Primeval fic: Knit one, slip one
Title: Knit one, slip one
Artist: lsellersfic
Character: Claudia Brown
Rating: Gen
Word count: 1250
Written for the Art Challenge: Organised by lsellersfic
Summary: The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
AN: Triple thanks to the incredible lsellersfic for providing the lovely Claudia pic seen here, for making me a Claudia icon, and for overseeing the whole Art Challenge fest, which she somehow also found time to write for. Please send her lots of comments and appreciation.
Big up to Fififolle for the beta. Any errors belong to me.
KNIT ONE, SLIP ONE
A life unravels…
When Nick Cutter came out the anomaly the first person he looked for was Claudia Brown. But she was gone.
*
“Oh to hell with professionalism!” It wasn’t a passionate kiss, more of a promise between friends who had somehow become more than friends. Claudia didn’t regret it for a moment. The look Nick gave her as he turned away showed he didn’t regret it either. He had better come back or Claudia was going right into that anomaly and retrieving him herself - carnivorous creatures and ex-wives be-damned. She would invite Nick to dinner, she decided. There would be candles and she would wear her prettiest underwear. As her eyes focused on the glittering, swirling mass of the anomaly Claudia allowed her thoughts to drift…
His team gathered behind him: Stephen, Connor, Abby, and, in a rare excursion from the office, Lester. They were there supporting him just as they had dozens of times before. Nick entered the anomaly without turning back.
*
“And what if I don’t agree with you?” asked Miss Brown smoothly. If she was rattled by the inquisition she didn’t let it show.
Sir James Lester was impressed. He didn’t let that show either. He was as susceptible as the next man to flattery but the last thing he wanted on his team was a ‘yes man’. Or woman, for that matter. “I’m sure that will never happen,” he said.
She looked frankly disbelieving. Good. Lester had seen that in her records. That odd streak of nonconformity that had made her application stand out from amongst the amorphous mass of First Class honours and A-grade passes that all CVs seemed to feature these days. She was pretty but didn’t play on her looks or try to flirt. That was another point in her favour.
“The job offers very little scope for advancement and a great deal of opportunity for career suicide,” he warned, both wanting her to know the worst and to rise to the challenge.
She hesitated a moment. “You make it sound more like a punishment than an opportunity.”
“Think of it as an extremely circuitous route to success. If this was a board game there would a dozen snakes to each ladder.” He leaned back in his chair. “Would you take the position if it were to be offered?”
Her lips curved in a wide-mouthed smile as she called his bluff. “Yes.”
It was an impossible brief and Lester wondered just who he had managed to offend this time to get landed with this one-way ticket to career oblivion and disaster. Of course, he had accepted the directorship. Saying no had not been presented as an option. He made just one stipulation:
“Just make sure you send me a bloody brilliant press secretary. I’m going to need someone completely unflappable - someone who can spin straw into gold.”
*
Claudia looked at the ring and slipped it on her engagement finger for one last time before taking it off and hiding it away in a drawer. It was pretty rather than ostentatious with rich yellow gold set with a trio of small diamonds. They’d found it in an antique jewellers in Ipswich. Rupert had told her to keep the ring, it had been bought for her, and it was hers. It was a typically generous gesture. He was a generous man. She closed her eyes and tried to visualise his face. There was his nose, his chin, even his eyes, but the individual features refused to coalesce. He was gone. Gone, too, were the days and nights of passion. It was odd what remained. Their kisses had faded into a brief sepia-tinged regret, while the memory of how he stirred his tea anti-clockwise still had the power to reduce her to a sobbing mess. Their final parting was awkward and a little formal with a chaste kiss on the cheek and a handshake conveying all that was left unsaid and unsayable. The last Claudia had heard Rupert had left his job at Clifford Chance with the intention of going travelling. India, she believed. She hoped he was happy.
Rupert’s family studied law at Cambridge. It was just what they did. So when Rupert announced that far from following the family tradition he was not planning on going to university at all, but instead intended to travel, the news was met with disbelief. Tears and entreaties failed to change his mind until eventually, reluctantly, the family came round. A one-way ticket to Australia was purchased.
“Get it out of your system,” said his father as they hugged stiffly at the airport. “Your real life will still be here when you get back.”
Rupert eventually settled in Sidney and took a series of short term jobs that financed his travelling. He was killed in a bus crash outside Delhi in 2006. He never returned to the UK.
*
“Go, Claudie, go! Go! Go! Go!” Claudia raised her stick and thwacked the wooden ball solidly into goal. Congratulations and pats on the back followed her as she ran back into centre field. Claudia loved hockey. It appealed to both the team-player and the ruthlessly competitive side of her nature. She rarely admitted it out loud but she liked to win.
Queen Ann’s College was proud of its academic record but never came more than half way up the league table when it came to sports. They were nice girls but that wasn’t much use when it came to games. Miss Anderson sighed inwardly as she made yet another speech emphasising that taking part was as important as winning. How she longed for a girl with a bit of fire.
*
“That one, daddy, the one who looks like Sandy.”
Sandy was the dog in Claudia’s favourite bedtime story. The puppy, goodness knows what mix of breeds it actually was, looked more mud than sand-coloured. However, he was already responding to Claudia’s pats and endearments with yips of enthusiasm and tail-wagging. Sandy Brown came home with them a week later. Tom imagined that Claudia would forget her promises to walk and care for the animal. He was wrong. She never did.
Rufus was adopted by Sarah and Alex Conway and their three boys after just two days in the rescue centre. He loved frisbee and walks along the beach. In later years he got arthritis and had to be pulled along the sand in a cart. He lived until he was 14 and was buried in the Conway’s back garden.
*
Laura resolutely shut her eyes and counted the three minutes it would take for the result to develop before looking. When she had finished, and had added an extra twenty seconds to be sure, she stared down at the stick in her hand. There it was. A thin but definite blue line crossed the small predictor screen. She shut her eyes and opened them again. The line was still there. Tom would be thrilled. They were going to have a baby. She hoped it was a girl.
Another month, another failure. Laura swallowed back tears. Tom said it didn’t matter. They had each other and that was what counted. It was silly to feel something was missing. She was being ridiculous dwelling on dreams and fantasies. You couldn’t miss what you never had.
*
Birth Announcement in The Times
Lewis
On 27 February 1981, to Elizabeth (nee Brooker-Price) and George, a daughter, Jennifer Alice, a sister for Henry.