Three stories I won’t write
A boy and his father are playing hide and seek in the gardens adjacent to the children’s museum. The father has been especially successful in concealing himself, and the boy calls out I give up, come out. Then again, I give up, come out.
I’m relieved, perhaps the boy is relieved, when the father emerges from his hiding place. If he had not appeared in the time it took me to pass them on the way to the tube station I would have worried, sporadically, for the rest of the afternoon. I might the next day have looked for a missing person’s reports in the local news.
If I were a writer, I could have written the story of the boy’s life from then onwards, shaped by the disappearance of his father: how the responsibility he felt for not having found his father that afternoon would never leave him, with effects persisting long into adulthood, his relationships, his career, his own experience in turn as a parent.
Two girls and their mother are walking along the path along the south eastern edge of the lake in Battersea Park. Their mother is telling the older child about a film starring Lindsay Lohan; the younger child trails behind, weaving about on a scooter and having no part of this conversation. Explanation of the film becomes complicated: So says the mother to her older daughter, here in Battersea Park, the mother and the daughter switch bodies, say you’re the daughter and I’m the mother… At which point the younger daughter comes tearing up on her wheels, crying No, no I’m the daughter!
If I were a writer, ideally with some experience of a sibling environment, I could create something of the life of this younger child, her fierce imperative of being the recognised, validated daughter, which persists into adulthood, etc, etc.
A man is propelling a pushchair briskly west along the Strand; in addition to the infant in the buggy a small boy holds his hand, keeping pace and cheerfully so. As they pass I hear their father say We’re going to meet Mummy off the train. It’s going to be a surprise.
If I were a writer, if I were a writer, I would add nothing. Just type out the above and arrange for it to be published. Because no speculation or imaginative construction for what is about to take place could match what is in each reader’s imagination. We can all have our own ideas as to what will happen when Mummy reaches the ticket barrier where her family are unexpectedly waiting, what happens after that, what effects persist.