By Touch the Light

Okay, we’ll play it that way. Pretend it’s just a story. A yarn I made up to pass the time.

Even if it isn’t.

Even if it really, really isn’t.

CHAPTER 5: THE GREAT DIVIDE

By Touch the Light

I threw back the covers, drew up my knees and leapt into that weird and wonderful world called the rest of my life.

CHAPTER 4: AN UNWRITTEN BOOK

By Touch the Light

Overhead those harbingers of winter, the Christmas lights, shone weakly in the gloom. The seasons were in transition, neither one thing nor the other.

Just like me.

CHAPTER 2: CHILDHOOD'S END

By Touch the Light

I nearly didn’t ring the bell. I couldn’t escape the feeling that by entering this house I risked bringing to an end the world I’d always known. But I reasoned that really bad news normally took you unawares; if you expected the worst, it probably wouldn’t happen.

I lifted my finger and pushed...

My freckled fingers freeze, just as they did all those months ago when I feared that death might be waiting for me in the room I was about to enter.

This time it’s life that’s scaring the pants off me.

We’ll see which one of us lands him first.

Sylvia had won that contest hands down. But the night Ruth came back…

It wasn’t going to be like playing one of the ugly sisters. Nobody would be in on the joke. There’d be no knowing winks to the audience, no muttered asides in a normal voice.

And no way of telling how long it might be before the curtain came down.

How long did Gillian hold out? Three days, did she say?

And I’ve been here nearly forty-eight hours already.

The clock is ticking down...

It’s finally happened.

I stood on the shore of the mating game with Padraig and Gerald,
but did no more than poke a toe into the surf. Now I’ve waded in
with both feet, and I’m waiting for the first real wave to break.

Kerrie hands me a mug and sits at the kitchen table, gesturing for me to join her. As I arrange the folds of my skirt I sense the vexation she’s been holding in check since we waved the boys away break free from its restraints. I haven’t told her everything about my encounter with Susan Dwyer and she knows it.

By Touch the Light

This would have been submitted to the Valentine's Day contest - if I hadn't read the rules first.

The tall, strongly-built young man standing next to the capstan has already smiled in response to Niamh’s precocious body language.

“Not my type,” I maintain, but before I can embellish this statement I realise that I know who he is...

I dole out snippets of my invented past, each sounding less fraudulent than the one before.

If you tell a lie often enough...

“I want you to go out and flag down a taxi. Tell the driver to take you to Victoria, but when you get there act all scatterbrained and say you meant Waterloo instead. I’ll–“

“We’re being followed, aren’t we?”

Kerrie’s hand has moved to cover mine. Her face is full of concern.

“Are you unwell, sweetheart? You’ve gone very pale.”

“You said three people died. Helen Sutton. Bob Hodgson.” And now my mouth’s so dry I can scarcely move my tongue. “Who…who was the third?”