motif, copied and pasted several times. She printed out the sheets and then cut them into little homemade calling cards. She made the children their tea then started baking.

When she dropped off the children the next morning, she handed the cards out to each mother as she arrived.

“I’ll be at home today,” Olive said. “Pop round, I’ve baked a cake.” 

A thin, angular woman with white-blonde hair pulled back in a severely aggressive bun, reached out her hand to Olive taking the homespun visiting card. While she assessed it, Olive looked down at the woman’s shoes – shiny black with a jewel-encrusted strap across them, with heels of only a millimetre in diameter.

“I am Liudmila. I cannot,” the woman said, in an eastern European, or possibly Russian accent. “I am cardiologist. That is,” she continued emphatically “- the heart.”

She went to return the “card” to Olive, but Olive stopped her and said, “Oh maybe you can give me a call in the summer? – your son, I don’t know his name, might want to come and play with Mikey?” 

Liudmila handed the card back, saying “Leonid has water sports and Russian language camp on Lake Baikal – that is Siberia. Do you know?” 

“Only from Dostoevsky,” Olive replied.

The look Liudmila threw her made Olive hope the spiked heels were not in fact darts.

She handed out more cards then waved bye-bye through the window to Nia and Mikey who had already donned painting aprons. 

Crossing the playground, she was passed by Clover running towards the nursery, dragging her daughter behind her. Clover’s long hair hung wavy and unkempt, her coat open.

“Hi,” said Olive. “Want to come by my place this morning? Coffee. You know.” 

“Sorry, in a rush…”

Olive waited in the street for Clover, watching the prep school mums mount their Range Rovers and drive their Sweaty Betty asses off to their yoga classes.

When Clover exited the school gate, she took the “card” from Olive with an unsteady hand.

“Who’s going?” she asked. 

“It’s a sort of open morning, I’ve invited everyone,” Olive replied in as upbeat a voice as she could manage. “But I don’t know who’ll turn up.”

Clover reached into her pocket and took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one.

“That bunch of bitches? Fuck me no!”

Then seeing Olive’s reaction and with a disdainful wave of her hand, she declared that they were all so “nouvy.” 

She puffed out a long exhalation of smoke.

“I’ve got a massive hangover. I need to find some aspirin.”

She dragged on the cigarette again. Then she stubbed the fag out in the eye of one of a pair of plaster cherubs that decorated the entrance gate of the Victorian building. Once extinguished, she used her middle finger to flick the butt over the wall into the playground.

“I’m off to see my solicitor.”

Back at home Olive filled the kettle and set some cups and some plates out on the long farmhouse-style table. And waited. 

Half an hour later there was a knock on the door and when she opened it, Kendra was standing there, and, coming up the path behind her, Nadine. Olive had seen them in the huddle and knew their names, but apart from that she had no idea what to expect of them. 

Kendra strode inside while Olive waited for Nadine. She showed her into the kitchen where Kendra was already having a good look around. 

“Nice space,” said Kendra. “You going for the ‘urban vibe’?” Her steely grey eyes coolly assessed the bare floorboards and the walls which had been stripped back to brick and not yet replastered.

“Oh no,” Olive replied. “It’s just that we’ve run out of money for a new kitchen. Replacing the roof cost a fortune.”

“Ohhhhh!” said Kendra, her eyes widening.

“The cooker’s new, obviously, and the fridge.”

Olive stood at one end of the table, at which, in their previous home, she, Alex and the kids had had many a felicitous gathering. Kendra and Nadine sat at the other end. They seemed a world away. And when Olive asked what they’d like to drink, their voices rang out, clipped and glacial, in the empty space.

“A decaf soya latte,” said Kendra.

“Peppermint tea,” said Nadine.

“Jesus Christ!” Olive joked “where do you think you are? Starbucks?” 

Instead of the expected laugh, Nadine snapped that she was dairy intolerant. She was dressed for exercise in leggings and a black hoodie. Her dyed black hair was pulled tightly back which made her face stern, prissy, even. If her aim had been Sporty Barbie, the result was more Penitential Barbie.  

“Would you make fun of a child who had allergies and intolerances?”

“Errr… no… not at all,” said Olive. “I’ll get you a glass of water.” 

Olive took the cakes out of the cake tins anticipating gasps of appreciation but neither of them noticed and they kept talking to each other. 

“I’m off to Sasha’s shortly,” Kendra said. “Need to keep an eye on the time. She wanted to show me some fabric samples for the blinds in the orangerie.” 

“Oh Sasha’s!” said Nadine, looking at Kendra as if to say, but she was my friend first. “I invited her to mine but we haven’t managed to set it up yet.”

“She told me she was overwhelmed with people inviting her places, since they moved into the Hall.” 

Olive awaited her moment, an orange and cardamom cake in one hand and a pineapple tarte tatin in the other. The tarte tatin had been tricky to produce. She’d had to throw the first attempt away and start again.

“I’ve been told my cakes taste pretty good,” she said. 

They looked up at her as if they had suddenly realised they were in a theatre and the play had begun.

“I’m thinking of setting up a cake making business.”

“Tippi’s cakes are amazing,” said Nadine.

No, they were not watching a play. They were watching the ads during an intermission for a product they were not interested in buying.

“She did one for Sam’s birthday with cricket stumps, two teams with different coloured kits, and a scoreboard that actually lit up!” said Kendra.

“Really it’s more about how they look,” said Nadine, “than about how they taste.”

“Yeah, you’d have major competition. Major.”

Olive took out a knife and the cake slice.

“Which would you like?” 

“I’m trying to lose a few pounds,” said Kendra. 

“I’m gluten intolerant,” said Nadine. 

“Anyway, I’m not that into cake.”

Olive cut herself a piece of cake. With all the waiting for things to cool and the tidying up, it had been 1.30 am before she’d got to bed, so she wanted at least to try one. But knowing that she would be the only one to indulge lessened the pleasure she would have in eating it.

Kendra stood up and went over to the large draughty windows.

“What are you doing about window treatments?” she asked, looking out to the garden that was full of rubble.

“All the frames seem in good nick. The surveyor didn’t highlight any issues.”

“I don’t mean the woodwork. I mean the dressings.”

“Dressings?”

“Have you got a designer?”

“Oh, I see what you mean. Alex has put up roller blinds til we get sorted.”

Kendra sat down beside Nadine and sighed.

“My mother-in-law has refused to pay for my new curtains.”

“That’s terrible!” Nadine’s words sympathised. But she seemed to hold her breath, her look watchful.

“Said it was the curtains or the school fees. I’d’ve happily taken the buggers out of school but Arty said it wouldn’t do for Whittier boys to be seen at a state school.”

Olive laughed.

“You think it’s funny but no one else is having to make these choices.”

Olive reined in her laughter. They all seemed to take themselves so seriously. She was going to have to adjust her sensitivity monitor because she seemed to keep misjudging them.

Kendra took her phone from her hip pocket, swishing through it. “I’m just checking the bidding,” she said. “It’s almost the hour.” 

“What are you having to sell this time?” Nadine asked.

“The Limoges.”

“The Limoges? No!” Nadine seemed horrified. But there it was again – was that an element of schadenfreude in her tone that went unnoticed by Kendra?

“Am I missing something?” Olive asked.

“Dinner service wedding present from the mother-in-law,” explained Kendra. “When am I ever going to use that? I’m no cook. It’ll pay for the curtains. It’s a Zoffany fabric, two hundred quid a metre and there’s a lot of windows.”  

“I would be surprised if the Limoges covered it,” said Nadine.

“You would be surprised,” said Kendra, rising up on the heels of her thigh length boots that she wore even though it was summer. “People pay a fortune for that old shit!”

“Old?”

“She didn’t buy it new. The dinner service was passed to her and then it was passed to me.”

“I never thought of pet food money being old money,” said Nadine.

“Pet food!” said Olive. “Is that your husband’s job?”

“He doesn’t have a job exactly,” Kendra explained, giving a deep throaty laugh. “He just lives off it!” 

“Where did you meet?” asked Olive.

“I worked for the business. In accountancy. Til I had the kids.” 

“Somebody’s got to bring up the heirs,” said Nadine.

“Two boys. Nightmare.”

Without knowing Sasha, Olive could see why she would choose Kendra over the more spartan Nadine for a curtain friend. Her clothes declared that she was not only not afraid to spend money, she wanted everyone to know it too. Over her top, she wore a fur gilet, fake or real, Olive was not qualified to appraise it.

“The thing is,” Kendra continued, “she gave us the money for a big house but then withholds the money to furnish it.”

“It doesn’t seem right!” Nadine sympathised.

“But what I say is we either get the money now or when she dies. Why wait?” 

She held her hands up in a gesture of despair, and the charms from a bangle jangled and sparkled.

“When I submitted the proposal for the curtains…”

“Hang on a minute,” Olive said, “what do you mean submitted the proposal?”

“I mean I have to ask in writing for money for every aspect of the project.”

“What project?”

“The house.”

“Oh, are you doing up a house?”

“It’s the one she lives in,” Nadine explained.

“That’s right. I have to submit a proposal to the mother-in-law every time I want to buy something for the house I live in with her son and her grandsons.”

“It’s like asking for alms,” said Nadine.

“And I’m no Catholic.”

“It’s a pity you didn’t find out about the tight grip of her hands on the purse strings before you married him.”

“That is a major regret. Major! But like I say, she can’t live forever. Anyway, in the proposal, I’d factored in an extra ten grand to clear off the credit card.”

“Can’t Arty pay it off?”

“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell him no lies.”

Now it was Olive who was watching a play from beside the kitchen counter where she was surreptitiously helping herself to another slice of cake. Kendra strode about Olive’s kitchen, her heels rapping forcefully on the wooden floor as if she was on an empty stage that she was totally owning. There was a kind of magnificence to her awfulness and her expectation that the audience would totally get her and her terrible predicament. 

“Thing is, it’s not like any of it’s for me. It’s only things for the house. But I had a few transactions go wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I bought more on eBay than I managed to sell. I usually make a small profit or even if it’s a loss it’s usually small enough to be “disappeared.” I’m hoping the Limoges will do it this time.”

“It’s incredible you have to live like that,” Nadine commiserated. “Selling expensive old stuff to buy second-hand new stuff.”

“I’m maxed out on my cards. I’ve had to ask my dad to pay them off for me.”

Kendra took her car keys from her bag.

“It was nice to see….” she looked around. “… where you live.”

Olive saw her to the door and when she returned to the kitchen, Nadine wasted no time in setting upon her.

“What’s she like? Asking her mother-in-law to pay for the curtains.”

“I thought you were friends.”

Nadine hesitated. “There’s no such thing as friendship here. Only …. manoeuvres.”

Olive wondered if Nadine’s presence at her kitchen table was an example of the said manoeuvres – Kendra went somewhere, Nadine followed.

“Is her dad loaded, too?”

“He’s a retired miner…”

“A miner? 

“… or redundant, however you put it.”

Money may make the world go round, but it seemed it was miners’ money that was doing the spinning.

“But I thought Kendra….” 

“Yeah, County Durham. She dropped the accent.  She only worked in the business til she thought it would be more profitable to marry into the family. Social climber.  In the first week of nursery, she managed to wangle the addresses of everyone from the school office, then drove around each house to see who had the biggest one! That was Sasha’s. So Kendra set about bagging her, like she had done her husband. No one else could get a look in.”

“Are they all equally awful?”

The length of time Nadine took to say “no” was not reassuring. “The question you have to ask yourself is, do you want to be socially dead?”

Olive considered this proposition and was filled with a lacerating homesickness. She had imagined an ingenuous coffee morning from a time before: the mothers would moan about their husbands and express equal amounts of pride and exasperation in their children.

There was a knock at the door.

“That might be Clover…”

It turned out to be the delivery guy with another box of paint samples.

“I didn’t think it would be Clover. She doesn’t socialise much.”

“Oh that’s a shame. She seems…. interesting.”

“She can be a bit … flaky.”

Oh?

“You didn’t hear this from me….” Nadine looked around Olive’s kitchen, though there were still just the two of them in it. “You won’t know since you’ve just arrived… She’s just come out of a clinic.”

“Oh! What sort of clinic?”

“Drying out.”

“Just come out or about to go in?” Olive asked, thinking about the playground at drop off.

“Just got out. The husband’s affair sent her over the top.”

“Is Clover ok?” 

“I think they’ve decided to make a go of it,” said Nadine picking up her bag and getting ready to go.

Olive accompanied her to the door and with quite some relief closed the door on the second of the Mothers Grim.

When Alex got back from work he asked how her morning had been. She thought about explaining, in the manner of an anthropology lecture, that in this culture it seemed to be acceptable to stalk potential friends til you worked out how much they were worth. 

“Kendra is married to the Paws and Jaws family so they’re living on dog food, as it were.” 

Alex was already sitting at the table with his laptop open. Olive glanced over his shoulder.

“Sorry, darling, what did you say?” He was looking at the average daytime temperature in July in Ankara.

Soon it was the last day of school before the summer. Olive waited outside for the children to gather up their belongings while everyone in the frenzied huddle asked everyone else where they were going on holiday. Even though they all seemed to already know. Dubai.

“Are you all going together?” Olive asked.

“Ha ha! No!” Kendra laughed, then asked “Have you ever been to Dubai?”

“I prefer not to visit places that haven’t abolished slavery,” Olive replied realising as she spoke that she was heading for social death.

She stared at the mothers as they reformed the huddle. Surely there must be someone worth getting to know? Who was she kidding? They were as grotesque as circus acts. Where was Clover? She might have proven an ally, but she had seemingly disappeared from the playground a few days after the cakeless coffeeless morning.

The children came filing out of the nursery, clutching in their guileless fingers the term’s output of crafting. Mikey handed a pile of paintings to Olive. She set them in the pram and followed him and Nia across the playground, glancing down at Mikey’s piece of art nouveau. White feathers glued onto some glinting, coloured paper. It made her think of the swans on the river where they used to live. “What is it you’ve made?” she asked, hoping for spiritual guidance from her small son. “What does it mean? Is it swans? Are they swimming away? Or are they returning to the riverbank where they were born?” But Mikey’s interest lay elsewhere now and he ran to the school gate beyond which beckoned the carefree days of summer.

Nadine called from the huddle that she’d be in touch. It was pathetic, Olive felt, to hang on to this potential offer, like receiving a job offer to work for someone she didn’t like. What would she have to do or become to breach Fortress Huddle? Why did she want anything to do with them? It was this: they had what Olive, Nia and Mikey needed – children. Maybe the white feathers in Mikey’s collage were not swans but her soul which might be swept away by dark waters, if she stayed here, and entered into a Faustian pact with the huddle. 

During the holidays, Olive divided the local park into what she termed Zones of Enjoyment, the playpark, the paddling pool, the pinewoods. All summer, the three of them alone. In the last week, she received a postcard from Nadine with a picture of the Burj Al Arab hotel. On the back was a scribbled note saying sorry they’d been too busy to get in touch but would “catch up” soon. The card had been posted in England. It reminded Olive that they’d be returning to the elite sports academy she had unwittingly signed up for. So she booked a tennis court for an hour and tried to give her four year old and two year old some tennis coaching. It didn’t go well.

In the next court sitting on a bench was one of the mothers she recognised from school. She was reading a book while her twin boys were coached on the courts.

“What you reading?” Olive asked. 

The woman didn’t speak but, by way of an answer, she turned the book to Olive.

Olive took in the title, “How to Raise a Champion” while Nia stood by, observing. Beside them, Mikey scuffed the tennis racket along the surface of the court. 

“Not my cup of tea,” said Olive, chivvying Nia and Mikey to pack up their belongings.

“No wonder nobody likes us,” Nia commented as they set off home. “You should’ve just said you liked that book. That’s what we do at nursery when you don’t like someone’s drawing. If you don’t, they won’t be friends with you.” 

“So you lie to make friends?”

Nia folded her arms across her chest like the village wise woman and, head down and determined, set off up the stony path that led to the road home. Olive followed behind pushing Mikey in the pram. The little Joan Miró was making abstract drawings in a notebook, holding three different pencils in his left hand, a frozen lolly in his right. Nia stopped at the locked gate of every house they passed and pointed in, saying “Do they have children in that house? Do you think any children live in there?”

And at home, hearing children’s voices from the garden next door, Mikey crouched down on his hunkers and called through the gap in the hedge. “Children! Children! Come and play! Look! See! I’ve got pencils.” And he set the very pencils down on the hardened earth below the hedge like an offering to the Gods of Friendship. 

It was as if the children knew a tangible relationship such as friendship was the only way to prove that they existed. But no reply came from behind the locked gates, nor through the glossy leaves of the suburban privet. They might have been the otherworldly family, Olive, Nia and Mikey, from a ghost film, going about their lives on one side of a wall, unseen and unknown, on the other side of which lived The Others.

My debut novella, Source, won the New Fictions Prize in 2020 and was published by Story Machines in 2021. I have completed a debut novel, The Children of Angels’ Eyrie, about a century of conflict as seen through the eyes of two families who live in the same house in Yorkshire, 100 years apart. My short story collection, Dismantling the Catapult, is nearing completion. I am the editor of The Vixen, a magazine of art and lit based in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, where I live with my family.

If you ever come looking for me, you’ll find me sitting in my car at the Kisementi car park, listening to Radio One.  Kisementi is a shopping centre on Number 12 Bukoto Street, in Kololo, a suburb of Kampala. Opposite me are the Fat Boyz pub and Payless Supermarket. On my left are a local handicraft shop, The Banana Boat and The Crocodile restaurant, and on my right, the Christian Bookshop. From my car, I enjoy watching the congestion of boda bodas, special hires, taxis, matatus and private cars. I do this every day for a few minutes or a few hours. It all depends. 

*

A few months ago, Inayat and I were at a dinner party.

‘I hope you’re getting ready for your job at Radio One?’ Nicole said, patting her chic bob and smoothing down her pale pink dress. Next to her with unruly curls and in black chiffon, I felt like a witch with secrets. Before I could answer, Inayat said to Marc, ‘Let’s get a drink and I’ll tell you about our trip to Thailand.’ They walked across the garden towards the bar.

‘Thailand?’ Nicole said. 

‘It’s the first I’m hearing of it,’ I said. ‘These days Inayat’s living in his own world. He doesn’t pay any attention to me.’

She laughed. ‘Men have short attention spans when it comes to their wives.’  

The fairy lights in the tree twinkled and music from the bar drifted across the lawn. 

On our way home, Inayat drove past Kisementi. I turned in my seat to look at the car park. It was dark aside from the orange and green flashing neon sign, Fat Boyz: Warm Beers and Soggy Burgers.

‘What’s the matter?’ Inayat said. 

‘Nothing.’ 

‘So we’re all booked for Thailand, for the week after next.’ 

‘But I’ve got my interview with Radio One.’ 

He replied by pressing his foot on the accelerator and we swerved around a blind corner.

I spent the next day at my desk. I was in-between jobs waiting for the interview with Radio One. The role was for script editing. Looking out beyond the balcony, I felt the old listlessness coming. I ran down to the garden, went down on my knees, and started digging up the flowerbed. The soil was damp and warm in my hands, and my spirits revived.  After I’d finished uprooting all the plants, I lay back on the grass and watched the sky. It was almost dusk. Nothing was permanent; you could only rely on change. 

I heard Inayat’s car honking. He drove up, parked and I waved. He raised his hand and entered the house.

I stayed outside. The sky turned golden yellow with streaks of pink and red. A low flying creature flapped past. The night watchman whistled, switching on the garden lamps. Clouds moved across the sky, around me trees cast dark shadows on the lawn. Something brushed against my face, crickets whistled in the grass and a dog barked. I picked up a plant I’d dug up and went back to the house.  

Inayat was in the study watching television. My hands were covered in soil and fingernails were filled with mud. The back of my shirt was damp and my forehead clammy. I pushed my fingers through my hair and pulled out bits of grass. 

 ‘About time,’ he said, and turned his attention back to the television. I lifted my arm and aimed the plant at him, hoping its thin, straggly roots would land in the middle of his face. But he ducked and it landed on the rug. 

‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ he said. 

‘Nothing.’ 

The next morning at breakfast I said to Inayat, ‘Could you pass me the sugar, please?’ From behind his newspaper, he handed me the butter dish. As usual, he hadn’t been listening. I took a teaspoonful of butter and stirred it in my tea. Oil globules floated to the surface. 

Inayat folded his newspaper and stood up. ‘I’ll be late tonight.’

Butter and tea don’t mix.

Back in the study, the plant was still lying on the rug, wasting. I felt a familiar lethargy coming over me. I had to shake it off. I began rearranging the bookshelves. Some of the tomes were my childhood favourites. I’d brought them across to Kampala from Nairobi when I’d moved. I turned the pages, trying to reconnect with who I’d been and who I was now. Each book had a different smell, musty, grassy, acidic and one even had a hint of vanilla. A bookmark fell out of one; an old birthday card from Inayat. When had those gestures meant something?

At dusk, I stood on the balcony. Dozens of Kaloli marabou storks circled the sky.  One by one, they descended onto the trees in the garden, their black cloak-like wings opening and closing around their skinny, white legs and then swooped down and stalked the spot of grass where I’d lain the previous evening. They moved silently, scavenging, necks with pink throat sacs hanging like amulets, retracting and stretching. The night watchman put on the lamps, and the birds took flight, leaving their spirits lurking in the garden.  

My phone beeped. A message from Inayat: Don’t wait up. I’ll be late.  

I parked in my usual spot opposite Fat Boyz and listened to Jazz Hour on Radio One. Kisementi was packed with cars, shoppers and street sellers. Outside the kiosk in the middle of the car park, a man was roasting gonja on a makeshift stove. As usual, for Friday nights, the Christian bookshop had been converted into a bar and barbecue joint. Outside on the pavement revellers feasted on mchomo and waragi. I switched off the radio, reclined the seat and shut my eyes. 

When I woke some time later, Payless and The Crocodile were closed but near the entrance to Fat Boyz, merrymakers were still sitting around chimezas with their bottles. For a moment I thought I saw Inayat, but of course it couldn’t have been. He never came to Kisementi.     

It began to rain. It drizzled, then hard drops hit against the windscreen and the bonnet. I turned on the wipers and switched on the headlights. Everyone rushed inside Fat Boyz, overturning the chimezas and chairs. The wipers swished back and forth, the windows steamed up. 

It was after midnight when I drove back to the house. 

I stood in the study watching the nsenenes hopping around in the balcony.  Winged termites clustered around the light bulb. In the garden, the watchman had tied a plastic bag over his head and was waving a fishing net around the lamps. 

The rain stopped. Drowned insects floated in the pools of water on the balcony floor. The watchman pulled out a low stool, and sat down with an open newspaper on his lap. 

I went down to the car and drove to the gate. The watchman tapped on my window.

‘Nyabo, a gift for you.’  He offered me a damp, rolled up newspaper. Inside was a clump of dead nsenenes. 

‘Why are you giving me these?’ I said.

‘No wings, no legs, and ready to eat. Just fry in butter. Please try Madam, once you start, you won’t stop.’

I pushed the newspaper back into his hands. 

At Kisementi I parked near Fat Boyz and ate the half-eaten bar of chocolate I found in the glove-box.  My phone rang. 

‘Where are you?’ Inayat said. ‘I’ve had enough of your stupid hide and seek games.’  

‘You mean yours?’

‘What nonsense.’ He hung up.

I waited till the neon sign at Fat Boyz had been switched off, and then drove back to the house. The watchman was packing his things to go off duty. A cock crowed, and in the hazy light of daybreak the garden appeared dreamlike. The study light was on; Inayat was waiting for me. As I turned the key in the door, the light in the study went out. I left the key and returned to my car. 

At the Sheraton I took a shower and tried to sleep but the pillow and bed clothes smelt musty. I lay in bed listening to voices from the corridor, someone was saying, ‘Paralysis, paralysis.’ I sat up and realised they were calling, ‘Room service, room service.’ 

The next day I telephoned Nicole and told her what had happened.

‘You’re overreacting,’ she said. ‘That’s how all men are. More importantly, don’t forget your interview’s on the fifteenth.’  

At the end of the week I left the hotel and rented a furnished flat. I sent Inayat a text message saying I needed my clothes and books. He replied saying he’d leave them outside the front door and I could send someone to pick them.

I arranged a taxi and the driver came back with a broken box full of wet books and clothes. He said he’d found the box dumped at the bottom of the garden and complained that his freshly polished shoes had become muddy when he’d rescued some of the books from the flower bed. The box had given way when he’d lifted it. He said the watch man had asked where I was.   

‘I told him I don’t know anything, I’m just a taxi driver.’ 

I wiped each book at a time and dried the pages with a hair dryer, but they were ruined forever.

 In the evening I parked across from Fat Boyz and sat listening to the traffic updates on Drive Time. I noticed a familiar car reversing into a parking space.  A man got out and walked to the alley between The Crocodile and Banana Boat. He stopped at the stall selling pirated DVDs and fake mobile phones. My view was blocked by two passing cars and the next thing I knew, the man was standing beside my car, knocking on my window. I rolled it down. 

‘What a lovely surprise seeing you here,’ Inayat said. ‘How have you been?’ and then, ‘I’ve missed you.’ 

‘You spoilt my books,’ I said.

He looked the same, clean shaven, hair combed neatly to one side, shirt starched and pressed. Nothing had changed. Why should it have? I’d left him a few days, weeks or months ago? I’d lost track. Life had continued. 

 ‘The past’s the past,’ he said. ‘Let’s start again. We can still make it to Thailand. It’ll help you recover.’ 

‘What do you mean recover?’ I said. ‘Recover from what?’

Before he could answer, a boy sidled up to the car, his arms filled with flowers;  pink lilies, white tuber roses and yellow carnations. ‘Ki kati, Ssebo, why not give flowers to your beautiful Nyabo?’ he said.

‘Good idea,’ Inayat said, ‘I’ll buy them all.’ 

The boy looked at me and smiled. ‘Ssebo loves his Madam, she is lucky.’ 

Inayat paid the boy, took the flowers, opened the back door and placed them on the seat. The car was filled with the cloying scent of lilies. I looked straight ahead, a woman in a black dress with a dog was entering Payless.

 ‘See you soon,’ Inayat said. ‘I’ll be waiting for you. At home.’ He bent to look at me through the window, but I did not turn my head and when I did not answer he straightened and tapped the roof of my car. ‘Don’t be late,’ he said and walked back to his car parked near the Christian bookshop. 

I stayed at Kisementi listening to Radio One, until the music at Fat Boyz had faded, and the neon sign Warm Beers, Soggy Burgers had been switched off, and the car park was empty.

Farah Ahamed’s short fiction and essays have been published in The White Review, Ploughshares, The Massachusetts Review, The Mechanics’ Institute Review, and other literary journals. You can read more of her work here: farahahamed.com.

The king has been a prisoner

And a prisoner long in Spain

And Willie of the Winsbury

Has lain long with his daughter at home

Liz wipes a tankard dry, humming along with the fiddler and the singer in the corner. The tavern is only half full tonight, a crowd of beardless students daring each other to one more ale, and a few older men scattered about the place.

At the bar, across from Liz, the scholars continue their bickering.

‘This ballad? It’s about a king who finds his daughter playing at St. George with a chamberlain. Ha! Must have taken a good hiding from the King, I am sure,’ says the physicist, with a wink. He is wide, with a swollen red nose and a curtain of beard.

The historian jumps in, his voice as mousy as his demeanour, all whiskers on a gaunt face. ‘She did not take a hiding. Listen carefully. She marries the lad, in the end.’

‘Sure she does. Tell me, what kind of king gives his daughter away to some chamberlain?’

‘Actually, according to my sources, it was Francis I,’ offers the American, taking off his glasses and wiping them on his sleeve. He is squat with a headful of curls, like a child. Indeed, Liz hears them call him by the name Child. But his eyes are bright and intelligent, and the other men keep quiet, curious to hear him speak. ‘And your chamberlain, Willie of the Winsbury, is no other than James V of Scotland, or so it has been suggested by the folk-tellers. I should know; I have collected this very ballad in my English and Scottish Popular Ballads.’

The historian’s eyes twinkle with curiosity. ‘By heaven, if Willie is James V then Janet must be…’

‘Madeleine of Valois.’

‘Madeleine? Wasn’t her head taken from her grave ‘bout a century ago? They said it still looked beautiful, two hundred years after her death.’

The three men sip their ale and listen to another verse:

Cast off, cast off your berry-brown gown

You stand naked upon the stone

That I may know you by your shape

If you be a maiden or none

The historian turns to the men and tuts, his mouth curling up in a grimace: ‘What kind of princess lets herself be seduced like that?’

With a bang, Liz places three copious tankards of ale on the bar, and the three men jump on their stools.

‘And how would you know that she wanted to be seduced?’ she says, hand on hip, looking down at the historian.

The three men stare, their mouths hung open, until Child clears his throat and adjusts his spectacles. 

‘Well, all of my research into variants of the ballad tell the same story. The girl lies with Willie Winsbury, falls pregnant and the King secures their union.’

‘The ballad only says that Willie lies with her,‘ Liz insists. ‘The girl never asks to lie with him, nor to be disrobed like that in front of her father. It is only the men from your ballads that love to pry inside of women’s bellies,’ she adds, holding her own flabby belly and shaking it up and down.

Child and the other men look at each other with amused grins. 

‘But he’s only helping her, miss,’ Child says. ‘Making sure the boy will marry her, rather than leave her with child. If I have learnt anything from these folk tales, it is that times used to be simpler than they are now.’

Liz scoffs. ‘Do you really believe that everything is simpler once a woman is married? What if she did not wish to marry him?’

The physicist is incensed by this. Liz can tell from his cheeks, which are turning bright red. ‘If she didn’t wish to marry him, she shouldn’t have lain with him, should she? Anyhow, Mr. Child here is a folklorist and he understands the meaning of these ballads better than yourself.’ He empties his tankard and bangs it on the bar, although he manages little more than a hollow clatter.

Liz cackles a big belly laugh that makes all three men nearly fall off their stools. ‘And weren’t these folk songs written by common people like myself?’ she mocks. 

In the corner, the singer sings another verse:

And will you marry my daughter Janet

By the truth of your right hand?

Oh, will you marry my daughter Janet?

I will make you the lord of my land

Liz stares wistfully towards the musicians, her arms crossed over her chest, a frown creasing her forehead. 

‘You scholars have a lot to learn about the business of laying and the business of marriage. And, it would seem, the business of queens,’ she says. ‘Forget your history books, I will tell you what happened.’

*

It is the night when the Scots insist on their time-honoured tradition, even though their King is not yet arrived in Loire. There will be plenty of time for Scots and Frenchmen to discuss their old alliance, but for now the halls are decked in holly and ivy and the men cry for misrule.

Madeleine sits at her father’s place in the dining hall, staring down at the sprawl of men. The loudest and brawliest of all, a yeoman known as Willy Wynnesbury with fiery red hair, has already done the rounds of the King’s wines, and is now taking out his lute and shouting out the old folk songs, more and more obscene as the night wears on . His voice is raucous and harsh, but not at all displeasing. From where she’s sitting at the high table, Madeleine can see that, despite his tongue, his face is sweet and radiant like the perfect child of Venus and Mars.

Now Willy is drawing the crowd of Scots into chant, raising a storm of voices with the lift of his arms: Will, Will, Will, Will, Will, Will.

The chorus reaches a crescendo, and then he wills it to quieten by lowering his arms and stepping onto the table.

‘Christmas is upon us!’ he shouts.

‘Yea!’

‘Let us celebrate!’

‘Yea!’

‘Let us eat!’

‘Yea!’

‘Let us gamble!’

‘Yea!’

‘Let us drink ‘til we drop dead!’

The ruckus begins once again. Yea, yea, yea, yea!

In comes a page boy, just a child—younger even than Madeleine—in his hands a chapeau with goat horns and asses’ ears. The boy climbs onto the table and raises it to the yeoman’s head and, as he is crowned Lord of Misrule, Willy Wynnesbury makes the backwards sign of the cross and the Scotsmen howl with delight.

Willy now prances towards the high table and stares directly up at Madeleine, his eyes burning into hers, as flaming as his red hair. Madeleine’s heart beats hard, but she doesn’t look away. He may be Lord of Misrule, but she is the King’s daughter and will not give up her authority so easily. But, by heaven, is he handsome. 

There is a mischievous grin on Willy’s face as he bows down, his chapeau of horns almost falling off his head. ‘A dance, m’lady?’ he says, and this sends the Scotsmen into sniggers. 

Madeleine feels her cheeks burn. Dance, with a yeoman? Whoever heard of such a thing?

Madeleine shakes her head no, and Willy turns to face the Scotsmen, bending over in mock despair, shaking his head with its goat’s horns as if Madeleine had brought him to tears.

This is more than enough to set the Scotsmen off once more, and they roar with laughter, lifting Willy onto their shoulders and parading him around the hall, while the yeoman shoves his body to and fro, mimicking acts of obscenity.

By midnight, Willy Wynnesbury has driven the court to madness, and Madeleine is retiring to her sleeping quarters. Winter takes a toll, even in Loire, and the cold has already begun to spread up her chest and to take hold. The cough always comes at this hour, and her neck feels swollen like a baby’s belly. Madeleine climbs under her covers and closes her eyes.

It feels like two shakes of a lamb’s tail before she is awakened. The draft is making the embers of the fireplace blink.

There is a presence in the room, and it stirs. She can see its outlines in the darkness. The air around the figure is different, wispy and ghostly.

Madeleine shuts her eyes. She is not so sick tonight that she should pray. Whatever it is, it will go away.

A creak of floorboards breaks the spell and Madeleine’s heart thrums in her ribs.

‘Who is it?’ She meant for her voice to sound strong, but she is too frail and angry to realise that she is afraid.

The ghost makes its way to the fireplace and, in an instant, a gleam of light fills the chamber as he walks towards her bed, lantern in hand. Red flushes his cheeks and his hair, and the hint of madness is still in not quite gone from his eyes. Madeleine sits up quickly, bringing the covers up to her neck.

‘You.’

He is shushing her, his voice soft and low where before it had been loud and rowdy. ‘Quiet, my lady. I am not who you think I am.’

‘I know who you are,’ she hisses, the hairs at the back of her neck spiralling into a panic. ‘You are William Wynnesbury. How did you get in my chamber?’

Willy grins and he sets his lantern on the ground. ‘It was easy to arrange. As I was saying, I am not who you think I am… Perhaps you would care to make a guess?’

Madeleine stares carefully at his face. It doesn’t take her long to surmise. His reputation precedes him, after all. It’s not been three months since he went to see Mary at St. Quentin, and don’t the rumours say that he went to her in disguise, as a commoner? And every nobleman at court has heard the other stories. How he likes to travel around his kingdom, playing his lute for pennies.

‘James,’ she says. ‘Your Grace,’ she hastily adds.

James looks very pleased with himself. He extends his hand and takes hers. His skin is so hot it is almost scalding.

‘And you are the lovely Madeleine, the one who has eluded me for so long. Do you know how many times I have asked your father for your hand? Ever since I first saw you at that hunting-party. Although, it would seem, I did not make the same impression on you.’ His grin widens, but Madeleine makes no response. ‘Now tell me, Madeleine, would your father still object to our union were he to find me in your bed?’

James is drawing closer, but it is not the sweet child of Venus and Mars that she sees upon his face now, but something dark and more urgent.

‘Yes, he would,’ she tries to say. Her voice is trembling, and when she tries to move away, her back only comes against the wooden frame of her bed.

Outside, in the hallway, silence reigns over the dead of night. Only many long hours will bring the dawn.

Weeks pass in this manner, and Madeleine grows resigned to her fate. She wants, more than anything, to find in James’ face the signs of his beauty, the sweet countenance she first remarked upon. But there is only ugliness in his burning eyes, and under the flicker of the fireplace, he is nothing more than St. George’s dragon, romping over her like a beast.

It is only a few weeks before the whispers begin to spread among the maids. She can tell from their looks. Then, one morning, she is too exhausted to climb out of bed, and when the chambermaid brings her the pot, she retches into it.

‘My lady, you are ill.’

‘Be quiet,’ she snarls. ‘I have always been ill.’

It is no use. Soon after the King returns to Loire, he calls for her. She is surprised to find him in his chamber alone, except for one of the old nurses with a dry and sober face, more lines than flesh, and a stare that makes Madeleine look away.

‘Father!’ She runs towards him to embrace him, but the King’s arms do not wrap themselves around her. Madeleine looks up at him. King Francis’s eyes are purple with weariness, and his beard conceals the downward curve of his mouth.

‘What is it, father?’ Madeleine can’t keep her voice steady. She stirs, knowing what’s coming.

‘Cast off your gown.’

Madeleine starts, his words sending her into a panic. She grabs onto her skirts, but her father will no longer meet her eye, so she attempts her sweetest voice, to invoke her father’s love. ‘Father?’

‘Cast off your gown.’

Madeleine is rooted to her spot, but King Francis turns to look at the nurse and nods his head, and the woman walks towards Madeleine, her mouth small and ugly like a sprat.

Madeleine sinks to the ground, her arms crossed over her chest, her teeth ready to bite. But the nurse’s fingers are stiff like the dead and Madeleine can’t slip away from them, not until she is naked upon the flagstone, bare as the day she was born, her hands endeavouring to cover her body. But her arms can’t hide the signs, which her father reads like the sky.

Madeleine is pale and wan and her belly is bloated. Her breasts are heavy and tender and her haunches are round. She kneels upon the ground, her spine white like a sheet, until King Francis picks up her gown and throws it over her furiously.

‘Well? Was it with a lord or a duke or a knight? Or was it with one of my serving men?’

For a moment, Madeleine wants to tell him who it really was, to see relief in his eyes, perhaps even pity or sadness. But she is angry now, and when she bites her tongue she tastes venom.

‘It was with William Wynnesbury.’

The King dithers, his face blank. Then he walks out of the chamber and calls out to his men. ‘Fetch me William Wynnesbury.’

Soon enough, they return. ‘William Wynnesbury, Your Majesty.’

His hair looks redder in the light of the King’s chamber, like dancing firelight. As he enters, he smiles broadly at the King, bowing excessively. 

‘Most Christian Majesty.’

The King is about to speak when he stops, as if he’s seen a ghost, squinting at the boy in front of him.

‘King James?’ he drawls.

‘In the flesh.’ And, of all things, he curtsies.

The King’s anger is seeping away from his face now, to be replaced by something more like fear.

‘What is the meaning of this?’

‘I believe the meaning is quite clear,’ James says. ‘We have an old alliance to upkeep. And you, Majesty, a lovely daughter. I will leave the rest to you.’

He bows once more, and he is off.

Madeleine looks at her father. The old King’s lips are trembling, and she suddenly feels fondness for him. She wants to hold him, and to feel him protect her like he always used to. But before she can touch him, he has turned to her, and his eyes are sad.

‘You will be married, of course. I will make the arrangements.’

Madeleine feels last night’s cold slice through her bones.

‘Father, I swear I did not go to him. Please don’t make me marry him. I can’t go to Scotland. You know I must stay here with you, where the weather is mild.’

‘You are carrying his child!’ King Francis looks at her with an expression of both pity and distaste, and it catches at her breath. 

‘I did not want his child!’

King Francis turns away, towards the window, and Madeline stands, waiting to hear what is to be done with her, hoping that her father will pity her. That he will understand that it was all against her will. 

But when her sentence comes, it is her father’s voice, rather than his words, that deliver the verdict. He is bitter and resigned, and underneath it all there is not a dreg of compassion.

‘You will wed him and, as early as Spring, you will travel north to Scotland.’

The nurse, tucked away in the corner, clears her throat and motions to Madeleine to follow. There is much to administer.

The wedding, like all royal weddings, is widely attended and splendidly decorated. James wears a red coat that offends all dignitaries, civil and royal, and they note he cannot speak a word of French.

As they say their vows, Madeleine feels herself suspended in mid-air, looking down upon her own pale body and at how the red of the coat is swallowing her up.

Afterwards, there is much jousting and merry-making. It is only a matter of months before the weather becomes reasonable, Her Grace’s health finally permitting that they travel north.

This is how Madeleine finds herself on a ship one Whitsun Eve, five months and eighteen days since the day she was married at Notre Dame. The air is far from the temperance of the valley of Loire, or even the mild chill of the streets of Paris. Here, it is icy sharp, and as she stands on the deck, her fingers holding onto the bulwark, she feels how the cold has been sucked up into her chest, settling around her heart.

The fleet of ten ships that set off from the north coast of France a month earlier approaches Leith, and in the distance, the shapes of the Scottish coast bob sharper, like a blotch of ink filling her vision with each swell of the freezing waters.

Madeleine can feel the weight of her life in the cellars below her feet and the surrounding ships: furniture and clothing, ruby and oriental pearl, silver cups and plates. Each of them the most magnificent in Europe, and the most expensive. These precious possessions will fill the treasury of the Scots, a gift of generosity from King to King, father to husband.

When the anchor drops and she steps on the Scottish land, she is immediately sick, the shaking worse than it has ever been, and two maid-servants help her onto the ground. She is swollen all over and there is a persistent pain in her belly; she could vomit up her entire innards. She looks down at her skirts and then she sees it, the blood flowing out from her body in a perfect circle, coming from between her thighs—

*

‘That is certainly not what happened!’ wails the physicist. Liz has come to learn that it takes a strong stomach to be a woman, and that men usually lack that quality. 

‘I tend to agree,’ adds Child. ‘There is no record of any pregnancy, or loss thereof—’

‘There is your beloved ballad,’ objects Liz, her hand resting gently on her belly, her eyes long and forlorn.

‘But you cannot base your story upon your favourite parts of the ballad with unequal judgement! These songs reflect the desires and longings of the common people, passed down through the generations. They are rather… How can I say…? Symbolic representations of our historical events, and not accurate ones.’

‘Child makes a good point,’ offers the historian. ‘And as pertains to Madeleine, we only have to turn to the historical records to learn what happened to her.’

‘And who wrote these records of yours?’ protests Liz. ‘Were these historians in Madeleine’s bedchamber when James slipped in to see her? Did they witness the exchange between father and daughter when the old King announced that she should marry the Scot? And what happened to Madeleine, after the wedding? Did she live happily ever after?’

The historian replies, hesitant. ‘If memory serves right, didn’t Madeleine die just a few months later? Her poor health didn’t carry her through to Scotland. It’s why King Francis didn’t want to give her to him, at first.’

They fall into silence, thick like ink, and with nothing left to be said, Liz hands them all fresh tankards and walks around the tavern, picking up empty ones to wash and wipe.

It is only as she returns behind the bar that she catches a waft of speech from the physicist who, it appears, can contain himself no longer.

‘If it isn’t a slap-up ballad though,’ he says.

Cristina Ferrandez is a Birkbeck graduate interested in the feminist revisionist fairy tale and mythology tradition pioneered by writers such as Angela Carter, and in exploring relationship power dynamics and trauma through the lens of folklore. She is currently working on two novels: a YA fantasy novel inspired by traditional witchcraft practices in the West Country and ’90s pop culture, and a literary novel exploring the lives of three generations of women in a small town.