@sandradavies
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UPDATE/ALTERNATIVE TO SEPTMBER COMP.
In view of lack of response so far, I wonder whether Tessa Hadley’s new collection, ‘After the funeral’ might be more inspiring? If so, give it a go – give them both a go if you feel so inspired – you’ve still a couple of weeks.
Oh heck – I never saw that coming, not among so many superb entries – thank you, Libby, for comp and comments, and thank you all for much reading awe and entertainment. I’ll aim to post September’s competition before the end of the day. [but isn’t it odd how often a last minute, popped into one’s head, final sentence seems to make what seems a disproportionate impact?]
Probably a bit aslant of what you were hoping for Libby, but is the idea that stuck
‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’
I guess you had to’ve been there, because even now, months later, just thinking about it makes me smile. It was the usual semi-dormant Friday afternoon meeting, Anton, our boss, wanting us to brain-storm some sort of cohesive plan which would encourage us to spend our weekend thinking up a cohesive marketing strategy for a new customer.
Clothes, as always, but not the usual sports-wear, which invariably demanded clashing colours, go-faster zing and shaped to display to best advantage biceps and meaty thighs; instead we gazed at slides of gauzy cotton, floral-printed nightwear, to be launched in time for Valentine’s Day, under the manufacturer’s ‘Sonnet’. Pretty, pastel and very feminine but … a wee bit too naïve to be sexy.
As per blinkered, normal, nerdy Richard, who I doubted even had a girlfriend. immediately clicked on Wiki and, assuming we were too arty-farty to know what a sonnet was, informed us, ‘A stanza of 14 lines; usually written in iambic pentameter and structured in three quatrains. Shakespeare wrote 154 of them, one of the best known is –‘
He was forced to halt by Ivan, our hunky, chunky sports-wear model, leaping to his feet and shouting, ‘Number 18!’ Hand on heart, he gazed misty-eyed out the window, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and temperate -’
After a moment’s astonishment, we gave him a round of applause. Anton, taking credit, said, That’s one approach. Anyone else?’
Bringing the mood down, I had to say, ’Please, not “compare”. Puts me in mind of that idiot with the twirly moustache, singing ‘ about car insurance.‘ Then Lily said, ’“Summer’s day” could be a bit dodgy too. Says ‘unexpectedly wet and fails to please’ to me!’
Jonty’s one-track mind and avid eyes failed to surprise any of us with his, ‘I approve of gauziness –‘ , but none of us anticipated his continuing, ‘For ‘those parts of thee that the world’s eye wanteth to view.’
Standing, checking his watch, Anton said, ‘Good start. Monday I want to know your top five.’ [344 words]
Congratulations Libby – what an interesting verbless exercise, one I’d like to attempt sometime and which you managed so smoothly. Thanks to Ath for another entertaining Teabreak episode. And to Terrie for both the challenge and the summing up. The being stretched into a maybe new direction is so good for my writing, shame more Denizens can’t find time to enter.
“Season to taste”
I could say it started as a joke, except I knew, at that age, Suze and I were, a bit self-consciously, aiming to bridge the gap between our schoolgirl selves and the mysterious, scary-but-enticing grown-up world we were bracing ourselves to enter.
Both of us were in top English. Read our homework to each other, critiqued (a more grown-up, more carefully-applied process than ‘criticise’) and praised (more or less sincerely) to our mutual benefit. Where we differed was while Suze also did Chemistry and Physics, I did Art. Was in the top group there too.
We also shared and exchanged books. Not only each other’s but also those belonging to our parents. With permission, usually, but also the ones they aimed to hide. The ones with lots of s*x. Suze was ahead of me with that. Not that she’d actually DONE anything, but her parents were less … inhibited, less secretive and more widely read than mine. Something Suze took full advantage of, beginning to write what she claimed would be her debut novel. She let me read it bit by bit when she was more or less happy with it. I thought it at least as good as most of what her mother read. Even so, I was surprised when, after weeks of prevaricating, she announced she was going to self-publish it.
‘Don’t you have to be, you know, over eighteen?’
‘I’m using Flora’s account.’ Flora her “giddy aunt” ‘And not my own name.’
‘And what about things like proof-reading?’
‘You’ve read it. Pointed out the mistakes.’
‘Yeah but …’
‘What I want you to do is paint something for the cover.’
Aah. I’d read her novel, yes. Her words put pictures in my head. Shadowy, and where experience couldn’t provide, they sparked my imagination more than a bit more scarlet. Plus, I did have one major advantage: the Life Drawing group I’d been going to for the past six weeks (claiming I was seventeen). We had male and female models. All ages. All naked. Lots of different poses. I was always being told I had talent, and was sure I could more than cobble something indicative of the clandestine trinkety nature of Suze’s story.
Reading my glee, Suze frowned, ‘You can’t have, you know, full frontal … or, or actual!‘
‘No, but I can … suggest. That kitchen table scene, for example. . A well placed tagine pot, ladles –‘
Suze shrieked, ‘And spice jars!’
‘Gives you some scope with your title.’
I’d already decided which of the models I’d ask to pose for me. Give me scope to enlarge upon my experience
[436 words]
Wow. Thank you Libby for this at-first-sight innocuous challenge. (I tried to resist the autobiographical, but in the end it was the only way for me to go) so thank you Terrie and Ath for such impactful alternatives; I’m glad I didn’t have the task of choosing between them.
Electricity and us
Electricity has played a considerable part in directing the path our lives have travelled, from the instant (if only sensory) flash of knowledge, at the end of our first date, that “This man is who I can safely be ME with!” to our fifty years of living in the North East.
At that time (5th April 1963) Steve worked for a company manufacturing Purple Hearts. Soon after swapped drugs for precious metals before joining (as had his father) the CEGB. West Ham power station was a longish commute from a Hertfordshire village on a dodgy motorbike, extended twice a week via Northern Poly to do a day release BSc in chemistry and zoology.)
June 1964 I’d left school (with 2 ‘O’ levels), then failed an OND in Business studies, but did learn typing and shorthand.
We got engaged. (More emotional electricity: my father warning, when Steve requested permission, “You’re worth ten of her!”; his father, “Oh gorblimey, what d’you wanna do a thing like that for?” as his mother cried, “But you’re so young!” Yet more sparks when we married: Not In Church.
Steve passed his Finals and transferred to the Electricity Board’s Central Radiochemical laboratory. (More money but not enough to afford a house in Hornsey so we started married life in a mobile home in Waltham Abbey (an electricity pylon only yards away), before buying a house in Enfield. By 1971 the laboratory job had palled enough to begin to look for another electricity job.
We’d two children by the time the health physics job at Hartlepool’s as yet uncommissioned nuclear power station was offered, requiring the measuring and implementation up of radiation protection procedures for workers and public on a nuclear power station site (and giving him the power to evacuate Hartlepool should it become necessary!)
Despite warnings such as “They eat their children there!” we were eager to move, and with access to the East coast and then Scotland’s wonderful countryside, friendly folk and so uncrowded, soon realised it was the best thing we ever did.
In 1993 privatisation, led to voluntary redundancy which we’ve been enjoying ever since.
[358 words]
Thank you Ath, both for the competition and for your encouraging summing up. I certainly would’ve been hard-pressed to choose a winner, so congratulations and thanks to Libby, and also to Terrie and Seagreen.
(This may well be missing the point)
The language of flowers not always sweet
Only after finding, (months later) photographs other than the ones taken by fourteen-year-old schoolgirl Kally Logan that caused all the trouble did Luke Darbyshere register flowers had twice been fleetingly present on his wedding day. Much of the time he’d been suffering such a maelstrom of nerves his usual well-honed observation skills had been shredded.
Heading out of Lucy’s apartment, from where he’d collected her, not wanting to risk her making him late, he’d been aware of her snatching something up from the shelf in the hallway. In the taxi, seeing the posy of, yet-to-open, pale yellow rosebuds his mind had been too much occupied with what he knew was a wholly irrational fear Fran might not turn up to do more than recall it was usually the bride who carried flowers, not the last-minute-invited witness.
Fran hadn’t mentioned flowers. No more than she’d responded to his several messages informing her illness had forced their first-choice witnesses to back out and she’d need to find another. She could hardly choose someone less appropriate than he’d done with Lucy: Edinburgh’s most expensive call-girl who, six years ago, had earned his gratitude for rescuing him from loneliness on his arrival in Edinburgh.
On the steps of Leith’s Register Office, he assumed Lucy was attempting a repetition: halting his anxious pacing by reaching up and pushing a single bloom through the buttonhole in the lapel of his jacket. Only on registering the proprietorial nature of the gesture did his attention focus beyond Lucy to realise it had been a show put on for the benefit of the woman just emerged from the rear of the building, her long hair flying across the face of the man close-following who was attempting to wrap her in an Aztec-patterned blanket: Fran had chosen as witness the man who’d taken her teenage virginity, which absolved him of guilt, even if it failed to comfort. Because the strappy, wine-grape heavy silk dress she wore, the one he’d christened her “come fuck me” dress, was highly unsuitable!
All of which prevented him noticing schoolgirl Kally Logan who’d positioned herself across the road and used her phone to snap several shots of him and Lucy.
Once inside the magnificent circular entrance, Fran unwrapped herself, static causing her dress to further cling, tight enough to reveal, bud-nipples and the mound of her pudenda. Raising goose-pimpled arms she declared, ‘My something borrowed and blue – off Ivo’s bed.’ The dress creased enough for him to suppose she’d slept in it. Similarly false, the half dozen tulips she clutched – so unlikely, for November, so perfect a colour match for the dress, they too had to be silk.
Luke had to work hard enough to convince himself his marriage wasn’t starting with fakes and lies; he could hardly be blamed for not anticipating Kally’s photo as incendiary as a match thrown into petrol.
[479 words]
Sea, thank you for the useful challenge, especially because it helped me formulate my character as well as sparking such a brilliant range of responses; I wouldn’t’ve liked to choose a winner.
“Transfer of information” is where I stumble. I’ve several notebooks but rarely there when I need them, so a handy piece of paper does the trick. I then blutack it to the shelf above my monitor from which, within days usually, it drop, onto the paper chaos that is my working space. then promptly disappears. Bigger problem is organising those notes. As for inspiration, it’s most often when two characters talk to each other and I wonder what prompted the conversation, where it will lead to. (All fine and dandy until they fall silent)
I can certainly vouch for Terrie’s inventiveness. Who’d’ve thought such a vivid and engrossing story would arise from the the prompt word ‘armadillo’?
Mishaping to fit
Only as he pushed open the door into Haugesund’s Folkepuben, his mind occupied not only with what he needed to establish with Lars Sigmundssen but also a slightly fearful curiosity as to how Lars would react to his having slept with Maja, Lars’ current woman, was Rick Thorssen reminded, by the roar of convivial conversation, that last time he was here he’d been deemed invisible for longer than he was used to. For reasons unknown, the bar presence he’d long taken for granted had somehow been forfeited. A check in the mirror behind the bar showed him Lars and Lars’ usual group of friends, none of whom were notably taller, blonder nor more blue-eyed than he.
From habit, he studied them, needing – still! – to measure his success in eradicating his father’s attempts to create Richard Thorn II. Supplanted by a more satisfactory second son he’d modelled himself on his mother. She’d insisted on him being Norwegian-born and soon decided he needed also to be Norwegian-bred. Took him – never Hal – with her on her solo trips ‘home’. He saw, how, even before they boarded the plane – she became a different person. Quieter. More self-contained. He understood she was de-Americanising – de-toxing – herself and immediately began to do likewise – stepping away from his father’s unending pressure for him to become the All American Jock his younger brother so willingly embraced.
Thereafter she took him with her whenever she visited Norway. By the time he enrolled at a university there, his father had given up on him; by graduation folk rarely took hm for anything other than Norwegian. Then, an enforced return to America – his mother ill and pleading for him to come home which went on long enough for him to take an undercover role with the FBI, combating the Northern European drugs trade, in the course of which he had met Lars Sigmundssen.
Whose face he now checked again. Now talking with Maja. Still smiling. Not even asking, if his lip-reading was good as it used to be, ‘Was he as good as me?’ Seemingly unworried by her reply.
Which further confirmed the necessity of utilising Lars’ services. If he wanted to properly fulfill what had in the last two years, become a mission of revenge against the man who got him ejected from the FBI, something more than mere appropriation was required. Some more damaging refinement – such as inextricably linking his name to the drugs trade. His delivery of death and disgrace a couldn’t-fail combination.
He allowed his imagination to picture, as closing image, her funeral. Camera closing on Hetherington’s face – a manacled mourner, so damaged, so devastated by grief as to be oblivious as the credits rolled up, Music, initially sombre, becoming increasingly triumphant. ‘Mission accomplished’.
Maybe then he’d been recognised for his capabilities.
[474 words]
Thank you for this challenge Terrie, and your kind comments; I was glad of the opportunity to make best use of it. Well done Sea – and never doubt those who have read you KNOW full well you are indeed a talented and sparkling writer, and thank you Ath for evoking. albeit dimly, the challenges of childhood.
Cheeky leap into an attempt of an opener for ‘Snap is not a children’s game’
Vic Duncan. Did Lucy but know it, the first of three Duncan men she’d sleep with before she died, a possibly dangerous, but especially satisfying addition to her habitual maintenance of a quartet of alphabetically consecutively-named lovers.
It began in the final year of her business degree when, having earned enough to buy a house, she invited four fellow students to move in with her, on the understanding that, for a much-reduced rent they’d be guinea pigs, i.e. lovers for her to practice on, to analyse and thereby hone her skills, before setting herself up in business as a provider of discreetly delivered, top quality sex, for those who could afford it. The first she asked, the already well-trained, well-trusted, sensitive, good friend Baz. He, comprehending the breadth of what she required, suggested Andrew Bishop, more frequently addressed as Arch.
‘As you’ve no doubt sussed, when it comes to sex his experience thus far has been… damaging. I trust you to treat him with good care.’
She had done so. To the point of letting him go, when he needed to, despite being well on the way to falling in love with him.
B and A in place, Chris the next invited housemate. Older than the others, harder and less kind, she anticipated he would teach her maybe difficult lessons. He it was who introduced the disruptive Del, thus completing an ABCD foursome which, remembering another childhood rhyme, she code-named ‘Gol’fish and continued to always choose clients via that method.
But. But the last two additions had come via third party introductions Fearing to lose autonomy, asking Vic had been a deliberate leap into the unknown.
His day had begun with a driver phoning in sick and no replacement. He’d turned out with a couple of Duncan cousins to deliver a super-king-size bed to her second-floor, no lift, apartment. She’d watched him add rumours of her reputation to the furnishings of the room and confirm the use the bed would be put to. Silently commended his lack of comment and enjoyed their efficient camaraderie and lack of complaint. Admired how easily he carried his authority. On overhearing him addressed by name, she lost no time in telling him of her need for a ‘V’ in her client list.
He’d been amused.
‘My Dad had the same idea. I’ve brothers beginning with T and W, but Ursula’s a sister —’
‘I’ve got a “U”. A gift.’
Vic’s sudden scrutiny told Lucy her face had given her away. ‘Gift? You know what they say about gift horses?’
‘Don’t look them in the mouth? He’s an introduction from a friend.’
‘Still horse-trading. Ask yourself why they’re being given away. He good to you, this “U”?’
‘He, he was …’
‘But is no longer, Get rid, you don’t need to be made unhappy.’
‘Easier said than done, I’m afraid.’
‘You should never be afraid.’
But within the year it turned out she was right to be so.
[493 words]
Congratulations Terrie – a tale that got richer with every re-reading, as did those of Alex and Ath. And thank you Pinkbelt for the challenge.
Retrieving memories
When on the Word Cloud, in 2014, Alan P proposed the challenge ‘We’re not in Kansas anymore’, I was in need of an explanation as to why Luke Darbyshere ( DI and main character in my ‘Love triangles with murder’ series) regularly sabotaged relationships at the point when they looked like becoming meaningful. His upbringing, his parents were clearly the cause and in attempting to bring that to life I returned to the mid-1950s, the Hertfordshire village of Hunsdon, and a fledgling friendship with new-to-the-village Fran Griffiths, memories of which seeded the behaviour of Luke’s parents and paternal grandparents.
On my first visit (they had one of Hunsdon’s (now Grade II listed) High Street cottages) there was awkwardness, not knowing what to do with each other. I recall being fascinated – a little awed — by how much more socially at ease she was than I, while simultaneously wondering why she thought anyone would be interested in the black wooden cabinet she steered me to, pulling out and closing one shallow drawer after another, to show me trays of birds’ eggs or pinned down butterflies. Her father’s hobby, she told me. I thought it weird.
A far vaguer memory had him briefly enter the room. He wore army khaki, lots of buttons, his black hair Brylcreemed flatly to his head, maybe a moustache. From somewhere I’d been told he was a major, but for some reason ’bantam’ stuck more firmly.
Soon after, they moved four miles to Stanstead Abbots. It was arranged that I would visit for the day.
It wasn’t a success. Neither of us could think what to do; I remember gazing from her bedroom across an empty carpark. Somehow, we filled the day. But when it came to teatime (what I now call dinner) her father demonstrated his bullying nature when filling our plates.
‘Do you like asparagus?’
I’d never heard of it. Shook my head.
Suddenly, disproportionately, aggressive. ‘Have you ever tasted it?’
Ditto.
‘Then you will eat some.’
The slimy nature of the three or four slivers of greenery deposited on my plate revolted me. I was already shocked at his rudeness; a grown-up not allowing me to know my mind (and was simultaneously aware of the wispy reluctance (maybe inability?) of Fran’s mother to speak on my behalf) Not being an especially bold child (ever mindful of the need to “be good”) I felt afraid.
Now, of course, I recognise it wasn’t much in the way of cruelty, but the fear from having displeased never left me. No more did what I had perceived of the dynamics between husband and wife.) Luke’s father’s choice of wife had been viewed as unforgiveable, his bullying army father saw noting of the soldier and Luke’s spitty-voiced grandmother never liked him. It was no wonder Luke’s mother behaved as badly as she did, abandoning him at the age of thirteen.
[481 words]
Have to confess I avoid much of that for Steve, by ordering and collecting the books I want and handing them over for him to ‘hide’ (recognising he is doubly challenged by my having a birthday five days before Christmas.)
@ Terrie – I second Ath’s recommendation for hard drives: the one my thoughtful elder son bought for me, having listened to my moans, scrambled its contents when my laptop blew several gaskets.
@Athelstone – “gift lists for next year” not illegal, they masquerade as Amazon wish lists, ready to be re-written for handing to my local bookshop.Thanks, Athers, for a competition theme that gave me much head-scratching before I found a direction, and for chuckling, since I didn’t intend to sound self-pitying. Also I thoroughly applaud your giving Pinkbelt the opportunity to challenge us in February.
Hi Pinks. Good to hear from you. Hope you stick around a bit longer, cease lurking and share a few words.
‘Mirror, Mirror …
When I say my bathroom mirror is old you shouldn’t imagine some gilt-framed, spidery-silvered antique, for it is a bevelled-edged two-foot square of glass, bought in ~1969 and screwed at each corner onto the wall above the sink and opposite a window twelve inches larger in each direction.
In daylight, my image backlit and my glasses removed, it is my friend; each glance tells me I could pass for at least ten years younger. Only once, more than fifty years ago did it let me down: in our previous house, at right angles to the window and opposite the bath, two weeks after giving birth to my daughter, as I climbed out the bath, it presented me with a naked, malformed stranger.
Mirrors — or at least the mirrored version of oneself, have been much in my mind since reading Laura Cumming’s ‘A Face to the World: on Self-portraits’, which I bought after reading ‘Thunderclap’ her investigation into the life and times of seventeenth century Dutch artist Carel Fabritius, whose painting of a goldfinch, is, courtesy of Donna Tartt’s novel, better known than his name, for whom very little documentary evidence survives but who did leave two self-portraits (one wrongly ascribed for some time.) From there Cummings discussed Rembrandt’s often brutally honest self-portraits, recording the gradual changes inflicted by Life and the passing of years.
‘A Face to the World’ is prompted by the knowledge painters necessarily spent hours looking at themselves in mirrors. With insight, and her knowledge and experience of painting, Cummings examines and discusses themes such as ‘Secrets’, ‘Motive, means, and opportunity,’ along with ‘Stage fright’, Egotists’, Victims’ and ‘Falling apart’ as they relate to such as Velazquez, Seurat, Gentileschi and Tracey Emin.
I can’t lay claim to a life hard enough to have wrought much damage to my face, but I do admit, when facing another mirror in the house — infelicitously placed in the downstairs loo, too close to ignore — I have spent time manipulating my cheeks upwards, so as to lift the creases either side of my nose which render my expression bad-tempered, but I cease as soon as I remember the queasy, and possibly apocryphal tale, told by a lunch companion of watching Sellotape unpeel fromBarbara Cartland’s face and drop into her soup.)
[379 words]
I’m now almost halfway through Salter’s ‘Collected Stories’ and can understand how the short, sharp sentences make an impact, but I find most of his characters, male and female, seem a bit self-obsessed, and, for me, there is over-much description (as is often the case with American literature.) At least they are readable! Some time since I read Will Self. Probably not ‘literature’ but I have to say I find David Mark’s writing exciting at times.
@ Daeds and Libby,
re James Salter, 2/3 years ago I read and was impressed by a short story featured in a newspaper. Eagerly borrowed ‘A sport and a pastime’ from the library and found it heavy-going. Couple of months ago I bought his ‘Collected Stories, but have yet to begin it, but hope to do so with an eye to his style.
I’m not at all sure I’ve fully adhered to the brief, but this scraping of possibilities from my current wip is the best I can do, before I leave the country 😉
Scene:
Need for a wee had Lucy check the time. Half ten. She’d been lying in her bed for more than two hours. Not moved since she’d taken refuge. Since hearing the click of the street door lock and being glad she’d never been persuaded to give him a key. That last scene had forced her to recognise he had coerced her – coerced with false kindness and counterfeit caring — to a point where she was no longer confident she recognised herself. Was only certain she didn’t want to be – could never be — the person he was trying to mould her into. She’d taken refuge, needing a safe place to plan her escape, and her bed – not the one used for paying clients – was her safe space.
Had been, until guilt — he’d spent so much on her and given so much time to entertaining her — led her to offer an invitation. That another mistake. In hindsight that when he’d got cocky. Proprietorial. Started telling her what to do. This morning’s scene a textbook example of domestic violence and she — Edinburgh’s most sought-after call girl, who’d always prided herself on her understanding of men — had become a victim. Not that he’d ever hit her. But this morning, she read the desire to do so in his eyes. What had saved her was his need to get to the airport in time to catch a flight to the States. He’d learnt late last night his father had had an accident and his mother needed him home. Lucy knew she’d been gifted time to erect some sort of defence. Escape She didn’t intend to lie in bed waiting until he returned.
Five folk to ask for help:
It could not be Ed, her landlord and long-term protector. Ulfric had already warned her one phone call and the FBI would turn their attention to Ed’s finances. Of her initial business partners, Chris was dead, Baz happily married and Arch strictly out of bounds since turning down her suggestion they marry.
Which left Luke, whose unsuitability rested on the fact he was a DI in Lothian’s Drug Squad, and thus, until she convinced him of her innocence, would be duty bound to arrest her. Along with several of her clients.
How Luke changed things: [352 words]
As Lucy dried her hands the doorbell sounded and, as if in answer to a prayer she hadn’t yet uttered, the intercom screen showed Luke.
But Luke appeared to have undergone some sort of epiphany. Or at least taken some sort of happiness drug. He couldn’t stop smiling. The glossy gold tin of Christmas biscuits he handed her didn’t account for it either. Instead of talking, she listened. And continued to read his face.
As he did hers. And he knew her well enough to know all was not well. ‘Has the corporate Christmas feasting begun already?’
‘You saying I’m getting fat?’
‘Rich food, late nights. I try to avoid them – ‘
‘So they’re not responsible for the fat cat grin?’
No, but you are looking … under siege. Is everything okay?’
‘Everything’s fine. Do I have to offer coffee before you open those biscuits? Or are they another sort of sweetener?’
‘Coffee would be good. As for sweetener … I’ve a favour to ask –’
‘You can come straight out and ask it, Luke. I know you said no more sex a while back, but if things have changed –’
They – that – hasn’t. Thank you. But leads me to what I wanted to ask. Fran finally said Yes.’
‘To marriage?’
’Of course, marriage. And, before you ask, it’s what I want. Have wanted, for more than four years.
‘But I’m hardly a fit candidate for a bridesmaid.’
His grin warmed her cool amusement. ‘Not that. I need a witness. Baz’s parents were more than willing, but Sarah’s picked up some sort of virus. Is too ill to travel.’
‘And Baz can’t do it?’
‘I didn’t ask him.’
Curious as she was, the sudden shuttering of his expression warned Lucy not to ask. But why not do it? At least check out this long-time-wanted Fran.
‘I’ll be honoured, Luke. Thank you. Who’s Fran’s witness?’
‘I haven’t a clue.’
Nor had Luke any sort of clue at all, any forewarning that by involving Lucy in his wedding he’d escape the need to arrest her but only because within the following fortnight she was dead.
Congratulations @ Seagreen, and thank you Squidge for prompt words, comments and competition – a lot of fascinating uses of the three words.
“Stealing and giving odour “ [Twelfth Night]
From my very first whiff of the pipe tobacco I was a sucker for the scent of Balkan Sobranie. Given its name, thirteen-year-old imagination conjured red-jacketed hunters chasing yellow-eyed wolves through night forests. My Dad’s dour, ‘Four Square far cheaper,’ confirmed its blend of leaves — Latakia, Oriental, Turkish and Virginia — too exotic for the likes of us.
Twenty years on, having attained the rank of detective sergeant, a lingering of smoky incense at a crime scene sufficient for me to evidence a suspect whose lupine features conjured thoughts of more than night forests. I assigned myself an undercover role.
Two days later, in an aisle seat of a north-bound train, he two rows further forward, my main problem resisting the deliberate reminders of his peridot eyes. Night ensured the only view from the window glass my competent reflection. We were on time. I felt the application of the brakes, the slowing of the train. An amber streak of blurred streetlamps confirmed arrival imminent. Separately, he and I gathered our belongings, stood, pulled coats from the rack and donned them. He caught my eye, his smile more knowing than was comfortable.
I checked the slow-passing platform, relieved to see, stationed between each geranium planted wheelbarrow, like archers readied between battlements, the several bulky figures of my back-up team.
He’d not evade us this time.
Too smug, too soon. I should have kept watching his reflection. He’d moved to stand behind me. A pound-coin-sized circle impressed itself against my ribs. Breath warmed my ears as he murmured, ‘They let me go or you die. Tell them.’
I shook my head. He’d no idea how little I wanted to live without him.
[279 words excluding title]