Aftermath
I wrote this in the summer of '08 in Tenerife on a piece of kitchen roll. It may seem slightly disjointed but it was inspired by a dream I had so it won't make much sense
As I stepped through the door I knew where everyone was without being told. We let ourselves in. Amy went to join Rachael upstairs to watch a move we'd seen thousands of times. I wasn't bothered. Dad and I made our way into the kitchen to join Janet.
The kitchen was large; with a stone floor and walls washed with terracotta paint. It bulged and troughed in places where the stones made the walls misshapen. The whole room had a Victorian feel to it; despite the house being reasonably modern. The space was so vast that any noise made should have echoed endlessly; instead the pine wood furniture and mahogany cupboards absorbed them. Warmth radiated from the walls of terracotta reds and mahogany browns. Janet did not radiate the same warmth.
She was at the end of the great pine table. The size of the room made her look lost. That was a look common to her those days. She was huddled around a white mug of tea on the table: leaning her shoulders toward it; wrapping both hands in a tight grasp around it. She looked cold. Dad asked her how she was coping and she ignored him. She turned to me.
“How’s the new school Faye?”
“Good, yeah, the people there are really nice. They’ve been really supportive since -” I broke off there. We both knew when since. Neither of us wanted to talk about it. We both knew why we were really visiting. It was Dad’s idea; so we’d talk together. Dad and Amy had talked. They’d stopped crying. So had Rachael. To me that betrayed the memory, though. I didn’t want to forget my Mum. Janet didn’t want to forget her Husband. We wanted to forget the night they died. The way they died. Dad kept trying to get us to talk but we wouldn’t. He started to talk to Janet about things I didn’t care about.
I snuck upstairs to watch the movie. I had an excuse to cry then. With my head bowed I traipsed up the stairs hoping to bump into him. Andrew. I looked up hopefully when I reached the top. I knew he wouldn’t be there but I wanted him to be. As I turned into the viewing room I caught a glimpse of him. Perfect, as ever. I looked straight at his eyes, knowing what he most wanted to say was in them. ‘We need to talk’ they told me.
We had always understood each other, had this way of communicating without saying a word. We knew that everything had changed now that Mum and Mark were gone. I saw for the first time then that he looked like Mark in every way. Apart from the eyes. They were Janet’s. Almond shape and a beautiful shade of sea green.
I entered the viewing room, a room much like a small cinema with teired seating and a large television screen, to see Amy and Rachael giggling together. They sat about half way up on the far side. I sat as far away from them, without seeming to be avoiding them, as possible. Soon after I came in Dad and Janet entered the dark room; and not long after them, he entered and flopping himself over three chairs. The film ended.
We both held back waiting for the others to leave. I made my way to him slowly. He soon was holding me close to his chest in a strong grip. We both knew this was dangerous; that I loved him. I could feel his muscles of his chest through his white shirt and I let out a sigh. I held myself closer to him, sinking into his skin; moulding myself to his body.
“Don’t,” he spoke softly to my hair. I held my breath but didn’t move.
“I’m not crying,” I told his solid muscular chest.
“We can’t do this,” he mused.
“I know.”
It will also be featured in a chaptered story I am posting (Prologue already up!) on Fiction Press called Our Lives. Hope you enjoy it!
Romantic
xx