Heart

I wrote a story for a competition on IdeasTap which had to be on the theme 'Heart'. It didn't win, which is kind of my thing, so I thought I'd stick it up here. Enjoy...

The Lady's Long Lost Love

“Oh, Dunstable,” she sighed, tracing a long tendril of golden chest fuzz with a coiffed fingernail, “let us make sweet love one last time before you leave on your perilous quest.”

“Enid,” he responded dramatically, “my dear sweet Enid, I cannot. You know I am an advocate of the moral high ground, and thus I must refuse to ravish your milky white bosoms, your tender kneecaps or your softly undulating clavicle until you consent to be my wife once and for all.”

She felt dizzy at the sternness of this ultimatum, even though she had heard it a hundred times before.

“You know I can never be your wife,” she wept, large salty tears rolling down her ample cheeks and glistening like rainbow crystals of cubic zirconia, “I vowed to my sweetheart I should never wed another, though he has long been lost and probably buried at sea.”

Dunstable frowned, his ordinarily perky moustache drooping like a sad horseshoe.

“You think he might still be alive?”

“They never recovered the body,” she whispered, her eyes aglaze with moisture as the magic of hindsight transported her back to the night of that fateful promise, and a man who was never coming back to her.

Enid pulled her pink fleecy negligee closer, shoulders shoogly at the memory of the day she received word he was missing. It had been so long – almost eighteen months – she had nearly forgotten the particulars of his freckly aspect. Of course at the time she had been plunged into black despair but then, little by little, days had begun to get brighter, until she fell headlong into Dunstable’s dependable embrace.

Dunstable knew she was riding the horns of a most furious dilemma, for whilst she truly loved him she could not break her promise to the brave childhood sweetheart who would always hold a place in her heart, just down from the aorta.

“I’m sorry my love,” he told her, full of regret, “I should not have asked you again. It was totes inapropes.”

“No,” she said with a weak smile, “it’s only natural you should feel this way. I know how men love weddings and commitment.”

“I do dream about the smell of ruffles and the flash of sweet pea in my bouquet most every night,” he agreed, “but as long as you are in my arms, I am content.”

He moved to embrace her once again, when all at once the door was thrown completely open.

“Not so fast,” said a booming voice the colour of coffee.

“Who are you?” Enid asked, even though she already knew.

“It is I, Johnny Sailorington, your long lost sweetheart!”

The owner of the voice stepped into the room. Dunstable and Enid stared at him in dismay and wonderment. The long lost Sailorington cut a dashing figure in his baseball cap and floral cravat, but gosh darn it why could he not have remained lost at sea? Now everything was quite ruined.

“Oh Johnny, where have you been all this time?” Enid asked, moving towards her erstwhile sweetheart as though propelled by a force akin to gravity, only it radiated sideways out of his belt rather than up from the ground. “I felt sure you must be dead and buried at sea, and as you know the psychic intuition of a lady is rarely wrong.”

Johnny Sailorington sighed, a deep and manly sound, and paced to the window to look out over the grey ocean. Unfortunately the sea was on the other side of the building, so he had to content himself with staring at a supermarket car park.

“Your feminine intuition was not actually far wrong,” he confessed, gazing heroically at a paper bag fluttering across the concrete outside. Crumbs of pastry scattered artistically from a hole in the side like some kind of metaphor, which all three silently agreed was oddly beautiful.

“After I went to make my fortune as a ship’s makeup artist, our vessel was captured by fierce environmental campaigners. They mistakenly thought we were evil scientists bent on creating a new strain of über tuna using bits of old whale, rather than the honest and upstanding members of the music industry we truly were.”

“So that is why there were news reports claiming the latest Pop Factor tour was a lot more highbrow than previous years,” Enid murmured.

“Indeed. The evil scientists went in our place, and forced everyone to carry out practical chemistry experiments in front of a pyrotechnic display instead of dancing and singing songs.”

“How horrible.”

“Yes. Meanwhile the environmental campaigners locked us in a metal storage container. When we finally escaped, we found all our singers had applied to go to university to learn more about science.”

“It must have been a terrible blow,” Dunstable said sympathetically.

“A little part of my soul died that day,” Johnny Sailorington confirmed. “The only thing that kept me going was the thought of returning home to my one true love – ” His voice caught on the back of his throat – “but I see now she is false. Oh, sweet Emily, how could you wrong me so?”

“I’m not Emily,” said Enid, “I’m Enid.”

Johnny Sailorington stopped staring at the car park and took her face in his hands.

“Enid?” he said. Then, “oh, I remember you from the Christmas party! You used to step out with Johnny Taylorington from Accounts. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“My loss?” she wobbled, face filling with tears again.

“Why yes,” said Johnny Sailorington, “haven’t you heard? He married the captain of the green lot and absconded to live in a Cornish commune. Terrible business. Anyway, if you don’t mind, I’ll be off to find my Emily.”

The lovers watched him leave, a great weight lifting from their shoulders.

“Enid,” Dunstable said, “dear, sweet Enid. Now will you consent to be my bride?”

She smiled at him and took his hand in hers.

“Dunstable,” she whispered in a voice thick with love, “I think I will.”

19.57 From Euston

On Saturday, this was doing the rounds on Twitter:



When I watched it, I thought ‘aw, that’s nice,’ posted it to Facebook and promptly forgot all about it.

This being the internet, a few people have reacted in a more considered way.

Natalie Dzerins (Forty Shades of Grey) finds it utterly cringeworthy, which is fair enough – but more than that, she thinks it is demeaning to women; a thought that never even crossed my mind until I read her post. The woman generally speaks a lot of sense so this prompted me to re-visit my initial reaction.

When I shared the vidjo on the book of face, I did so with the tagline “anybody remember the group ‘Disney Gave Me Unrealistic Expectations of Love?’ This guy clearly does, and said, ‘no more!’”

To explain, said group united those who had reached adulthood only to discover a distinct lack of perfectly coiffed prospective partners with freakishly straight teeth and talking animal pals. Where were the dragon slayers, the perky princesses, the lovers who unexpectedly burst into song at the drop of a hat?

Members bemoaned the fact love at first sight is not as common as Disney led them to believe, and that most people are pretty much the same – everyone gets a bit crabbit when they’ve not had enough sleep, wicked stepmothers are not especially prevalent, and most men don’t even own a cloak (excepting the more dedicated Noel Fielding fan, perhaps).

However, the occasional friend will find their own Prince Charming or Cinderella, you’ll be invited to a lovely wedding with a ceilidh and a bucket of stovies, and a collective sigh will go up for lo, there is romance in the world after all. Who doesn’t want a happy ever after in a castle full of talking crockery?

Well, I wouldn’t, to be fair. It’s one thing to enjoy a bit of schmaltz in a movie, quite another to deliberately inflict it on a loved one in a public space.

But I don’t speak for everyone, and I like to think there’s a possibility that the boyfriend in 19.57 from Euston made this ridiculously over the top gesture because they are madly in love, and he knew she’d appreciate it.

Dzerins concedes that it seems to have worked out for this pair, but: “all I can think when I watch it is "but what if she wanted to say no?"”

My instinctive my reply to that would be, she would have said no.

This sort of proposal puts a lot of pressure on the woman to comply, Dzerins argues, because it’s so public. Gangs of total strangers feel they have the right to stick their oar in and tell her to agree, and if she doesn’t he will become some kind of martyr for the romantic cause.

I take her point, but to be honest I’d have thought the emotional fallout between the couple is ultimately the same whether she rejects him in public or private. Yes, if you’re unlucky there is a possibility it goes viral for a week or two and people write some nasty comments about you on Youtube. But surely that’s the least of your worries when you’ve just discovered your partner knows sod all about you – for them to have misjudged your reaction so completely belies some serious communication problems.

My other query would be why is it only the woman is demeaned by this show of affection? The man has spent a load of time and money sorting it out solely to impress her – isn’t that flattering? Couldn’t it even be said he is demeaning himself by reducing his personality to 2-Dimensional cartoon prince purely to satisfy the romantic streak of the otherwise level-headed, educated woman he fell in love with?

The notion that this type of proposal is impersonal, or designed to make strangers think you’re cool, feels overly cynical to me. Yes, it’s cheesy, and no, of course you don’t need to make a massive song and dance over a proposal to make a marriage work - but who says that’s why he did it?

I like to think he was motivated by a sense that his fiancé’s feelings of joy and being special would outweigh the embarrassment either of them felt.

It wouldn’t work for me but that’s OK, because it’s not about me - or my feminist principles, or any other stranger from the internet.

It’s about two hopeless romantics on the 19.57 from Euston.

Long may they be sick-makingly sweet.

A Bastion Club Novel Review

In between researching the life of Caligula and watching various box sets, since Christmas I have sporadically engaged myself in the task of reading a fairly terrible historical romance by biochemist turned author Stephanie Laurens.

It's called Captain Jack's Woman, and if you're thinking of reading it at any point I suggest you stop reading this post now because there are going to be spoilers.

The story is simple enough. It is 1811, Norfolk, Engerland. A beautiful but headstrong girl returns to her childhood home, having failed to ensnare a husband in London. She disguises herself as a boy and becomes leader of a gang of smugglers. She meets the leader of a rival smuggling gang who happens to be the Lord next door. She doesn't know that, because he too is in disguise. So he can catch some French spies, since you asked. Their gangs join forces. He finds out she is a woman, although he doesn't know she is of his class, and she finds out he is a man, which mightn't be as bad as she previously thought. They fall madly in lust, have sex on a table, and eventually discover that they are the same class and can get married. Hooray!

But wait! There's still about a third of the book to go. For whilst they are married, they still do not fully understand one another. Yawn. So, they have some misunderstandings and some more sex, and eventually he realises she is not merely his wife - she is his friend. Meanwhile she comes to understand that he doesn't involve her in smuggling type activities not because he wants to control her, but because he doesn't want her to die. Which was fairly obvious, given she got herself shot almost immediately after he discovered her true identity.

My problems with this book are twofold. The first issue is that it is overlong - Laurens has got to the point where she's quite a well established romance author so they no longer edit her as stringently as they should. If you've ever wondered how many times is too many for a horse to be rubbed down in one chapter, I am here to confirm that four is right out.

The second issue I have is that heroine Kit is perceived as a scandalously headstrong character by everyone - herself, her husband, family, servants, friends and acquaintances - yet when she goes to tell him something, he only needs to kiss her and she forgets how to speak. I mean literally, cannot form words anymore. Which is mimsy as fuck, frankly. She doesn't once invoke the literary precedent of her red hair and give him a slap for behaving inappropriately, she merely claims to be seething inwardly - then forgets as soon as he forces his tongue between her teeth in a disconcertingly rapey manner.

I will concede that romantic heroines aren't famous for their feminist principles. But this woman's inner monologue is completely at odds with her behaviour, which made her character development feel disjointed and at times clunky. Captain Jack is reassuringly misogynistic and mostly does what you'd expect, so at least he fits into the action more easily.

There are some pretty torrid sex scenes in there, though, which are good for a laugh. Although I'm not convinced that "empurpled" is a proper word. And amusing though these passages are, they don't help my anxiety about April, when I am supposed to be writing a romance for 12 Books in 12 Months. I can't shake the feeling that if I end up needing to write a sex scene, I'll want to put jokes in. I'll probably end up with a satirical indictment of the fact that true romance does not exist in reality and several oblique references to social networking.

Maybe I should email Stephanie for help.

Chapter Eight

A fortnight had passed since the fire.

Bracken was staying in a grotty hostel up town until she could get somewhere else to live, but because she no longer had any dependants she seemed to have been pushed quite far down the list. This was annoying, but was not her primary grievance.

The morning after the fire, Bracken’s aunt had been found sound asleep on her own couch. She had apparently been evacuated by the bomb disposal people and just gone home, without stopping to think about the baby or her brother in law.

To add insult to injury, she was unable to recall any of the events after Bracken and Nigella had left for their night out. She was deeply apologetic, but no idea where Nicky or the baby were. Bracken, furious, assumed she had been so pissed she forgot all about them. As such, she the two had had a series of blazing rows, and now they weren’t talking to one another.

Her aunt maintained she had not been that pissed, but she couldn't explain what had happened to leave a black hole in her memory where a grown man and a child should have been. She was so worried about the potential for early onset alzheimers that it seemed easier to feud with her niece than to face the problem head on, and of course she felt terribly guilty, which makes people get quite defensive.

Nigella had sided with her mum out of a vague sense of family loyalty, so she too had stopped talking to Bracken. Bracken blustered that was fine by her because at least she didn't have to watch Nige throw herself at Jimmy Bob at every available opportunity, but when she was alone it was one of the things she cried about.

Never being one to read between the lines, Nige believed that Bracken was being very unreasonable expecting her to choose between her mum and her cousin. Her response to this was straightforward, with deviant tendencies. You see reader; Nigella was the only person other than themselves who knew that Aloysius and Esmeralda were not really a couple. She had witnessed a heated argument between them in the car on the night of the fire, when Bracken was investigating and they thought she was out for the count. As a result, she had decided that the best revenge for angry words (and of course her wronged mother) would be to take a crack at the beloved Al. And because Esmerelda was still hanging around like a bad smell, bracken would never know until it was too late.

In addition, the recording of Jeremy Kyle loomed large in Bracken's consciousness. She wondered if she'd get any sympathy for the vanished baby. Probably not. He'd say it was her own fault for going out and leaving him. But at least her aunt might get denounced as unfit to look after kids on national telly.

"Have you found anything yet," she said into the phone.

The police had launched a missing persons search for Nicky and the baby, and Bracken had been phoning for updates several times a day, sometimes going in to the station and waiting round for hours till someone took pity and talked to her for a bit.

As far as she could gather, they were looking with the assumption that Uncle Nicky had gone a bit brain wrong and taken off with his young nephew, for some as yet unknown end. Bracken didn't think that was it, but had been told that hunches didn't mean anything unless you were a fully trained police officer.

"It's not a hunch," she had said, "I know Nicky. He's not the kidnapping type."

"Well," the attending officer willfully misunderstood, "maybe your son went with him willingly, but if it was without your permission we have to treat it as kidnapping."

"Went with him willingly? He's sixteen months old!"

"They're often easily led at that age. You need to be teaching stranger danger from birth, in my view."

"But it's his uncle you're saying he's with! He looks after him every day!"

"Gosh," said the officer, who was actually an undercover actor doing research for a bit part in River City, "it's actually the perfect crime, isn't it?"

"Anyway," Bracken continued abrasively, "Nicky doesn’t have any money, and he’s feart of his ain shaow. Where would he go?"

"Oh I dunno," the police-actor replied airily, "there's all kinds of jolly free things to do in Edinburgh during the day. Maybe they've gone to the Museum of Childhood, or the Brass Rubbing Centre, or the National Gallery. Or maybe they're playing 'I spy' on the meadows. Or they could be at one of the libraries for Rhymetime."

Bracken balked at the mention of the library. She hadn't been back in since the fire. It wouldn’t be the same without the buggy as a kind of shield. And she didn't think she could cope with seeing Al all loved up, as he no doubt was.

"You're a muppet," she said to the police-actor, "they've been gone for two weeks, I doubt they're just wandering round various Edinburgh tourist attractions. Do you not think someone would have seen them?"

"Hm. I see what you mean."

There was a pause.

"Maybe they went to Glasgow. There's all animals and stuff at the Kelvingrove museum. Kids love that sort of thing."

"Right," said Bracken, "well if you get on to investigating that and let me know how you do. What was your name again?"

"Officer Moriarty," said the police-actor, with pride. He had spent ages trying to come up with a good fake name.

"Riiiiiight," Bracken said, wondering whether maybe she had dialled the wrong number.

She wrote down the name so she could ask not to speak to him next time she called.

“Good luck thwarting Sherlock Holmes,” she said, and hung up.

At the other end of the phone, the police-actor felt foolish.

“So that’s where I’ve heard that name before,” he said to no-one in particular. “And he’s not even one of the good guys.”

“Y’know, Jimmy Bob,” said the officer at the next desk, “there’s this thing called the internet, which might help you out with some of your research. Shall I show it to you?”

“I know how to do the internet,” Jimmy Bob said, “I’ll have you know I’ve got 807 facebook friends.”

“Is that so,” his companion remarked dryly. “The middle of a crowd is one of the loneliest places to be.”

“How does that work?”

“Ach, forget it.”

Bracken left the payphone and stared up at the sky.

It was overcast, and looked like rain. But then it always did these days. It was as though the weather was making an effort to reflect her mood, she thought sometimes. There would be something offensive about waking up to glorious sunshine.

A flock of geese honked over in their V-formation. She hadn’t seen them do that over the centre of town before. Maybe they were lost. Or opting for a city break instead of flying south…

‘I’m spending too much time on my own,’ she thought, ‘I nearly laughed at that.’ She shoved her hands into her pockets and began the four-mile trudge from the hostel to work. She did have change for the bus, but walking it was one way to fill in the time now that she had nobody to talk to look after.

As she walked, she watched the crowds with an intensity that made anyone who caught her eye give her a wide berth. Every time she saw a man with a small child, she stared at them extra hard to check… but it was never Nicky, and by extension never the wean. She couldn’t decide whether she liked the way her heart jumped whenever it looked like this time, it might actually be them… it was sort of like getting butterflies, and that had to be better than feeling nothing at all.

The rain came on with an onomatopoeic sound of your choosing, and she pulled up her hood around her ears. Her mood, like the last couple of chapters, was decidedly mopey.

Just ahead of her a car pulled in to the side of the road, and she grimaced unattractively when she recognized it as the one Esmeralda had given her a lift in just a couple of weeks previously. It seemed like it had been months.

“Bracken,” Esmeralda called as she leaned over to wind down the passenger window, “can I give you a lift somewhere?”

“Nah, that’s OK,” she said, “I’ll be mega early if you do that, so…”

“Well that’s better than getting drenched surely? Come on, we can sit in the library whilst we’re waiting for your shift to start. I’m sure I can persuade Al to give us some coffee…”

Her brain melted a little at the mention of his name. She wondered what he was wearing today. Something from Marks and Spencer, maybe.

“How is Al doing,” she asked, her voice a picture of concern.

“Oh, he’s a little bit up and down, as you might expect,” Esmeralda said vaguely. “Come on, get in the car and I’ll tell you more.”

As she suspected, this promise of information about Aloysius sealed the deal, and Bracken reluctantly opened the car door.

“So,” said Esmeralda, “any word on your uncle and your little boy?”

“Nothing,” Bracken said miserably, “and I think the polis who are working on the case might be retarded.”

“Oh dear,” Esmeralda replied in a tone that sounded 96% like real sympathy and almost completely masked the note of amusement underneath, “that’s no good at all. What makes you say that?”

“Well I don’t mean actually retarded, like special needs,” she qualified, “I just mean like a bit dozy.”

“I’m sure they’ll come good in the end,” Esmeralda said, although she had good reason to believe that this was not the case.

“I hope so. Anyway, you were saying about Al?”

“Well, he’s a bit moody,” Esmeralda said, “more so than usual I mean. But he’s settled in well at his job, and started running the rhyme sessions with the mummies and the lickle babies.”

“Aw,” said Bracken wistfully, “there’s nice.”

“Yes, he’s very good,” she gushed, “he plays harmonica and ukulele so he gets a bit of live music in there.”

“Sounds good,” Bracken said. “The wean likes harmonica. Always gurgles away tae ‘eeself when we’re up town and he hears a tramp playing one to get money for methylated spirits.”

“Lovely.”

“I miss him.”

“I know you do, sweetie. But maybe its not such a bad thing.”

“Come again?”

“Well, think about it. This is a chance for you to start again, be who you always wanted to be, before motherhood got in the way. You didn’t plan to get pregnant when you did, did you?”

“Well no, I guess not.”

“So maybe this is the opportunity to do what you did plan on doing. What did you want to be when you were seventeen?”

“A bus driver.”

“Really?”

“Yes. They ran a campaign to get more drivers and they said they paid them 26k a year and I thought, ‘that’ll dae.’ I’d drive a bus for that money, wouldn’t you?”

Esmeralda thought of the small private fortune she had amassed over the past few years through nefarious wheelings and dealings.

“Yeah,” she said, “wow, I didn’t know they made so much cash!”

“Mmm,” Bracken continued, “but I kind of went off the idea after a while. Sitting down all the time, you probably get piles and stuff like that.”

“Oh yeah,” Esmeralda agreed, “I hadn’t thought of that.” Which was true, she hadn’t.

They turned down the road where the library and school sat next to one another, listening to the rain drumming on the car roof.

“Bracken, I’ll level with you,” Esmeralda said as she pulled into the library car park, “there’s a reason why I was asking you those probing questions about your future ambitions from the past.”

She suppressed a groan.

“Really, Esmeralda? What’s that?”

An almighty clap of thunder drowned out the other woman’s answer, and they high-tailed it into the building before the rain took out one of their eyes.

Once inside, the looks on the faces of Adric and Aloysius put it out of her mind.

“What’s the matter with you two,” she asked, “except for the obvious of course – sorry to be insensitive at this difficult time.”

Aloysius smiled sadly.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

“The matter,” boomed Adric, who lost all sense of volume control in times of stress, “is everything and a half.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he replied, this time in a quarter of a whisper, which is the most dramatic level it’s possible to whisper at, “that they are closing the library.”

Chapter Six

Bracken sat in the hospital waiting room with Nigella propped up against her shoulder. A cursory glance by an attending paramedic had determined that the injury looked worse than it actually was, and so they had been told to sit and wait their turn. The police hadn’t been very interested in bringing charges, so had given them all a warning not to be so bloody stupid and then gone off to attend a stand off with a lone gunman in Dalry.

Nige had a damp bar towel pressed against the welt in her side, and was mainly conscious, but she wasn’t giving much good chat. It felt to Bracken as though they had been sitting there for an eternity before eventually they were summoned through to see a doctor.

“Needs stitches,” the aforementioned doctor said, “about five of ‘em.”

He was a big burly ex-colonel of a man, with twinkling blue eyes and an enormous auburn moustache that curled out at the ends. His doctor coat was made of tweed, which Bracken was fairly sure was not the norm, and he wore a deerstalker hat, which she felt could not have been regulation doctor-wear. He looked at her, suddenly serious.

“Will it take long,” she asked, disconcerted. “The stitching?”

“Well that depends,” he replied, “how good’s your sewing?”

“My – aren’t you going to do it?” she queried, as he burst into peals of raucous belly laughter. The tweed trembled like an ocean in the breeze.

“Of course I’m not old gel,” he said, “the nurse will manage. Honestly, the look on your face. That joke always works on children but it’s much better when I get an adult with it. How’s your sewing, heh heh. Funny every time.”

The nurse who was silently cleaning Nigella’s wound with alcoholic swabs grimaced and shook her head.

“Geeta always finds it funny, don’t you Geeta,” he continued, apparently having not seen the face.

“Every time, Doctor Maxwell,” she said pleasantly. “It’s the-“

“-Looks on their faces that does it, eh?”

Bracken got the impression that Geeta was rather accustomed to being interrupted by the tweedy behemoth. He looked about six foot five, and that was in his stockinged feet. Again, Bracken was compelled to fight what she assumed must be her ignorant, stereotypical view of how doctors dressed.

“Righty ho,” he said, “terribly nice to meet you but I must trot on. There’s a rather ill lady I must go and visit over on one of the wards. I used to know her husband back in the day so I wish to ensure she is being well looked after. No ruddy hospital food, for a start.”

Geeta looked at him strangely, but did not voice whatever she was thinking, presumably in the interests of patient confidentiality.

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Geeta told Bracken, after he was gone, “he literally does that to everyone. Some of us were thinking about buying him a joke book for secret Santa last Christmas but somehow his wife got wind of it and banned us. Apparently he’d had one before and it was nearly the end of their marriage. He kept mixing up the punch lines and offending their posh friends.”

“How the other half live,” groaned Nigella from the trolley she had been bleeding on till Geeta sorted her out.

“You need to be quiet and have lots of rest,” Geeta informed her, slipping out of gossip mode and into calm professionalism without a fuss.

“I feel sick,” Nigella mumbled in response.

“That’s probably the pain killers. Here,” she said, producing a cardboard tray, “you can do it in this. And you can lie down here for a while but we don’t have any beds so I think your pal is going to have to try and organize you a lift somehow.”

“Thanks,” she said, vomiting politely.

“No problem,” Geeta said, removing herself to go and rescue other patients from the unwanted humour of Doctor Maxwell.

“Right well I’ll go and see about getting us hame, will I,” Bracken said brightly.

“Nah, stay with me a bit.”

Bracken perched awkwardly on the trolley, holding her cousin’s hand.

“Wasn’t quite the night you had in mind eh Nige,” she said softly.

“Not quite,” she agreed, “but at least I never went hame wi Jimmy Bob.”

“I so knew you were going to do that! That’s pure shan by the way Nige, he’s no worth it.”

“Aye ah ken,” she said sleepily. “Just sometimes ah get lonely, but.”

Her dark eyes closed.

“Aye,” Bracken said wistfully, “ken wit ye mean.”

Nigella gave a long, throaty snore.

“Right,” Bracken whispered, creeping slowly out of the room, “lets see about getting a lift.”

There didn’t seem to be any pay phones about, so she went outside and switched on her mobile. There was no reception.

“Sake,” she cursed, her mind racing to think of a back up plan.

“No reception?” Asked a voice from the shadows.

Bracken turned to see that it belonged to a woman, with long wavy hair and intelligent eyes.

“Nut,” she replied, “have you noticed whether there’s any payphones in there?”

“They’re out of order,” the woman said, “but here, you can use mine. I get free minutes anyway.”

“Oh, I couldn’t use up your minutes,” Bracken said, coming over all Miss Jean Brodie in the presence of such a classy bird.

“Not at all,” the benevolent stranger replied, “I insist.”

“Thanks,” Bracken said gratefully, punching in her aunt’s mobile number.

The aunt was asleep in front of late night poker, having had a bottle and a half of wine to herself, and failed to hear her phone singing Justin Bieber’s modern classic, the one that goes ‘Baby, Baby, Baby, Oh!’

“Nae answer,” she said, as her aunt dreamed she was on a date with Bieber’s older, talented brother, “I’ll have tae try a cab.”

“Go ahead,” the Samaritan replied.

Bracken duly used the woman’s free minutes to book a taxi, then handed her phone back awkwardly.

“Thank you so much,” she said, “I dunno what I would have done.”

“No problem,” the woman said.

“So, what are you in for?” Bracken asked. “Are you visiting someone?”

“Yeah,” the woman said after a pause that was just slightly too long. “My… boyfriend’s mother just took ill suddenly so I brought them to the hospital. He can’t drive, and I can, so it made sense. She’s just with the doctor now but I didn’t want to crowd them.”

“That’s awful,” Bracken said, “do you think she’ll be alright?”

“Hard to say, really,” the stranger said, somewhat strangely. There was a lump in her voice, Bracken assumed because she was upset, and yet… there was a metallic tang to it, as though the emotion was a little less visceral than it was calculated.

“I should go and find them really. Hope your cousin is OK.”

“Thanks,” Bracken said, “and thanks again for letting me use your phone. Life saver!”

The Samaritan smiled thinly, and shimmied back into the hospital.

Bracken crossed her arms and rubbed her shoulders, which had gone goosepimply in the November air. She looked up, and was pleased to be able to see stars from this part of the city. Usually clouds, or reflections from street lamps blocked them from view around where Bracken lived. Or other times, the ceiling got in the way.

‘Better go and get Nige,’ she thought to herself with a sigh. Then, ‘how did that lassie ken I was here wi ma cousin?’

She shivered. There was something not quite right about that beautiful stranger. She said the right things but it was as though her heart was separate from the process. Bracken, an altogether more emotional being, found this hard to relate to.

But it hardly mattered, she thought. It wasn’t as if she was ever going to see the girl again. Although, she had seemed sort of familiar, now she came to think of it. She thought that she recognized the eyes in particular, hard and cold, observing her strangely. Maybe she was on telly or something.

Bracken walked back through the automatic doors, and was blinded momentarily by the lights.

“You alright love,” a passing man in a nurse’s uniform enquired.

“Yeah thanks,” Bracken replied. “Just going to pick up my friend.”

“Mr Nightingale,” Geeta squeaked, appearing at his shoulder, “just why are you wearing one of our uniforms? You’re supposed to be visiting your wife, not stealing hospital supplies.”

“She was asleep,” he said, “all that labour stuff tired her out, and someone took the baby off me and put it elsewhere. I got bored waiting for her to wake up, and when I went to look for the baby I got told to go back and sit with her. So I thought I’d do some investigating, but first I had to find a cunning disguise.”

“Someone’s been watching too much Diagnosis Murder,” Geeta said, meaning Mr Nightingale. “I’m going to write a strongly worded email to Dick Van Dyke about encouraging farcical detective shenanigans in a medical environment. It’s deeply annoying and very unprofessional.”

“I’m going to get Nige now,” Bracken excused herself. “Thanks for all your help, Geeta. Good luck with your shenanigans, Mr Nightingale.”

“What a nice girl,” Mr Nightingale observed as she clopped off down the corridor, dressed as she still was in her tallest clubbing heels.

“Yes,” said Geeta, “although something of a tragic figure I feel. Hope things turn out alright for her in the end.”

“Well, there’s just under forty thousand words to go before we find that out,” he replied. “So I’d better carry on my investigations, just in case she needs me for a subplot?”

Geeta shook her head.

“This is high romance, not Scooby Doo. Go back to your wife, she’ll be livid if she wakes up and you’re not there.”

“Fair point.”

“And take off that uniform,” she added, “I don’t want you getting yourself into a comedy situation where you have to treat someone. This is an NHS hospital, not Carry On Doctor.”

Meanwhile, Bracken was trying to wake Nigella, who was out cold.

“I can’t believe they went ahead and gave you painkillers knowing you’d been drinking,” Bracken said.

“Urg,” went Nigella, incoherently.

Bracken looked about her, hands on hips, thinking.

In the corner of the room, there was a fold up wheelchair with no seat and a yellow post-it note inscribed ‘goosed – do not use’.

She considered for a moment.

“Sod it,” she decided, “we’re only going to the door.”

She unfolded the chair, and laid the bloody bar towel across where the seat should be, knotting it around the frame. She then put it as close to the trolley as possible and tried to maneuver her cousin on to it. Nigella unhelpfully flopped about like an enormous rag doll the whole time, which made the operation a lot more difficult.

“Wish I had someone here to help,” Bracken wished out loud, impotently. Nobody came.

Eventually she managed to get Nigella into a sitting position, and with one arm under her legs and another around her back, she lifted from the knees and finally got her cousin into the chair. Nige’s head lolled dangerously.

‘Hope her neck’s alright,’ Bracken thought. She had seen medical dramas, and was vaguely aware that you had to be careful of people’s necks.

Then she carefully took the brake off, and wheeled her sleeping cousin towards the door.

Up ahead in the waiting area she could see the voluptuous hair of the phone Samaritan, who was trying to console a companion whose face Bracken could not make out. It tumbled down her slim line back like a shiny waterfall, just as if she was in a herbal essences advert.

As they got closer, Bracken was about to say hello, when two things happened.

First, Nigella woke up for just long enough to be sick all down herself, which meant that the taxi driver was not going to allow them into his cab.

Second, Bracken managed to identify the beautiful stranger’s companion – presumably the boyfriend whose mother was ill.

It was Aloysius Hunkington-Smythe.

Chapter Three

"What did you make of Bracken, then," asked Adric McGuff, who was Aloysius's manager.

They were sitting in the poky staff room ingesting coffee and cake after a rough couple of hours shelving books and the like.

Aloysius tried to think of the words. Tentatively, like a mouse emerging from its house to engage in some sort of metaphor, he ventured,

"She seems a little... Spiky?"

"What, like an armadillo?"

"You mean porcupine, surely?"

"No I don't, porcupines are the feathery things aren't they? And don't call me Shirley."

"Stop trying to pad out the word count by spouting needless non sequiturs."

"Sorry," Adric said, rubbing his eyes vigorously using his hands, of which he had the usual number, "but you’ve got to admit, it's too early for this."

"It's quarter to five!"

"Yes well, I'm not a morning person."

Aloysius was puzzled, and not for the first time that day, as the more astute of you readers may recall from previous chapters. But he sucked it up and got on with it, because that’s what a manly man would do. Then he'd probably punch some guy in the face, then catch and eat some raw meat. But this isn't that kind of story. Not yet anyway.

"So you found her a wee bit defensive, then?"

"You could say that. She seemed alright, quite a strong character, but like, with issues of some kind. Is that baby hers?"

Adric looked surprised, which basically meant his eyebrows went further up his face than usual for a short period of time. This looked quite comical, and the amusing effect was heightened by the presence of a large white blob of cream above his right eyebrow.

'How did that even get there,' Aloysius wondered, by which point it was too late to say anything because Adric was talking and had been for several minutes.

"- and so me and Vhairi think it might be a ghost."

Aloysius wondered whether he would get away with it if he asked Adric to start again.

"I can see you don't believe me,” he was saying. “And why would you, it's pretty out there. But you have to admit the whole thing is pretty suspicious. And once you've eliminated the possible, the impossible becomes the most likely to be probable. Viz a Viz, QED, it's a catch 22."

"It is?"

"Glad you agree. Right, that's 5pm, let's get out of here."

Aloysius waited for his bus so deep in thought that sparrows could have collected in the furrow of his brow, but only if that hadn't been an utterly preposterous idea. He wished he hadn't offended Bracken, although he was a bit irritated with her for jumping to the conclusion he had been deliberately offensive rather than just confused about what to say. There again, Adric had implied she had some pretty heavy stuff going on. Or at least he thought that's what he had been saying. But he couldn't seriously be entertaining the notion that her baby was a ghost, could he? People with views like that don't scale the dizzying heights of middle management; they stay on the bottom rung, googling conspiracy theories.

It wasn’t that Aloysius was not open minded about matters supernatural - he had met several ghosts in his time, and even seen an elephant fly. That’s a fly that looks like an elephant, not an enormous mammal with wings. But his openness was precisely why the concept of a ghoul inhabiting the body of a baby made no sense to him - that's just not how people roll in the afterlife. Well, would you? And anyway, the baby had seemed pretty corporeal as it sat there sucking its pie. Kind of soggy and gross, but definitely real.

His musings were momentarily interrupted as the bus arrived, in an atmospheric swirl of fumes and spray from the road. Aloysius boarded as if in a dream, and the driver exhaled slowly but threateningly as he fumbled in his pockets for change. One of them had the beginnings of a hole in it, and he had already lost a few 5ps as a result.

And what had those guys in the black cars been about, he wondered, mechanically putting £1.20’s worth of coppers into the box thing that you put bus fares in when you get on the bus (assuming you don’t have a concessionary pass, day ticket, etc). From the look on her face when they pulled up she didn't seem to know them. But she didn’t seem to react well to whatever they’d said to her, so it was unlikely to be the postcode lottery or Jimmy Saville fixing it for her to go on Broadway, or whatever it was girls wanted to do.

Maybe she'd borrowed some money she couldn’t pay back and now she was being threatened? He felt a metaphorical chink appear in his otherwise impervious suit of musty man armour. Bracken being kneecapped by the mafia didn't bear thinking about.

Or was it to do with the uncle, perhaps? Hadn’t she described him as nice but a bit of a soft touch? These sorts of people didn't suffer fools gladly, Aloysius knew - he'd seen gangster movies. He’d seen The Godfather (I, II and III), Goodfellas, Casino, that other one with the guy…. The expensive suits were a dead giveaway (as far as Hollywood was concerned) that these guys were up to no good, but trying to mask it by looking outwardly respectable.

He sat down next to an old woman who appeared to be asleep. The whole bus smelt of wet dog and leeks, but he soon came to the conclusion that most of it was emanating from her. Bracken would never smell like that, he found himself thinking. Then he thought, ‘damn, why am I still thinking about her?’ and he balled his hands into angsty fists. After years of seeing things through a prism of his own problems and discontent, it was both odd and upsetting that she should keep cropping up in his brain.

"I don't even know what she really looks like under all that makeup," he said out loud.

The man in front turned round, and slowly examined the old woman Aloysius was sitting next to. The one who smelled of wet dog and leeks, and probably gin.

"If that's makeup, I dread to think mate,” he quipped. “I'd let her keep wearing it if I were you."

Later on that day, the man was to develop an unusual rash on the backs of his knees. He didn't connect this with insulting the old lady on the bus, having forgotten all about that as he went about his daily routine, in which she did not feature. However, there are some folks round the estate who think that said lady is a witch, with a penchant for inflicting people with upsetting rashes for their misdemeanors. And if I were Sherlock Holmes, I might notice that these two things make for a strange coincidence.

Aloysius rolled his eyes, and said

"Oh leave her alone mate. It’s pretty unfair to start on her when she's sleeping and can't defend herself." This chivalrous defense could be what saved him from his own hex. Unfortunately it also made him miss his stop.

"Bollocks," he said vehemently, pressing the stop button without due care and attention. The driver screeched to a halt, and then put on the brakes to stop the bus. It was pissing with rain as well.

"Cheers," Aloysius said to the bus driver, because good manners cost nothing, and he took off towards the flat in an awkward, loping run.

"You're late," his mother informed him as soon as he opened the door, "I thought something had happened!"

He glanced at the clock.

"How do you know I'm late," he asked in a measured tone. "This was my first day, we didn’t know how long I'd be."

"I had to take my medication on my own," she said, wheeling through to the next room.

"It's only Vitamin C," he said, following reluctantly.

"I know," she said, "I'm just a bit on edge is all. Was it alright?"

"Yeah, fine I guess."

"None of those jakey types have a pop at you?"

"Mother, please."

"Alright, alright. Its just that I never envisioned this as a career for you, my boy."

"I know. I didn't exactly plan it myself… But it'll do for now. We need the money, after all. What with your legs and-"

"We're probably eligible for some sort of help, though," she cut in.

"We’re not going on benefits, mother. That all goes on file you know. They aren't having any private information about me."

"Don't be so paranoid, dear."

"Maybe you'd be paranoid too, if everybody was out to get you."

"That's a touch melodramatic, even for you."

"Well it's true."

"If you say so. Cup of tea?"

He shook his head.

"No thanks. I need to go and brood awhile."

"Really? So soon? I thought we moved away from the moors because you were ready to live again?"

"I thought I was, but now... Now I'm not so sure."

"Was there a girl at your new job?"

"There were several. But I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"Well that’s because you are being willfully obtuse,” she observed wryly. “Off you go then, brood away. Do a bit of pacing for me, I can't do it like I used to."

"I find that in very poor taste."

"Why? I'm the one in the chair."

Aloysius took this opportunity to exeunt stage left, out of the back door and into their poky shared garden. A cat gazed balefully at him from the wall. He ignored it, and began to pace up and down.

It only took him four steps to navigate the entire length of the place, so after a while he stopped and sat down next to the cat.

"Am I ready to love again?"

The cat looked noncommittal.

"I've been to hell and back in the name of that saucy emotion," he expanded, "but some time has elapsed since then. Almost a year, in fact."

"Miaow," said the cat, which didn't really want to get involved but felt like there wasn't really a lot of choice in the matter.

"Oh no," said Aloysius, laughing nervously, "there's nobody else. No mad wives hidden away in the tower to set Bracken alight during the night."

The cat said nothing, having spotted a rodent in the grass a few yards away.

“I think maybe I’ll ask her to come out with me,” he said, more to himself than the cat (which was just as well, because by this point it was half way home with a gory present for its owner).

“Yes,” he told the moon, “I will. I am ready to move on.”

“Guess who,” came a sultry voice from behind him, and his heart dropped down to his toes and dribbled out the ends in a terrified puddle.

There was only one woman in the world whose voice had the power to do that to him.

Aloysius turned around in slow motion, hoping it wasn’t so. But there, larger than life and leaning over his garden gate, was the strapping figure of the only woman he had ever loved, who had jilted him at the alter for his best friend Kyle.

“Hello, spunkface,” she said cheerily.

“Esmerelda,” he replied…

Chapter One

Remember NaNoWriMo? I'm having another bash this year. And with no Beatblogger interviews pending, I might even have time to get it done. Here is chapter the first. 1828 words so far, hooray!

"Nah, that's lies," Bracken McCracken told the man behind the counter with certainty.

His sandy sideburns glistened uncertainly. He was quite attractive, she noticed then. He had all his own hair and limbs, two eyes, comparatively clean clothes… the whole package.

"Sorry Ms McCracken," he began stiffly, "I have to ask you - it’s my job.”

“Right,” she begrudged, grudgingly. She didn’t want him to know she had been swayed by his physical charms. After all this was 2010, when women had the vote, and rights to education and the like.

“The computer thinks you owe us £39,” he continued. “So I let’s see… If I read them out can you tell me if any of the titles ring a bell?”

She glared at him, in what she hoped was a vampish way. He cleared his throat nervously.

“'The Hispanic Trillionaire's Cruise Ship Baby', perhaps?”

Bracken folded her arms, showing off her signet rings to their full advantage.

“OK, I can see that’s a no go. How about 'Her Inexperienced Sugar Daddy'?”

Slowly and deliberately, she shook her head. Her hair, scraped back by a daring array of polyester scrunchies, cracked about her face like a cat o’ nine tails. Somehow though, he remained impervious.

“Uh, the next one is 'The Lady Pirate's Navy Tryst'?"

She flushed with embarrassment and anger.

"Do I look like the type of person that would read any of that stuff?"

He raised an eyebrow, taking in her velour tracksuit, silver puffa jacket and gold plated accessories. The buggy beside her contained a baby of indeterminate age, which was holding a pasty from Gregg’s.

'Dextrous,' he thought to himself, before replying as politely as he knew how,

"I'm sure I don't know madam. All sorts of people read those books and I wouldn't dare to presume anything about anyone’s reading habits. I can’t, ever since we assumed one old chap who takes twelve of these romances at a time got them for his wife, then he told us he’s never been married.”

Bracken was interested in spite of herself.

"You can get 12 books at a time?"

"Oh yes, for three weeks at first, and then you can renew them by phone or online if you need them longer."

"Michty me."

"Quite."

They paused awkwardly for a moment. She tried to remain defiant, but forgot herself when she looked into his eyes, which were like deep bubbling pools of blackberry jam. Bracken was rather partial to jam, particularly blackberry flavour.

"Delicious," she said out loud.

"What?"

"Sorry," she replied, visibly reddening even under a thick layer of itchy but affordable foundation, "I was thinking about scones."

He smiled warmly for the first time, and the jam eyes crinkled a little bit at the edges.

"My mother makes lovely scones. Or at least she did, before-"

He stopped dead, a frown passing over his manly jaw.

"Before what?"

"Before... The accident."

A dramatic chord sounded.

"Sorry, forgot to put my phone off," said an old man who was sitting on the sofa reading the Daily Record whilst he waited for the rain to go off.

Bracken gave him one of her patented scowls, before venturing, "Is she...?"

"…Paralysed from the waist down," he responded, heavily. "She can't reach the kitchen work top to use the mixer anymore." He closed his eyes, overwhelmed for a moment by some terrible kind of mental anguish. "Damn tiny wheelchair."

"I'm so sorry for your loss," Bracken said sincerely.

"Thank you," he replied, and lo, it was as if some sort of spark exchanged between them. It was invisible though, not like an actual spark. Sort of just like a feeling you get sometimes when you click with someone. You know the one.

"Oh," he said, in a sudden moment of clarity, "Speaking of mothers - does yours have the same name as you? Perhaps she took those books out!"

Bracken frowned deeply, the hood of her puffa crinkling with the effort, before stropping,

"My maw ran off wi some bawjaws nae guid drug dealer when I was a bairn. I dinnae ken anyhin about her and I dinnae want tae."

She tended to enunciate less when upset.

"Sorry," he said, "I didn't know. Were you raised by your dad then?"

"Who d'ye hink the nae guid bawjaws was?!"

"Oh."

She shrugged. He might be beautiful, but seemingly he wasn’t the brightest.

"Ah was brought up by my gran, which is pretty normal round here. But she kicked me out over the bairn-" she gestured in the direction of the buggy - "so I live wi Uncle Nicky the now. He’s a bit o’ a soft touch, but his hearts in the right place."

Aloysius Hunkington-Smythe – for this was the strapping library assistant’s name - looked back over some of his own life’s tragedies, of which there were many. They were, he reflected somewhat pretentiously, the sorts of things that might come to light if he were a character in a novel. In real life, though, they would never be known to another living soul. He had often wished there was someone he might share his pain with, but he had always thought it hopeless. Who could ever understand the effect of such trauma? Who would want to look far enough beyond his averagely dashing good looks to even try? But now, as he compared his darkest times with the experiences of this orange faced girl, he wondered whether Bracken's pain and suffering might rival even his own…

There again no, he thought, how could her pain be anything in comparison to his? Here she was, getting on with her life, feistily arguing the toss over what were quite clearly her library fines, as a queue of irate locals gathered behind her. Would she be able to do that if her past was full of secrets, hanging over her like fat, juicy ghosts?

Maybe she would, a voice in his subconscious pointed out, making him feel a little schizophrenic. He had heard tell in the past that women were different from men in some ways. Was this one of them? Aloysius sighed demonstratively, and his strong shoulders wobbled with the cyan coloured jelly of mixed emotions. How he wished he was able to pack all his sorrows in his old kit bag like that. Perhaps if he had a baby, like Bracken did, he would be able to be strong for it…

“So,” she said, interrupting his reverie, “are ye gonnae take they fines aff ma caird?”

“Well I don’t actually know how,” he admitted, “This is only my first day on the job.”

Bracken knew this already, because she was in the library every day. It was nice here, she thought. The flat was cold because they couldn’t really afford to heat it, and Uncle Nicky was a little bit wrong in the head and kept making hats out of tin foil to protect them from UFOs. But in here they had internet access, and daily papers, and lots of activities with kids, like storytelling and rhyme sessions and craft activities.

“Could you not ask someone else to show you?” she asked him.

“Well, they’re having a meeting,” he began apologetically, “and I don’t really know if I should interrupt.”

‘Who knew customer service would be so complex,’ he added to himself. Before working in this place, he had never had to deal with members of the public in his life.

Behind her in the queue, a middle-aged man with no front teeth tutted melodramatically.

“Ach, nevermind,” she snapped suddenly in exasperation, “I need tae get tae work anyway.”

“Work?” he replied, in that way you do when you can’t really think of anything to say.

She narrowed her eyes, about to completely misinterpret his meaning with potentially disastrous results.

“What, you don’t think a schemie single mum like me would bother holding down a job?”

“No-"

“Hink ah had the wean just so I could get a free hoose, is that it?”

“That’s not what I-"

“You dinnae ken ANYHIN about me and don’t even pretend you do, ya pompous, self satisfied, ‘oooh, when they made us read Shakespeare in school I actually enjoyed it’ piece e good for nothing, up your own arse, TRAMP.”

“Bracken – Ms McCracken – I –"

But she was gone, in a bittersweet cloud of hormones and Impulse body spray.

“Women, eh,” the toothless man from the queue intoned sagely.

Aloysius sighed once more, and the knees of a nearby schoolgirl who was skiving off to check her bebo went weak.

“Can I help you?” he asked the man, without really meaning it.

“Aye. Ah’ll have twenty lammy bammies please lad.”

“You’ll have what?”

“Lammy bammies. Fags! Chop chop, we huvnae got aw day. Specially after waiting on you and your bird sortin’ oot yer wee lovers tiff.”

“We’re not… she’s not… fags?”

The toothless man nodded, expectant.

“But… This is the library, though.”

The toothless man blinked and looked about him.

“Whaddya know,” he laughed phlegmily. “So it is as well. Ah’ve no been in here for aboot twenty years. It’s aw changed since then!”

“Ha, yeah.”

Not into a shop, though, he thought.

“Still dinnae sell fags though eh?”

Apparently this toothless wonder was something of a mind reader, even if his standards of dental hygiene left something to be desired.

“I’m afraid not,” Aloysius replied graciously. “I could do you a book with Audrey Hepburn smoking on the cover though?”

“Naw laddie, dinnae hink so. Audrey Hepburn? She was a man. Heard it on the Discovery Channel. Or was it a dream? I have dreams like that sometimes.”

“Oh right.”

“The libray though eh. What a pranny I am! Looks different than when I was a bairn. That a telly ower there?”

Aloysius smiled politely.

“Yes,” he replied, “we do a lot of youth work in here these days.”

“Oh aye?”

“Yes. I mean aye.”

“Rather youse than mese, heh heh heh. A telly eh. No like when I was a bairn. Librarian’d gie us a clip round the ear and send us on our way.”

“Well sir, the times they are a changing.”

“They are that. And ah’m only 32! Heh heh.”

“Ha ha.”

“OK well, I’ll see you when I need ma bus pass renewed,” the man coughed.

With that, he slouched off out into the rain and Aloysius, aside from stamping the due date on to a few Joan Jonker classics and exchanging weather-related pleasantries with the remaining people in the queue, was left alone with his thoughts.

He was surprised and slightly disconcerted to find that for the first time in several years, all of said thoughts were not of his dark past, but of a shapely young mum clad in a bright pink velour tracksuit set off by camel coloured ugg boots.

“I promised myself I’d never love again,” he muttered.

But if he was to keep that vow, he would have to stop thinking about Bracken McCracken’s heavily kohled eyes, which he had noticed were just the colour of gooseberry jam.

“Delicious,” he said.