Wanderlust

I was eight years old when Grandpa got me my first atlas. It was Christmas, yet another grey year with sludge not snow, but with the Christmas tree lit up with white faerie lights and shining baubles, and those teasingly concealed presents stacked underneath it, nothing could spoil it.

I ran downstairs at breakneck speed that magical morning. I cheered over the computer game from mum and dad, ignored the predictable scarf from Auntie June and planned how to spend the money from Grandma as soon as I had it in my hand. I was contented with my haul, ready to find new uses for the toys from friends and beat the games within the day.

Then Grandpa pointed out the large, rectangular gold package at the back, which thus far had gone unnoticed. It was shiny and heavy, and suspiciously book shaped. I tore the paper off, my suspicions rising at the gleam in my grandfather’s eyes. It was a book, but as I flicked though it, my initial disgust faded to captivated interest.

At that moment, a new world presented itself to me in that moment, a world far beyond my small hometown and the cottage we went to in Wales every year. This world had mountains that scraped the sky, animals that could tear a man apart in seconds, jungles filled with yellow-eyed tigers and striped, poison-fanged snakes. It had cities which had stood for thousands of years, pyramids filled with treasure, prairies which stretched, like seas of grass, for hundreds of miles and were populated by only a few tribes of wild, elusive people.

That was the day that began my obsession. That book became my pride and joy, I carried it everywhere, and every time I opened it, I found somewhere new, some other place to discover. My parents were glad that I was reading and learning so readily, but it was so much more to me than that. I wasn’t there with them, in our small front room with the television and battered old sofa, I was up Mount Everest with a seemingly omniscient Sherpa, or on the savannah with the bush men, or walking along the Great Wall of China: the only human building that can be seen from space.

From that book there grew an entire bookshelf of atlases, travel guides and scrapbooks of images. The idea of seeing it all, actually feeling it with my own hands was consuming, intoxicating, though only a fond dream at that point. It was a ‘phase’ as my father called it, which I was expected to grow out of. And as I hit my teens, it did seem that my obsession had waned. The atlas stayed on my shelf, replaced in my school bag by novels and schoolbooks, and I began to spend more time with my friends than with my books.

That didn’t stop me from spending every evening staring out of my window at the horizon. More and more, I was realizing that I had to get out of that small town, with its grey sky and single convenience store.

My life was simple. I knew where I was going, and it was away from here.

Then came Alex, and everything became a little bit more difficult.

He moved in next door when I was fourteen, and the first thing I thought about him was that he was tall. I was tall, then, for a girl, and he towered over me. And seemed to take pleasure in that fact, at every opportunity.

He had ripped up jeans, long dyed hair, and a battered old guitar. His smile was genuine and his eyes were warm brown. I helped him shift his boxes of computer games and videos into his room, surprised by the volume of movies he owned.

From him I learnt of my second hidden world: film. I had watched movies before, of course, my dad’s old war movies, my mum’s romantic comedies. But Alex’s films were different. His collection spanned black and white classics to explosive action to almost-sentimental drama. He had a television in his bedroom, with a video player.

My mum found us, three hours later, watching the end of Labyrinth, curled up on the floor, already the best of friends.

I think she was pleased I finally had a male friend. I had always made friends with girls my own age, the boys at my school being of the loud, sweaty immature variety. Alex was different. He was a month older than me, and already in love with the silver screen.

Next to his guitar, his best friend was his old camcorder. I wasn’t in the drama club, far from it, but somehow narrating and dancing in front of that lens – or directing from behind it - provided a thrill, a possibility and potential, that before had only been found in atlases and travel guides.

A year passed, and I settled into a happy routine. I went to school, hung out with Abigail and Heidi, then walked home and dumped my massive schoolbag, changing out of my hated school uniform, before running next door and spending the afternoon with Alex.

He was my best friend, my confident, and I was his. He told me about his music, played me the songs he wrote for girls at school and about things on telly. I told him about everywhere I was going to go, all the things I was going to see.

We watched films I had never heard of: Some Like It Hot with the greatest ending line ever; War Games with an adolescent Matthew Broderick; Howl’s Moving Castle, which opened my mind to the world of anime.

We collected joint favourites, agreeing that the Muppet Christmas Carol was the single best adaptation ever made, that Red Dwarf was brilliant up to series seven, that Disney was wonderful in its Golden Age.

We disagreed just as often: He believed that the Lord of the Rings was too long winded and boring, but I loved the scope of it, the varied and wonderful cast of characters.

It was in the middle of such a debate that he first kissed me. Out of the blue - one moment, I was arguing that the Breakfast Club was the world’s greatest teen movie, the next, his lips were against mine, all soft and warm.

For my sixteenth birthday he gave me a camcorder of my own. It rivalled my atlas for position as my favourite thing in the world.

We were best friends from the day we met; deep down I’d loved him from the first film we ever watched together. He was intelligent, matured beyond his teenage years. He was musical and creative; he loved me for who I was.

When I was eighteen, the dream I’d held in my heart from the age of eight was finally a reality. I’d passed my A-Levels; I was taking a gap year before going to university. I was finally going to leave my tiny little town and see the world.

Alex was going to university in Manchester.

The single fact – he was staying in England and I was off around the world - caused our first and only separation. He wanted his music and his degree. He was studious and creative and wanted the university experience. He didn’t lust for travel, as I did. He didn’t long for mountains that touched the sky, plains that stretched on forever. He didn’t need to see all those things, as I did.

We parted with a long embrace and a promise to see each other again.

I didn’t come back to England for ten years. I didn’t speak to Alex more than once or twice a year, on my birthday and just before his exams, when he needed a friend who didn’t have that pressure.

I lived a day-to-day existence. I got temp jobs in cities and used the money on the road. I worked in an office in New York and rented an apartment for six months. I learnt bits and pieces of different languages, from holding a three-month shop job in Tokyo to helping out in an orphanage New Deli.

I can’t tell you how I survived all those years, when the original plan was to take up my differed place in Liverpool university and study Geography when I was nineteen. I was twenty-eight when I returned home for the first time, after building up a decent savings pot from making roving travel documentaries and writing a travel column for a small newspaper in New York. My atlas lived in my suitcase with my old camcorder and laptop.

Alex was a teacher, now, at a Manchester high school. He still had his battered old guitar and it lived in his wardrobe. He ran the school band, and half the female students were in love with him.

He had been married to a woman called Laverne, and they’d had twins. They divorced a year later, when they realised they just didn’t work. He called when they married, and I was stuck in Sydney, unable to make my best friend and soulmate’s wedding. He called when they divorced, and he needed someone to talk it over with.

I think I was part of the problem – whenever he had a problem, a really big one, he called me before he told Laverne. What woman in her right mind would put up with that from her husband?

I don’t know what I was doing; I just appeared in the doorway of his classroom, as the bell rang, and when the kids had all rushed past, and the room was settled and quiet, I knocked, once, on the door.

“Hey stranger.” He looked up, a little startled, and for a moment my heart broke when he didn’t recognise me. Then his eyes widened, and his mouth stretched into the widest, happiest grin I had ever seen.

He was out of his seat in a heartbeat, and I laughed as he swept me up into a massive, spinning hug, whisking me off my feet and whirling me around and around. He was laughing, so was I. I hadn’t seen him since we were eighteen and saying goodbye at the airport. No phone conversation, no letter or e-mail, could compare to being in my best friend’s arms again.

Where I belonged. I had travelled all over the world, satisfied a decent part of my wanderlust, just to end up right where my sixteen-year-old self had known she was meant to be: with his arms around me, his voice in my ear, his blood in my veins.

Home.

The Gift

The Gift

Norah’s world had ended; it was falling apart before her eyes. Will walked away from her, his head shaking in disgust, down the theatre steps and out of her life.
She’d ruined everything. She’d failed her exams because she stayed out all night with him; she’d left home to follow him. It wasn’t her fault that she was so tired, that she couldn’t cope anymore.

It wasn’t her fault that she was fading, the ground beneath her feet falling away beneath her. It wasn’t her fault that Will was out so much of the time, and Hayden had been there when she needed him.

She let out a sharp, harsh cry, the sound ripped from her throat. She felt her knees buckle beneath her, as she sank to the ground, unheeding of the dirty grey concrete.

“I wish… I was gone.” It was a whisper, the last plea of a dying girl. She wanted to be anywhere but there. She was tired of being her, of being Norah Johnson in the cold, harsh world of reality.

She wanted nothing more than to vanish into the world in her head. The world she wrote her songs about, the world she dreamed about when she had nothing more to hold on to.

She felt the last parts of her mind slip through the cracks, and gladly followed into unconsciousness.

***

When she woke up, the ground beneath her was soft and scratchy. Dry, warm straw that shone gold in the midday sun.

The sky was the wrong colour. Not green or purple or something strange like that, but simply the brightest, clearest blue she had ever seen. The kind of blue only found in tubes of paint or oil pastels, so pure that to call it ‘blue’ was almost an insult. So very far from the clouded, lurid orange night sky remembered last.

There was noise, too. All around her, clamouring, discordant chatter, shouts of strange, gnarled beings from behind stalls; sibilant whispers of tall, translucent women and melodic laughter from tall, beautiful creatures.

She stood, moving slowly off the straw pile and onto the warm sandstone floor, into the bustling street that seemed so familiar and so wrong. She moved dreamily through the marketplace, her movements slow and lifeless, her eyes feasting on the chaotic grace of the marketplace.

One stand pulled her in, enticing, mesmerizing, laden with the most luscious, ripest fruit she had ever encountered. She took a step toward it, drawn in by the musical quality of the chaotic sound. The colours almost hurt her eyes, they were wonderfully vivid, so vibrant that they almost seemed to glow. Crimson red enough that it could have poured from her veins; indigo the colour of the sky at dusk; blue that could have been cut straight from the sky above her.

The man behind the stall, a tall, dark haired man who leant against the sandstone wall, smirked at her interest, and beckoned. He was lean, catlike, impossibly graceful and totally at ease in the frenzied scene

She felt her lips go dry, her mouth suddenly parched and starving. The strange man’s gaze became more and more intense, his sinister smile enticing and repellent all at once. Her feet began to move forward of their own accord, in unconscious response to his wordless command.

Did she know him?

Why did her mind flee from him?

She glanced once more at the stall, which was now right in front of her. All doubts flew from her mind, replaced by intense temptation and a hunger like she had never known. She felt like she would barter her soul for just one taste of the succulent morsels before her.

The stranger stepped forward, though Norah was so far gone by now that she barely registered his movement, his new proximity.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice started to scream.

A hand, slim, pale and elegant, came into her line of vision. It held a plum, round and ripe, dark as star sapphire and oh, so tempting.

This was the most beautiful gift she had ever received.

He raised it, holding it to her lips. The screaming intensified. It warred with the numb, dream-like fogginess that argued there was no harm in just one little taste.

The world wouldn’t end with one little bite.

Right?

Freedom

It’s nine in the evening, on a rain-soaked September night, and the only place open is a small off-license on the corner of Bedford Street. The rain makes the lights misty and the light shimmers off of the grey, muddy pavement, as the cars lie abandoned to the weather on the cold streets.

The girl is strangely happy as she walks towards the only open building, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet. Her jeans are rapidly becoming soaked, her small umbrella incapable of keeping her entirely dry, although her itchy, hastily grabbed sweater keeps her nicely warm.

She’s free, and independent, and her choice to return home is of her own making, not that of anyone else. When she walks these deserted streets, she is no one’s friend, or daughter or sister, nothing and no-one but who she is and who she chooses to be. It’s a wonderful feeling, amplified by the smoky, woodsy smell of autumn and the cool breeze that calms her spirit.

Out here, there is nothing but the girl, the rain and the silence of the night.

Freedom.

Cyclamen (Game Over)

Cyclamen - Game Over

Louisa sat, now alone, waves of grief washing over her as Jonathon left, slamming the door to the café as he walked away for the last time. Her hands curled around her warm coffee mug, as she replayed their last conversation over and over again in her mind.

It was over: She had won.

She closed her eyes, rubbing them with her hands, suddenly exhausted. She saw his face behind her eyelids, no matter how hard she tried to shake it.

He did this, every time he left, every time she said something wrong, every time he did something so unforgivable that she said he had to go: he took her heart with him.
And every time he came back, she felt healed. The feeling was mutual, she had seen his heart break and freeze over, in tandem with hers, as they said horribly brief goodbye.

It was a vicious circle, the pattern in which they had lived their lives. He lied, she cheated, and somehow she always believed that all the pain was worth it for the brief weeks or months they would have in the middle, where they’d be recklessly, wonderfully happy.

But no more. The circle was broken. She herself had broken it, with no more than a few choice words, a diamond ring, and a bright smile. It had been an understanding, an unspoken agreement between them that in the end, when all was said and done, they would end up together. At some point they would stop playing the games of the young, and settle into the stability of middle age and beyond. Together.

She’d broken that deal, and she’d given up her seat on their roundabout. She was sick of waiting for him to calm down, and tired of crying in the middle of the night. She’d endured it for years, thrived off it for as long as she could remember, her sanity kept going by the hope that one day it would resolve itself. But now she’d finally grown up. She’d taken the initiative, she’d ended it, futilely believing that maybe, when he was gone, the pain would leave with him.

She looked down at her hands where they still encircled the mug. The only warmth in the world that still seemed to touch her was the warm coffee in its striped cup, cradled between her ice cold hands. A white-gold, diamond ring glinted on her forefinger, as icy and frozen as the rest of her. For a moment, she hated the beautiful stone, as it sparkled on her finger. Because of this small, precious thing, she had lost something which now seemed infinitely more valuable.

She took a deep breath, and straightened her spine. Louisa Carmichael was never one to bow down and cry. She rubbed the few, final tears from her eyes. She had done it. Finally, she had had her victory over the boy who had taunted and tainted her life since she was fifteen. He was gone, and she had made sure that he could never come back. This was it, this was the way that she had planned for it to go.

“I am young,” she whispered to herself “I am free, I am engaged to a wonderful man. And everything is going to be perfect.”

So why did it feel like everything had just fallen apart?

Azalea (Touching a Ghost)

Opal sat alone, stirring her now stone-cold coffee, lost in thought. The café moved in a whirl of colour and sound, people going about their lives in fast-forward, while she moved in slow motion. Sealed off in her bubble of silence, of peace, she saw a face before her that was so very, very different than those of the others in the room. It was a beautiful face, scarred and lined from a million betrayals, but somehow more glorious for the fact that it had made it through all of them. This was a face that had seen the rain, and now shone in sunlight. It was a face she knew in her dreams, a face that looked at hers in equal parts adoration and intense, heartbroken longing.

Her features mimicked his, sadness and love aging her face long beyond her youthful years. His ghost-hand reached out its elegant, musical fingers and her small hand followed, until their fingertips met in the middle. A tear rolled down her cheek, as the beautiful image shattered before her eyes, her fingers still extended, reaching out to thin air.

Yellow Tulip (Please Look Twice)

Yellow Tulip (Please Look Twice)

Sally sat in Rosie’s Café, staring out of the window.

Her tea was cold, but if she noticed, she didn’t care.

Beep.

Her mobile buzzed: One new text.

Hey, do you have the final draft ready? I need it ASAP.

Cheers,
Aaron

And for a single, fatal moment, her mind drifted.

She saw him every day, in some form or another. As he walked past, her eyes were trained to his, and he was the only one in the crowd who mattered, no matter who else was there.

She knew him, so well, she had listened to every word he had ever said to her, every look was burned indelibly into her mind.

She needed him to see her. She did all she could think of: she stood in front of a crowd and risked everything for him to notice her.

She changed her hair, her clothes, her manners. She did everything she could to be the girl he wanted. But she still seemed as noticeable to him as wallpaper.

No-one could see, to look at her. Her face was blank, her eyes open to the world around her. No one could see that her senses were attentive to nothing but his every move, while her mind tried to rationalize this new presence in her consciousness.

She wanted him to see it too, but couldn’t say a word. A world was stretched between them, a world of his ignorance or indifference to her thoughts and her feelings.

She’s spent years just waiting for him to notice. A hundred times she thought that he had finally realized, and a hundred times she was proven wrong.

She knew that it would never go away. It was a shallow depth, a longing for the man in her head, not the man beside her. The perfect being who would see her for who she was, and give up everything to be with her.

And she knew it was stupid, and crazy, and self-destructive.

So she convinced herself to lock him out. Her heart and mind left, they dreamt about other faces as his sat, in profile, half a metre away.

She did this a thousand times. Every time, every lousy time, he found the key back in, without realizing he’d done it.

And he’d never look at her twice.

Her fingers skimmed over the keys of her phone, the words flowing as she wrote back:

I’m at Rosie’s Cafe. Meet me?

Sally

Her hand hovered over the ‘send key’. She sighed, and added one last line to her message:

xxx

Red Carnation

A/N all mistakes are mine and mine alone, as this is unBETA'd (my usual BETA is currently busy with one of our friend's new romance novel, and this is only little anyway)

Red Carnation

“Look at me.” Jack’s eyes narrowed, his tone harsh, but Molly continued to stare at her hands. His clear blue eyes bore into her forehead, willing her to meet his challenging gaze.

“No.” She couldn’t, she just couldn’t. Her eyes stayed on her napkin, as she wound it between her red-tipped fingers. Jack leaned back in his chair, feigning relaxation, pretending to be completely at ease with the situation.

“Man, who’d have thought? Molly Reynolds, shying away from a fight?”

“I’m not ‘shying’ alright? And it’s Molly Lawrence now.”

“You’re actually scared, aren’t you? Since when do you care about making a scene?” He was deliberately baiting her; the sound of her married name was upsetting him more than he would like to admit. When she finally looked up at him, the old familiar fire flashing in her eyes, it was almost like old times.

But then, sadly, she remembered herself, and her face resumed its expression of forced politeness. She had changed so much from the Molly he still had in his mind. She had cut her hair for one thing. Gone was the uncontrolled flow of dark hair down her back, so free and untamed. It now bounced, perfectly styled and highlighted, at her shoulders. Coupled with her white blouse and smart black skirt, she had the look and air of an important, businesswoman, tough, cold and strangely dead inside.

“Since I grew up.”

“Really? Huh, the girl I knew swore she’d never get old. Then again, the girl I knew would never be so cold to an old friend.”

“But that’s just it! You’re not an old friend, you’re an old nightmare!” The words hurt, though he would never admit it. They had been so close…was that really how she remembered him? As an unwanted memory?

“C’mon Mol, I know you’ve missed me…I’ve missed you…” The fight had drained out of him, he was nearly pleading. He reached out to touch her hand, and for just the tiniest moment, her hand flexed under his. Then she realized what she was doing, and she recoiled.

“Get off me! Fine, I missed you. God, if Aaron knew I was here…”

“Oh yeah, how is the Brit boy?” At once Jack’s warm tone turned to ice. He had only met Molly’s husband once, on their wedding day, but still the sound of Aaron Lawrence’s name set his blood boiling.

“You don’t need to sound so bitter.” His upset over the reminder of her husband had hurt her, just a bit, an echo of the bond they had once shared.

“I’m not bitter, no, not at all.” His tone was sarcastic “No, that guy only took you so far away from home that I had to take a nine hour plane journey just to see you.”

“Stop it. You didn’t have to come.”

“Oh, but I did. How could I have missed this? Molly Reynolds, all grown up? A million bucks couldn’t have stopped me.”

She was flattered, and she hated herself for it. His honest Southern-boy charm had gotten to her, again.

“So, what is it this time, then? Money? Did your last pay cheque bounce?” she sneered at him, hoping to wipe that tender, dangerous look from his face.

“No.” it was a murmur, but she heard it. He slumped back, defeated, his head bowed. Finally, he looked up again, meeting her now steady gaze.

“Are you in some kind of trouble, Jack?” she sounded concerned now, and for a moment he considered lying, just to have some more of that attention lavished on him. But he banished that thought almost instantly - she was right, she was an adult now. If she wanted truth, she’d get truth.

“No, I can take care of myself, keep out of trouble.”

She let out a short bark of laughter, “Really? My, I’m not the only one who’s changed. Since when do you keep out of trouble?”

He smiled, laughing with her. “Well, ain’t that the truth. Alright, I’m not in any trouble right now, that any better?” he straightened, serious now, all laughter gone from his face. She still knew him well enough that she wasn’t fazed by the sudden shift.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Are you happy, Mol?” he asked, suddenly, not answering her question.

“I- of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” she sounded confused by his question, she laughed, “You make it sound as if I shouldn’t be!”

He said nothing for a moment, just staring into her eyes. Finally: “The girl I knew couldn’t be happy here.”

Her eyes turned hard, all the sadness and fragility frozen into icy anger, “Well, maybe you didn’t know her that well, then.”

“Oh I think I do,” He smiled, that gorgeous, annoyingly cocky smile. “Better than most anyone else.”

“Really. So what would she do now?” she leaned back in her chair, her arms folded, an eyebrow raised.

“Right now, she would smile, like she was trying to keep it together,” he leaned in further, like he was telling her a secret, “But then she would waver, and I’d see that really, inside, she was falling apart.”

“Oh, really.” Her eyebrows raised, “Poor girl.”

“Oh I don’t think so. ‘Cause then she’d look at me, and tell me I was all that she needed. Like she always did.”

A million images flashed before her eyes, of the hundred times she’d done just that. The day when it was raining, and they’d huddled in the van, watching the raindrops on the windows and trying to stay warm. Many months later, when they’d sat in a swanky hotel room, and she was homesick. The countless times her mum had called, begging her to come home.

The memory of the genuine feeling behind the words, the complete youthful certainty of their truth was all too real. They pierced her heart like icy knives, breaking it where she had glued it back together.

“Come back, don’t let this ruin you.” He whispered, and she realised that, at some point, she had leaned in closer, so their foreheads were almost touching.

His words broke the spell, bringing her jolting back to reality. She wasn’t twenty, on the road, drunk on the notion of freedom and travel. She was a sensible, mature woman, in a grey café in England, watching as the man who was once her whole world tried to convince her to run away.

And she couldn’t take it.

She jumped back, grabbing her handbag and blinking tears from her eyes. “I’m not ruined, Jack, I’m just an adult. We live in the real world, whether you like it or not, and this is who I am.” She rose to her feet, and swayed slightly, trying to maintain her composure and stay upright at the same time. “I was stupid to come here. I… made a mistake. And it’s time to rectify it.”

“What do you mean?” He had that timeless expression; the lost puppy eyes that would have once turned her heart to mush.

“You were…you were the sun, when we were young. I wish we still were. But us meeting again - this - this was a mistake.” Then the apology in her voice died, replaced by stony command, “So leave, Jack. When I walk out of here, don’t follow me. Don’t try to convince me that this is right when you know it’s not.”

And with that, she left, her neat hair bobbing at her shoulders, her steps firm and determined.

And for once, Jack did as he was told.