I think he died for me...

'I think he died for me.'  You looked at me expectantly, 'Greta said that didn't she?' You were gesturing to my own dogeared copy of Dubliners in your lap.

It was one of those days, those beautiful sunny days that our mid-twenties seemed to be made of. We were lying in the grass, outside the lecture hall, coffee and half eaten sandwiches lay abandoned around us. The smell of illicit smoke drifted out from behind the science lab. The physics students were the worst for it, maintaining that the weed opened their minds so they could understand the complex world of theoretical physics. High, they could debate the merits of String Theory over Loop Quantum Gravity, or whatever it is that theoretical physicists talk about while high. Probably Stargate Universe versus Atlantis if we're being honest.

'Hey!' You tapped me with your highlighter on the knee, 'I asked you a question.'

'Yeah, Greta said it about Michael Furey, to Gabriel.' You were still looking at me. 'What?' I asked, feeling uncomfortable under your gaze.

'Well... Did he die for her?' You were smiling, that smile.

I wanted to tell you yes. I wanted to tell you that poor Michael Furey risked his already failing health to throw stones at Greta's window, that it had meant he loved her, and that he died in order to let her know. It wasn't true though. At least not to me. Greta's statement that Michael Furey died for her was just romanticism. What Michael died of was consumption, not a broken heart. We had discussed the line in lectures and tutorials, you would have known if you bothered to attend your lectures.

It was easy to see the romance in Joyce, the romance in Ireland, it wasn't always so easy to see the truth. That's what Joyce was saying, the Irish, we were too caught up in the romanticism of ourselves. The line was supposed to be a homage to Yeats' Cathleen ni Houlihan, Yeats' feminine representative of Eire, the woman who men would die for, and die willingly. Once again, you would have known this yourself if you had bothered to show up one in awhile, instead of two weeks before finals. I looked at you then, feeling a compulsive urge to land this all on you, to corrupt the image you had of Greta, of Joyce, of Ireland and maybe even of yourself.

As I opened my mouth a breeze drifted over the grass and swept itself up in your hair. You laughed as you tried to catch the wily strands, drifting around your face, obscuring you for a second or two. I watched you, taking each strand and pulling them back into your hands at the nape of your neck. You leaned over, so close to me I thought for a minute that this was the moment, instead you lifted my ballpoint pen out of my open notebook and used it to pin your hair. You sat back, a satisfied smile on your lips, and picked Dubliners, cracking the already battered spine some more.

'Are you planning on answering me?' You were pouting now, half mocking half serious.

I thought again for a moment and said 'Yes, he died for her.'

As you lay back in the grass, sighing with the romanticism of it all, I thought about what I should have said.

Michael Furey didn't die for Greta, but I would die for you.    

The Fields

Somewhere in this place there is a tree that bares two names. I’m not even sure if it even still exists. Perhaps, the universe in some attempt at poetic justice, tore it down shortly after the end. It would only have been fair, but when has the universe ever been fair to us? I know if it was still there I could find it if I really wanted. I hope it’s waiting there, somewhere on the far boundary of Mahon’s land, in a row of twenty or thirty trees, the past waits. I stand here, staring out my Mother’s kitchen window, the memories of my childhood should over power me, the smell of apple tarts long since eaten, the sound of my Father walking in the door, but all I see are images of you and me. I can see, from the window, myself as young as twelve and as old as nineteen, running out the back door, my Father yelling at me, my Mother fretting, and me, running, long hair streaming, down the garden to meet you. My hair was so long then, do you remember? You used to say that when I ran it was like I had a cape, streaming out behind me. It was too long really, it was constantly getting caught on the rough wood of the garden fence as I climbed over it to meet you in the empty field between our two lands.

Yesterday, I extracted myself from my present, saying I needed to walk the garden, alone, alone with my past. I walked down to the old fence, it’s wood is peeling and chipping, the rung where I used to put my foot is gone now, rotten with the weight of my life journey which all passed over this fence. It was here that I realised for the first time that we were no longer just friends. It happened when, at fourteen, you reached up to my waist in order to help me down off the fence. I remember feeling flushed, my heart pounding in my chest, my hands flickering nervously, pulling loose strands of hair from my head. I looked at you, through the cloak of my hair, and for the first time I wondered what it would be like to kiss my best friend. Disgusting, I decided, and then promptly punched you in the arm, complaining about you treating me like ‘a girl’. Your look of puzzlement is one image of you that I cherish like a lost photograph in my mind. For years, when I replayed the moment we first shared something other then friendship, I thought that the look was one of confusion over my ‘girl’ statement, but now, with the benefit of age, and having had more then one man look at me like that, I realise that your confusion, like my own, was about the energy that had suddenly, but subtly changed around us.

It was a surprise and a mystery to us and no one else that we fell in love. Everyone saw it coming, our friends, the priest, the teachers in school, the residents of our small town, even our parents. The cries of ‘Look out for that Riordan fella, he’s trouble!’ stung when we were friends, but cut me like knives when we became more. They never understood that sins could be inherited. After that day things changed for us. We were still friends, but you started helping me down from the fence when I climbed over it to meet you, and I started letting you. We would savour that brief contact, your hands on my waist, and when I turned around to face you, ready for the day of adventure, or school or just walking the fields, we stood for a moment, closer than friends stand. Then as if a spell was cast and broken we would snap apart and begin discussing the world according to us. If it was fourteen that I first thought I might like to kiss you (if the idea hadn’t been so disgusting), it was fifteen that I realised that what was between us was not just friendship. We held hands, we shared secrets, we lived in each others pockets, sneaking out late at night to lie in empty fields and look up at the stars.

I think it was your future I fell in love with. You wanted to leave this place, to go to a city like Dublin, or maybe London if you were in a particularly adventurous mood. I was always paralysed with fear when you talked about moving away. ‘What will I do?’ I wanted to say, ‘How will I live without you here?’ I never wanted you to go, but I’d be damned if I was going to say it out loud. I never really understood why you wanted to leave so much, you hated talking about what things were like at home. You steadfastly ignored my questions about bruises and cuts, preferring to distract me with something else. Eventually I stopped asking, and you stopped hiding the bruises and the scars. It was our version of a compromise. Then one day, as we lay in the sun in the empty fields, twirling long blades of grass in the air and watching the light fracturing around us. You leaned over me to grab one of the cans of coke I had stolen from my fridge at home. Your t-shirt lifted up and all I could see were the welts. Welts you kept hidden from me. I never fully understood how it got so bad, I knew you thought you deserved it which is why you hid them, and I knew that no matter what I said to you, this would always be your secret shame. I couldn’t resist running my finger along the edge of one of the scars, I was surprised at how smooth the skin was, how deep the wound must have been. You pulled back, tugging your t-shirt down, I knew I had tears in my eyes, but I didn’t know how to clear them away without you noticing, so we stared at each other for awhile, and then when I opened my mouth to say something, anything, you leaned in and kissed me.

I remember the next two years as one long summers day. In my mind, we spent two years smiling, laughing and loving each other. We didn’t keep it a secret, but we kept it to ourselves. It would have been foolish to try and keep it under the radar, with everyone smiling at us, secret smiles that said they knew. The parish priest lectured us both on young love, hormones and waiting. We were waiting, but we didn’t know for what. I know that we spent two years moving further and further to that emotional and physical end point, getting closer and closer in the empty fields, in the middle of the night. My Mother washed grass stains out of my pyjamas, but said nothing. My Father just sulked, I’m sure my Mother must have said something to him, but as my curves filled out I found my Father had less and less time for me. I was a woman now, no longer his little girl, I don’t think he knew how to handle it. I know he wanted to blame you, to hurt you before you hurt me, but he didn’t get the chance. I remember the first time we talked about it. All our friends were doing it, or so they told us, but for us, or for me, I never asked you, it wasn’t about passing some sort of milestone. I was ready to be yours completely and for you to be mine. We made a decision for it to happen on Christmas Eve, we would meet, in the tree line on Mahon’s land and commit ourselves to each other.

Weeks after we had made our decision, during Christmas Week, you looked more tired then usual. Your body was more tender then, and I saw scars I had never seen before. I knew it was getting worse, but I don’t think either of us realised just how bad it would get. I remember so clearly the blood curdling scream the eve before Christmas eve. I was awake, lying on my bed, thinking about what would happen tomorrow, when the gut wrenching sound drifted out of your home and into mine. I jumped up, pulling on my boots and tucking my pyjamas into them. I ran down the stairs towards the back door. I had my hand on the door when my Father stopped me. He had a coat on over his own pyjamas and his gun in hand. The only other time I had seen him with his gun was hunting season, when he was covered head to toe in mud and dear scent. Seeing him with the over-sized gun in his pyjamas made me want to laugh, and to cry. ‘I’m going with you.’ I said to him, giving him the stubbornest look I could manage, it looked frighteningly similar to his own. He shook his head, not even responding to my statement, and opened the backdoor stepping into the darkness just as my Mother came behind me and put her arms around me. ‘He will be alright love.’ I wanted to ask who she was talking about? But we both knew. I waited for my Mother to release me, she went to stick the kettle on, and in that split second I was gone, out the backdoor, running through the garden, and up over the fence. My Father wasn’t too far ahead and when he heard me approach he said nothing. Maybe because he knew trying to send me back would be a futile waste of his time.

When we arrived at the boundary of your land my Father paused for a second and checked the barrel of the gun, ‘Stay behind me. No matter what happens.’ He growled at me over his shoulder. We could still hear shouting and crying as we approached the house, but thankfully nothing like the scream that had taken us all from our beds. We were making our way towards the backdoor when it abruptly swung open, your Mother toppling through the open door way and spilling onto the grass. I made a move to help her up but my Father’s armed pinned me to where I was standing behind him. I wanted to protest, but the vision of your Father barreling out the door after your Mother, spitting furious vitriol about her, he was swigging from a bottle of whiskey and for a moment I thought I was caught in something from a Tennessee Williams play. It was very much real though, and I stood paralysed, instantly regretting coming with my Father and witnessing something you had tried so hard to keep from me. I considered, momentarily, running before you knew I was there, but I found I couldn’t even move my legs to turn around. As your Father’s abuse of your Mother grew more threatening your brother Joe came flying out the door, running at your Father, clearly intent on stopping him from what he was about to do. Joe leaped on his back, but your Father just swatted him away as if Joe’s six foot four frame was nothing. With Joe lying on the ground, your Father looked momentarily confused. Looking from your Mother who was no longer moving in the grass to Joe, who looked like he was trying to get back up, your Father moved closer to Joe.

As he raised the bottle in his hand high above his head, ready to bring it down over Joe’s, I heard the click of my Father’s gun and his calm clear voice saying to your Father, ‘Tom, let the boy go.’

I was scanning the door way for a glimpse of you inside the house when your Father dropped the bottle, shielding his eyes from a light that didn’t exist he responded to my Father with a laugh. ‘John!’ He said in mock suprise, ‘What are you doing here? And with a gun no less.’ He laughed a loud drunken laugh, ‘Here to rob me are ya?’

My Father shook his head, ‘Just here to check on Mary and the boys Tom.’ My Father turned his attention to your Mother lying on the ground, reaching out a hand to her, he said, ‘Are you alright Mary?’

Your Father moved closer, ‘She’s fine John. Just a misunderstanding, you know what they can be like.’

Your Mother stood fixing her hair, keeping her face turned away from my Father so he wouldn’t see what I could guess was a series of cuts and bruises from her husbands fists. My Father kept his eyes on Mary and his gun pointed at Tom, ‘I’d like to hear it from herself Tom if you don’t mind.’

There was silence, punctured only by my gasp when your Mother eventually turned to my Father. Her face was swollen and mottled from crying, her left eye was swollen closed and she limped as she shuffled to turn to my Father. I looked at your Father and wondered how someone could do that to someone they love. Your Mother whispered, ‘Everything’s fine John, you and the young lass head on home now. Send Maire my best now won’t you?’
Your Father looked pleased with himself, and part of me really wanted my Father to fly off the handle and hit him the way he hit his wife and children. My Father looked defeated and sad, he watched Joe stand to his full height, his head hanging, refusing to look at my Father. There was another cry from inside the house, one of the younger children was crying for their Mammy.

The sound got louder and a shadow temporarily crossed the scene. It was you. ‘Mam,’ It was a choked voice, were you crying? ‘She won’t settle, can you -’ as soon as you saw me you stopped, letting go of your younger sister who ran to her Mother. ‘What are you doing here?’ Your eyes were on mine.

I wanted to run up the steps to the backdoor and take you in my arms. I wanted to tell you that what I had seen here meant nothing. It told me only what you came from, not what you were, or what you would be. My Father spoke for me, ‘We’re just here, making sure everything’s alright son, why don’t you take your brother and Mother back into the house so I can have a private word with your Father.’

Your Mother spoke up, ‘That won’t be necessary John. It’s a family matter. You head home now.’
I wanted to scream. You walked down the steps to your Brother, wrapping an arm around him and using your free hand to take your sister’s. As you bent to take her, you were so close to me I wanted to reach out and touch you. I didn’t. I don’t think I ever explained to you why I didn’t. You said it was because I was afraid, and I was, afraid for you. I was afraid that if your Father saw something in your eyes that he could take away then he would take it away. I thought it would be better to let him think that you had nothing, but instead, I just made you feel that you had nothing. That night was one of the biggest mistakes of my life, that simple moment, when I could have laid a hand on the curve of your neck and whispered that it would be okay.
When, eventually, my Father and I turned away and began the walk home, I made it to the boundary of our land before I broke down crying. When my Father lifted me into his arms my tears flowed even harder and my body shook as we made our way back to the house.

I remember the next day we went as a family to mass on Christmas Eve. I scanned the parishioners, desperate for a glimpse of you to work out if our plan still existed for tonight. I needed to see you, to know that you were still around, still fighting, still alive. When I saw your Father in the queue for communion I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that if he was here at least he was away from you.

That night we placed the stockings on the fireplace for Santa and we lit a candle in the window, to guide lost souls home for Christmas. When my parents went to bed I waited for an hour, watching the clock tick over to midnight and then I silently climbed out of bed putting my boots on in the same hurried fashion as the night before. I snuck out of my parents house and walked the mile to the tree line on Mahon’s land.

I didn’t know if you were coming. I hoped you were. I hoped that I would be able to see you and hold you. I sat and waited, by one of the taller trees with a clear view of the path you would take from your house. I rested against the tree trunk and waited for you to come. Then, in the blink of an eye, there you were. You stood a little bit away from me, I didn’t know if you could see me, so I moved into the moonlight. We stood there for awhile, like strangers. I didn’t know what to say, or if you wanted me to say anything. While we stood there, I feared that perhaps the magic that had been between us had been undone by the events of the night before. I looked at you as closely as I could with the distance between us and I saw the fear and the shame in your eyes. Or maybe I imagined it, maybe it was my own fear and my own shame that I saw reflected back to me. Eventually I stepped clearly out of the tree line and moved towards you. Gently I approached you, thinking you would bolt, like a frightened rabbit, never to be seen again. I placed my hand on your neck, a gesture of the intimacy I couldn’t give up. I pulled your head  to my shoulder and held you there. We stayed like that for longer than necessary until your arms snaked around my waist and pulled me to you. We kissed, in a way we hadn’t before, hungry and passionate. It was a new side to you and to me, born out of need, the need to devour each other, the need to have our relationship be the only thing that was real, the only thing that mattered.

We both cried. I remember that night so clearly, the stars over our heads, the flickering of the moon as your head moved in and out of my vision. You wondered a lot if I was okay, if this was okay, if the whole thing was okay. I nodded a lot, and grimaced occasionally when you hurt me. It made it real. It made our relationship real, our future meant something now. It was you and me and for once nothing else mattered. Afterwards, you held me. Your fingers tracing patterns in my skin. I wanted to say that I loved you, that right now we were perfect, and that I knew we’d be perfect forever. I didn’t though, I swallowed what I was thinking because for once, you were happy, you were relaxed and you were loved and you knew it. That was all that mattered. As the sky began to brighten you pulled me close to you.

From that moment our relationship changed and our lives did too. We became closer, but in a less obvious way. By silent, mutual consent we had agreed to bide our time and get out as quickly as possible, but when your brother Joe left home when we were eighteen it couldn’t come soon enough. You still didn’t want to talk about it. Even when the bruising got much worse, when the scars could barely even scar before they were opened again. I was afraid he’d kill you.

Then one day, the scars on your back opened leaving blood trails all over your back, soaking your jumper. The school wanted to intervene, you never wanted to go back there. I remember when Sister Aloysius wanted to bring your Father in for a stern talking to you came to me, for the first time directly about this, you were worried, and for the first time I realised that it was not just black and white, it was not just your Father, it was your Mother too. You said, that it was almost worse with her because she knew it was wrong. No matter how many times they begged her, no matter how many times he beat you and the others unconscious, she never wanted to leave, and when she did, or when she was forced to, she went back. She always went back. You worried that if the school intervened they would make it worse.

You wanted to leave, you wanted to go home that night for one last time, to grab your stuff and just go. I said I couldn’t. I was frightened. It was happening so soon, I was worried for you, for your future. Mostly though, I was just scared. I was eighteen, I wasn’t ready to just run. I needed a day I said, a day or two, at most a week. You told me to take as long as I wanted, you said it with love in your voice but the look in your eye told me something else. I just didn’t know what it was. We were stood in my parents kitchen. My Father was due home soon, which meant you would have to leave, I looked at the clock. I asked you to meet me later, as usual. You agreed. I heard my Father’s key in the door, I told you, you needed to go, as you turned to go through the back door you paused for a second, and just as my Father walked in, you grabbed me by the neck and pulled me in. You kissed me, like you had never kissed me before, it enveloped me completely and while you kissed me I felt everything was separated out, that it was just me and you, the way we wanted it.

My Father coughed and we pulled apart, you kissed me on my forehead, and looked at me, I searched your face for a clue, in your beautiful green eyes, the slightly crooked smile, but I saw nothing except you.

That night I puzzled over the kiss, wondering what it meant. I knew it was important, but that was about all I could work out. I’d wait until midnight to ask you. When it eventually rolled around, long after my parents had fallen asleep, I completed the almost nightly ritual of boots and pyjamas and stepped out in the fields. It was quiet that night I remember, a clear night sky showed all the stars in the sky and the moon was almost low enough to touch. I climbed over the boundary fence and waited. When I had waited an hour, I started walking towards Mahon’s fields, maybe you were there, maybe that was where we were supposed to meet. I remember my heart became heavy, it felt like it was a lead ball resting in my chest, my feet slowed and it was difficult to lift them. I knew that you wouldn’t be at Mahon’s, but for some reason I had to still go. I had to go there and wait for you, because whatever happened you would find me and then we would be together, forever. I sat, by the treeline, huddling into my knees to keep warm. A while passed and then awhile longer.

I remember the sound of my Father’s voice, carrying over the fields, the panic in his tone clear for everyone to hear. I realised I had fallen asleep in the field, you must have been worried sick I thought. That’s probably why my Father’s out so early, you probably feared something had happened to me so you told my Father I was no where to be found. I remember I was so proud of you, I thought it so brave of you to confess to my Father of our clandestine meetings, foolish considering I was fine, but brave nonetheless. As I walked out of the treeline and into the fields I saw my Father in the distance and waved. He continued to walk towards me, his feet looked heavy and I wondered just how long he had been looking for me to be this tired.
I walked to meet him, looking around and behind him for a glimpse of you, I figured you had decided it would be best to leave me alone to my Father’s yelling. Eventually my Father came close enough for me to see his face. The crestfallen look he wore was unlike anything I had ever seen on his face before. It was as if he had glimpsed Medusa and simply turned to stone. I thought something must have happened that my Mother must have gotten hurt, that someone in the family had died.

In a way they had. Our family, yours and mine, our future hypothetical  family had vanished. The flaxen haired children we had imagined raising had been obliterated in an instant. The life I saw for us, set far away from the reach of your Father was gone, and even though our future was never real, I mourned for it as if it were the life I was living.

The wake, the funeral, the reception and the anniversary month mass passed me by. I think I was living in a catatonic state. I was raging at the injustice, the loss. I remember one moment from the funeral, your Mother weeping as I went towards the coffin, your Father was gone at that moment, beginning to rot in a jail cell where he belonged, I wanted to shake your Mother. I wanted to slap her, for putting you in harms way, for giving you to the man who would take you from me. I didn't because I knew in my heart of hearts that we had all been victims, it just seemed so unfair that it took you leaving us for everyone to realise what the animal was doing. I never saw them bury your body,  went home and walked the land, down to Mahon's fields and into the trees. I walked amongst them and eventually I came across it. Your message to me, carved into the tree, just our names, that was it. No grand declaration, no heart, no horrifying ‘4eva’ just me and you, the way we wanted it. It comforted me to know that evidence of our love would survive long after both our bodies had returned to the earth.

In the aftermath of losing you I realised how unkind those trying to be kind can be. I heard the phrase 'puppy love' thrown around, as if our love was somehow invalidated by our age. Maybe it was, maybe if you had lived we would have grown up and apart. Maybe that would have meant that when I thought of you, after marrying and having someone else's children I would smile at the memories of youthful love, instead of feeling a yearning for you that I have never felt for my husband. I sometimes think that would be better, a full life in the present, than a half-life in the past. I stopped telling people about you when I went to college, no one understood what I had felt for you, not even me. I told my husband, but I bent the truth, the way you do when you are married, I made it seem as if something sad had happened to a childhood sweetheart, that I was broken by it then but fixed now. I didn't tell him that sometimes when I looked at my children I could momentarily close my eyes and imagine that you were my husband. I do love him, most of the time, and I suppose he is here and you are not and that counts for something, it has to.

Whatever it counts for though, it's not enough. Tomorrow, as we go to mark the anniversary of my Fathers death, two years, how fast time can fly, and how slow it can seem, I will take a moment and I will visit you, and lay white roses a symbol of the love we once held and the loss I feel, even now. We'll leave in a couple of days, the children have to go back to school, but before I do, I will take one last stroll through the fields of our history and our love, to remember you  and to let you go. I don't think I can carry you anymore. I think it's time I moved forward, twenty years later, I feel your soul a lot less now. I feel the loss of you has lessened slightly, enough for me to pretend it is not there anymore. I will go though, one last time through the fields, and I will say goodbye, to you and to me, the girl I once was, and I will move myself from the past into the future. You will  never be far from my heart or my thoughts but the time has come. We will always have Mahon's fields, and the tree that bears witness to our love and reminds me that it was once real.

The World Ended Last Night

The world ended last night,
Like a clock without batteries,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopped.

The world ended last night,
Now I feel lost,
We paid the cost,
We wanted to cross.

The world ended last night,
Now we're here,
The banks of the styx,
Was it worth the risk?

The world ended last night,
Right in your arms,
You held me tight,
But it wouldn't be alright.

The Forecourt

‘I don’t love you anymore.’ It escaped her lips and hovered between them. The weight of the words she had often thought but never said made the small car even smaller and made the distance between them seem even wider.

‘Is that why you brought me out here?’ He stared straight ahead, his mouth set in a hard line. She stared at his lips and remembered a time when they traced their way across her throat, as if discovering secrets, buried in her neck.

She remembered the first time he had put his lips to hers, clumsy, hurried and shy. They had been so young, so unsure, like fawns learning how to walk for the first time. She remembered a time when she would look as his lips moved and while he spoke to her she would think to herself; if he doesn’t kiss me now, I might die. It was almost unimaginable, as she sat in the beat up old fiesta, that they had gone from there to here in only nine short years.

She stared out the window at the old petrol station. The sign was crumbling so that it was almost unreadable, the paint was peeling revealing years of color changes as the station changed hands, the once pristine tarmac of the forecourt was now overgrown with weeds. Care. That’s what it was lacking, someone to care for it, to invest in it, to believe that there was a future in it. The similarities between the destitution of their meeting place and the destitution of their relationship was not lost on her.

‘Do you remember the first day we met?’ She looked at him as he stared angrily straight ahead. She continued earnestly, wanting him to remember, needing him to remember, ‘You were what? Eighteen? You were stood right over there?’ She pointed to the remnants of the second pump on the forecourt. ‘You were wearing a blue shirt and jeans, and I thought; who the hell is that?’ She laughed at the memory of it, of falling in love at first sight at seventeen.

She was lost in the memory and jumped when he spoke, ‘You jumped out of your Da’s car, all legs and elbows, this skinny girl,’ His expression softened and he almost smiled, ‘You picked up the diesel pump, it was only when I should to you that you realised the mistake.’ He looked out the window at the shadow of their relationship as it lingered briefly on the forecourt.

She saw herself as she was then, smiling at the memory of the seventeen year old girl far too concerned with impressing the boy in front of her than potentially recking her father’s car engine. ‘It’s hard to believe we were ever that young,’ she sighed.

‘Yeah,’ He snapped, the bitterness returning to his voice, ‘Time flies when you’re having fun.’

She went to place her hand on his, but thought better of it, she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her coat so they wouldn’t betray her. ‘It was fun.’ She whispered.

‘Just not anymore right?’ He looked at her, the question both accusing and pleading. He sagged slightly in his seat, defeated, ‘At least not for you.’

‘Don’t put this all on me.’ She was losing patience with his poor me act. He had a short memory, and clearly he didn’t remember his own cruelty over the past years.

‘It’s you that wants to end it though.’ His voice rising slightly with the righteous anger he now felt, ‘So I think I’m entitled to attribute blame to someone.’

‘Oh yeah, because nothing is ever your fault.’ She was losing it now. ‘You can be such a fucking child sometimes.’ She didn’t want it to be like this, she didn’t want them shouting at each other in the car, but now she couldn’t stop. ‘It’s like you don’t even remember the last six months!’

‘It’s like you don’t remember the eight years before it.’ He bit back. ‘You can’t just drag me out here, and then say your ending it because ‘you don’t love me anymore’ what the fuck is that?’ He was shouting now, banging his hand against the steering wheel, ‘What about my feelings? What about the fact that I still love you?’ She looked out the window. ‘Don’t ignore me.’ He grabbed her chin and turned her to face him, ‘I said, I still love you.’

She pushed his hand away as her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t know what she had expected, but a declaration of love was not it. ‘No you don’t. You’re just saying that because you don’t want to admit that this is over. That it’s been over now for awhile. It’s just about time one of us admits it.’

He took her hand gently, ‘It’s not over.’ He leaned gently over the gearbox, pushing his face against hers, ‘It’s not over.’ He whispered again, and then he kissed her.

It was like being thrown through a time machine. Before she knew what was happening she was kissing him back, leaning her body into his, pressing herself against him as he returned the pressure. As her sense caught up with her hormones, she pulled away.

He looked quizzically at her and then moved towards her again. She placed a hand on his chest and shook her head wordlessly. He slumped back in his seat. She traced the edges of her mouth, tingling with the pressure of him, they were swollen already and it made her remember the early days, when they would simply spend hours and hours kissing.

‘We need to end this now.’ She settled her shaking breath, ‘It’s over. I’m done. I just can’t... I can’t do this anymore.’ She looked at him, he had returned to staring out at the forecourt. ‘Are you listening to me?’ she reached out a hand to place on his shoulder, he snapped back around and she left her hand, momentarily stretched across the car. Gently, she brought her hand to his face, tracing the structure she had once loved so much, ‘I did love you. Once. For a very long time.’

He grimaced, ‘I loved you too. I still do.’

She brought her head against his. ‘I know. But it’s not enough.’

Their eyes were both filling with tears, and she knew almost immediately that if she didn’t get out soon, they would be sitting here in nine years, trying to leave each other all over again. She knew, that he could tell himself that he was still in love with her, but he wasn’t. He was in love with the ghost that hovered between them that spoke to love and future and happiness, but it was just a ghost, there was nothing true about it, it was just the lingering feelings of a relationship that died long long ago.

‘At least we’ll always have the forecourt.’ She smiled and so did he, through a haze of sadness they said goodbye, to each other and to the young lovers on the forecourt.

The Model

Marianne stood in the small back room, waiting. She could hear the rumblings next door, chairs scraping, papers rustling, muted laughter and chitchat.  She was nervous. Very nervous. She took a deep breath and down on one of the unstacked tables. This was obviously where they stored the extra furniture from the main hall. She slid further onto the table so her legs were swinging, placing her hands behind her she leaned back, taking more deep breaths she gazed up at the ceiling. The white paint was peeling off, slowly revealing the yellow watermarks, signalling damp, or perhaps just an overflow from a bathroom upstairs. It was a depressing room, that smelt faintly of old sandwiches and dust. Her fingers lightly traced the carvings in the cheap wood of the table. Still staring at the ceiling she moved her fingers along the outline of the etchings. ‘Em woz ere 06’ and ‘Tom luvs Steph C 4eva’, it made her sad. Not just the poor grammar and spelling, it was the futility of the effort. Teenagers, she presumed, unless their teachers were sneaking into the hall to carve their own names, always so obsessed with inscribing their own personal histories. 

It was odd really, teenagers by their nature were temperamental, always moving, always changing and progressing, they believed that everything would stay the same ‘4eva’ that their friends would always be their friends, that Mum and Dad would always be pricks, that they would remain with the boy or girl they loved, until the end of time. Yet, they documented it like someone on the brink of losing their memories, annotating every minute piece of information. It was as if they were in public denial that things would change, but privately they knew that the days would go in the blink of an eye, the way they had for all the adults that came before. Marianna thought briefly of her own teenage years, of the thousands and thousands of photographs taken, she took more photographs in the two years between sixteen and eighteen than she had in the last six years of adulthood. Marianne wondered what exactly that said about her, and her life now.

There was a knock on the internal door. That was her cue to get ready. Her little trip into the psyche of teenagers had done little to calm her nerves. It would be good for her, she knew that. It would be challenging, of course it would, but she needed to do it, if only to prove that she could. Mark had asked her to attend once or twice before, he told her she was interesting, that the group would enjoy her presence, that they would learn a lot from her. She had hushed him, embarrassed at the flattery and what he was asking her to do. Then it had all changed. In the blink of an eye, something she would never consider doing, became important. It was important for her to reclaim it for herself. She had taken  so much, and had so much taken, that she needed a portion of it back. She needed to keep something for herself. She needed to know she could still be something even if only in the shadow of what she had been. So she had approached Mark, and asked could she take part, even though she had changed. He was delighted and more then happy to offer up his group to her. Now, after six weeks, she was here. It was the moment of truth. She knew that she could just slip out the other door, Mark would be disappointed, but she had asked him not to tell anyone she was coming, just in case she backed out last minute.

Marianne took another deep breath. You’re here now she thought to herself. You might as well get as far as you can and then see what happens. You can do this. She pushed herself off the table and lifted her heavy rucksack onto the table. She removed the robe, the hair brush, the small makeup bag and mirror. She started by brushing her hair, usually she wore it down but Mark had asked for it up. She took the simple black hair bobbin and slipped it onto her left wrist. She glided the brush from root to tip, again and again. She wanted a high ponytail so she tipped her body at the waist and furiously began brushing the underside of her head. It hurt, when she was rough with the underside of her hair, and she could feel the tender smaller strand pulling apart from the scalp as she ran the brush, pulling it into a shape she wanted. Next she turned her attention to the clothes she was wearing. Mark had advised her to wear something light and easy. A sundress he had suggested. She had no sundresses. She always wore as many layers as possible, like an armor protecting her from the outside. She removed her jumper first, tugging it over her head and stuffing it back into the rucksack. She contemplated pulling the shirt off over her head as well, but she new it would snag, and in true fashion she would panic when she found herself blinded and trapped by her own head. She slowly began unbuttoning the small buttons, her large fingers slipped on the small buttons, but still she continued, the tremor in her hands increased steadily with each new button she opened. When it was open she could see the curve over her stomach, hidden from view by the white camisole she wore underneath, she gently slipped the shirt from off her shoulders and pushed it into the rucksack. She reached down to her jeans and popped the button, pausing for a second to slide the zip she wiggled her hips out of the jeans until they were in a heap around her ankles.

Marianne stood completely still with her eyes closed. She stood in her camisole, bra and panties. She knew they had to come off as well, but she needed just one minute to regain her composure. She wanted to cry. She looked around the room, blurred through the rising tears in her eyes. How many times she wondered had young girls stood in this same room, semi naked, with would-be lovers, running their hands under and over uniforms, tearing jumpers and skirts in an effort to reach adolescent nirvana. Maybe not that many she acknowledged, her own school days had been decidedly sexless, yet if she listened to the sex stories of her friends, everyone was at it. Marianne almost smiled, as in life, she thought, the truth lies somewhere between the two. Marianne slid back onto the table. It was uncomfortable now. The table cold against her thighs, the edge digging into the soft flesh. She kept her eyes averted from her body as she pulled the camisole over her head. She reached behind her back, fumbling with the catch of her bra and finally unhooking it. She closed her eyes as she felt the weight of her breasts without her bra. She had always been ashamed of the feeling, as if it betrayed something inside her, something weak and base, something other. She stood once more and hooked her thumbs in her panties, pulling them down and off. She bundled them quickly in with the bra and camisole and whipped the dressing gown around her. Pulling the sash tightly around her, her breath was forced from her lungs, the burning feeling calmed her, made her feel real.

Suddenly, as she stood there in her dressing gown, waiting for Mark to knock again, Marianne dissolved into tears. She bit her knuckle to stifle the sobs escaping from her chest. She felt a hole in her heart that she thought had been filled rip open again, dragging up feelings of pain and suffering, at her own hands and someone else’s. It had been four years since she had seen her own body naked. Four years. She knew it was a long time, perhaps too long. She felt disconnected from it, like she was stuck on a busy train sharing an intimate space with a stranger. She knew that her form was a part of her, she knew that it and her mind were linked in ways she didn’t even understand. Yet, it was easier to pretend that she was above it. That the base passions of the body, were nothing compared to the cerebral thoughts of her mind. She distanced herself from it. She distanced herself because the body felt pain. It was weak, it would let people abuse it, even when she lifted her own hand against herself her body did nothing to stop it. Her body betrayed her in ways she would never imagine, in getting older, getting fatter, weaker. The strange hands that ran over it, spreading heat and passion throughout the molecules that made up her being, once they were gone she was left with her mind, a mind that would gift her with shame for letting such things take place. Her mind punished her, not just for allowing it, but for enjoying it.

The loathing she felt for herself had brought her to many a dark place. She had denied herself many things, most notably the type of love that she afforded to everyone else. It was hard for her, to love herself willingly, to believe herself worthy of love, especially as those who were supposed to love her often didn’t. So she surrounded herself in her armor, laughed at jokes at her expense, reduced her self esteem to a puddle at the end of anonymous men’s beds and most seriously she had taken out her loathing on herself. It was always her fault, it was an irrational belief that there was something inherently wrong in what she was, who she was. There was a need inside her to seek validation from outside of herself, and when she received none, she purged and punished. She denied herself the very essence of self-love; respect. The memories of the things that she had done often left her like this, huddled on the floor, sobbing silently, filled with fear and remorse.

As she rose from the floor she reminded herself of the teenagers. She once again traced her fingers along the etchings, hoping that they would endow her with a love of life, something she had been missing since she stopped taking photos. She took her nail file from her make-up bag and carved into the table, a message for herself and for anyone who found themselves in this room, like her, lost and unsure, so that they would know that once there was a woman who went from hating herself, to waiting for a knock on a door. That knock, would change her. It would see her walk from this room and strip all her armor off,to leave herself naked in front of strangers who would agonise over every pencil stroke as they traced her form and shaded her in. They would take her form, and they would see something in her that she had yet to see in herself; a person. She hoped to see in their eyes a recognition that she was here, that she was real and that she was worthy of some sort of life.

The knock came and with one last look at the table, she left the little room, with the peeling ceiling and ‘Em woz ere 06’ and ‘Tom luvs Steph C 4eva’, engraved on the table, and her own mark; ‘You are here’. A reminder to those who would seek it, that no matter what, you exist. You are something. Someone. You are worthy.