Uncategorized – Page 2 – Stefanie Moore

Like Busses

I have a strange approach to memory. I mean, I don’t know because I don’t really know how anyone else’s memory works, even when they say ‘oh my memory is terrible’. It’s all approximation, baby. But I’m going to go ahead and presume that mine is neither orthodox or particularly good.

I can’t remember dates, years, locations, events or even humans very well, but if I try to remember a very particular thing, like, when did I first hear the phrase, ‘Like busses, there’ll be two along at the same time’, what I see in my head is a wind swept playground in front of a low red brick primary school. I don’t know if there’s any correlation between this phrase and the place, but it’s what I see in my head.

I am envious, in awe and suspicious of people who can recall moments with ease. How the fuck does anyone write an autobriography? ‘I first met Joaquin at a drinks party given by Sooki. We were at a bar in Mayfair, The Chiselled Chimp’. He was wearing a blue cashmere rollneck and initiated conversation by enquiring after my Chagalls. We drank ‘Noisy Williams’ till dawn ..’ (Yes, this is my idea of glamour. No apologies.)

How do people remember to remember this detail? Or do people who write autobiographies have the self belief to think ‘I should probably note all this down because I’m the kind of important person who will have to write an autobiography one day’? Which is how and why they end up writing an autobiography.

So this is why I can pin down (or think I can pin down, in some way) the phrase, ‘Like Busses’ but not where I spent Christmas two years ago. Oh and if you’re not familiar with the phrase, “Like Busses’, it basically refers to the idea that nothing will come along for ages and then two will come along at the same time and can refer to anything; job interviews, lottery wins, unsolicited travelling salespeople. It’s kind of rueful and carries that sort of pissy British way of downplaying the hand of fate with it. I recall hearing it a few times in it’s full form ‘Like Busses, you want it for ages and then two come along at once’) until finally I must have given off the air of being someone who understood the phrase at which point it was shortened to ‘Like Busses, isn’t it?’ With whom I shared this landmark moment remains a mystery of course, but when I think of this particular ‘Like Busses’ I see the shop front of a butchers in my hometown. Memory, huh.

And I also wonder if the phrase ‘like busses’ is in itself, a bit ‘like busses’, because, after a long drought, I heard it twice yesterday in entirely separate contexts; I said it at exactly the same time as another woman in the post office queue and then we’d laughed at the very ‘like bussiness’ of it. The second time was later, and with thanks, in my own head, when I opened my email to see that two piece of flash fiction had been accepted after a long and stomach churning silence. Like Busses, I tell you.

#amwriting

Today:

A rant about lack of sleep and the relentlessness of the long distance primary carer. Despite all this, due to all this, irrelevant to all this, I also submitted 75 words to Paragraph Planet, using an idea that i couldn’t get to fit in any other form. I’m taking the idea of writing submitting writing submitting to heart; anything is better than a perfect nothing, baby.

And I’ve just logged wot I done on here. Kudos to me.

Quick – Before the Monkeys Get Me!

It has been a while, hasn’t it? And honestly, if I had to compile a ‘greatest hits of 2018’, even if i combined it with ‘wackiest nights out’ and the ‘memorable moments’ package, there wouldn’t be enough to fill an ad break. For clarity, I should add that no one has actually approached me to put this together, so don’t worry, you won’t have to watch it.

So what happened this year? Not a lot that is not solely attached to motherhood and while this is, yes, a big part of me and what I do, it is not the entirety of me. And now, as we shudder and jolt into December, one eye glued to the screen for news of Britain’s impending Brexit shaped implosion, the other scoping out black Friday deals, is there time for all this distraction to get a good thing going?

And it would appear, yes. I have momentum! I am writing again, not as part of Nanowrimo (although I salute all brave souls who are) but I just picked up a pen, chose a title, thought ‘this will probably be a bit shit’ and started writing! And you know what, it was a bit shit! But it was writing! And I have kept this going for the past two weeks. I’ve submitted some flash and I’m working on an application for a mentoring programme. I’ve become much less precious about what I’m working on. Lightness of touch is everything, although a creeping doubt has started to set in . My brain is run by a panel of monkeys in lab coats who throw out suggestions, instructions or queries at random – most often ‘You suck!’ ‘What even is this?’, ‘Why?’ or ‘Your kid hates you’. Which I, for reasons unbeknownst, then take as gospel. So, I am fully expecting the panel of monkeys in lab coats to wake up soon – I’ve never had such a long run without their toxic input – and my question is – how do I keep going? I can’t get rid of them, so how can I circumvent their meddling and keep the pen on the page? Writers, please let me know how you do this because I am sure that I’m not the only one out there. All suggestions taken very seriously and will be followed to the tee.

Vanishing Tricks

The ballet barre was a Christmas present. It was matt black, had a slightly bevelled appearance and was made of the kind of material that would never warm up and this was its greatest advantage; as a hot sweaty pre-teen then teen, I would spend hours pressing different parts of my face and cheeks against its implacable surface as balm to my feverish hormonal outbreaks.

Thinking back, it was probably actually a dress-rail on its lowest setting. It was stand-alone with little feet on wheels. Yes, it was a dress-rail, something that became more obvious once we started plonking discarded shell suits and training bras on top of it. My mother still uses it as her ‘holiday rail’ because of its ability to hold an inordinate number of white linen trousers without crumbling.

The point is, it was purchased as a gift for me, as a ballet barre. At the time, I consumed dancing, aiming always to be on the cover of The Dancing Times, a magazine which consistently featured a dancer mid – feat on its front cover. I wanted to be photographed en pointe, in attitude, my leg an impossible curve reaching up between my shoulder blades. And I would go to dancing lessons three or four times a week to help me achieve this. and because I was young and there was bit less flesh between my waist and thigh (and I don’t just mean buttock here, I mean that spread of flesh which creeps up round the sides towards the middle), I could fling my legs back and strike a pose that could pass for a Dancing Times Cover. But I didn’t practice at home. The ballet barre, like the stereotype of every ballet teacher that you have ever come across in film or fiction, remained in the corner, aloof and imperious but unused except as a cool resting place for my cheeks or temporary (read permanent) clothes hanger.

Aged 16, I got thick. That aforementioned bit near my middle , though by no means as prodigious as it is now, suddenly toughened up and refused to budge for arabesques or attitudes and jumps, any jumps, took a nano-moment of effort and consideration before execution. In response, I did what some girls would do in this situation; I cried, ate more, felt bad, tried a detoxifying seaweed wrap, ate cottage cheese, ate more then ate nothing. And still my body failed to live up to expectations. And now the ballet barre offered little cool comfort to my fired cheeks, displaying all the summer dresses, flimsy playsuits and bandeau tops that represented my attitude-flinging, floaty-jumpy past self.

Yes, I’m equating body size and success – not because it’s right, but because it;s how it was.

If only I’d listened to the ballet barre, i think I would have made some different decisions. After all, I was talented, but not resilient. I should perhaps have taken it up on its silent challenge and practised. Working on my technique and strength may have kept me in attitude for a bit longer, but I felt at the time a bit silly on my own and besides Golden Girls was on.

But that’s working on the assumption that I wanted to strike a pose badly enough. the humiliation of not being ‘good’ anymore was great, but not so great that I would switch off Rue McClanahan. I didn’t do anything to change the situation, except starve myself, which felt like control and looked to me at least, like success. Maybe the ballet barre was begging to be a full time clothes rail, that I should give up, if giving up was what I wanted to do.

The choice I made, my vanishing trick, was a semblance of choice. I punished myself by not eating and I’m still negotiating this terrain today. i could have built up my resilience, kept practising, gone for it and felt that transcendent joy that comes from working hard at something. Or I could have made a damn decision, sacked it off, filled my life with other, better things (like food). But my vanishing trick was successful at the time; I was thin and I had no energy so I could fall between the gaps. And it felt lovely for a bit. But now when I see young women (mostly) making that false equation between success and silence, both physical and mental, I hope that they have a ballet barre or a clothes rail or just somewhere to lay their hot heads in the summer and think again – and reflect – and that they decide to make a choice and not pull a vanishing trick.

Field Study

Here’s something that I read at a charity event in support of A New Leaf, who do incredible work towards greening the centre of Manchester, I tried to write in the style of an eminent Victorian Lady Botanist (if I had more time or brains I would give you a specific name) and in this guise, imagine what she would discover on a journey across the city.

Field Study – An Exploration of Shudehill to Cornbrook, April 9^th, 2018-04-09

Weather: Cloudy, inclement showers. I ascend the tram at Shudehill, a place which seems to be a bustling interchange. My first green sighting: a Broadfoot Plantain (Plantago Major) insinuating its way out between two paving slabs beside a small peach doily of vomit which itself lies in front of the ticket machine, as if waiting its turn to purchase passage to Crumpsall or East Didsbury. I am shocked – was the vomiter unaware as to the supreme medicinal qualities of Plantago Major? If they were, they may have avoided such a distressing and public ejaculation. I journey past the pile: A large, stately bush of Rubus Fruticosus Aggregate, enmeshed in a merry dance with Leontodon Autumnalis and Glechoma Hederacea resides spreadeagled behind a wire fence. I am pleased to see that it is being protected in this way.

I traverse the road and continue towards the eponymous Market Street, a semi formalised trading post, consisting of established stalls selling goods such as communication devices, shoes and something referred to as ‘sportswear’. But I digress, perhaps because there are so few green sightings here until – Oh wonder! And I would invite all botanical enthusiasts to lift their inquiring gaze up away from potential terranean treasures and seek new bounty from the heavens above! On the roof of a somewhat brutish building I see a whole shrub, Ligustrum Vulgare. It is mostly leafless and squat, I must confess, yet it is beautiful and unexpected and it reminds me of my own dear mother at my wedding, wearing the most artful concoction of feathers and netting atop her stern, square, naturally inscrutable face.

So there is nature in the city and it moves me.

Further along, I come to the city’s rich green centre piece – Picadilly Gardens. Perhaps it is the season and weather (remaining cloudy and inclement) but there is little of the conventional sense of garden to its presentation. There are trees – bare or brown leaved, there are trees -scattered about, like sobre guests at a drunken party, their feet in concrete. As to their genus I am confounded. They defy identification! Is it the lack of foliage that leaves me nonplussed? I request clarification from five different passers by and the responses are enlightening as to the nature of the denizens of Picadilly Gardens but irrelevant to my enquiry. I will write to the council when I return to my lodging. I can be sure of a prompt reply.

Exhausted and in need of succour, I return to the tram and continue my perambulation through this elusive city. I’m ashamed to admit that I am in the doldrums, and in a fit of absolute despair I almost slam closed my encyclopedia of trees (travel edition) – when I see it. White blossom in the gardens of the Art Gallery! The glimpse is fleeting, but whose heart does not quicken at the sight of Purnus Serulata! And in full bloom – nary a petal discarded! I experience the same wonder upon every sighting – it’s transience reminds me again of my own dear mother and I remind myself again to find such wonder in all living things for we, and they, are but passing through.

I am still musing on this as we reach the river, and it gives me, as rivers often do, renewed pause for reflection. I re-open my notebook to record my observations;

Salix Sepulcralis – two fine example genuflecting at a bend in the water

A bridge – one side, framed in Ipomoea Alba, the other Hedera Helix. A fabulous, verdant conjunction.

And then crowding the far side of the bank, a battalion of fluttering Narcissus Poeticus, craning their necks for better view of the joggers and prams and canal watchers who are out in force on this full and vibrant day!

Nature in its diverse forms and richness has revived my spirit and I arrive at my destination fortified, as demonstrated by the wild flourish with which I close my notebook and nod with firm cheer at my fellow commuters. As I exeunt, I mark a crowd of Budleia pushing and jostling at the sides of the tracks. Nature’s lonely trainspotter. Their flowers are brown and crusted and the leaves are shrivelled and the weather remains cloudy and inclement and yet it prevails and we prevail and will no doubt, revive. Such is the nature of the city.

Stag Party

I returned the handset to its brass cradle and looked at the man, who hovered near the only open doorway in a rectangle of yellow light.

‘Thank you.’

He shrugged. It’s a good job it happened when it did. There’s nothing for quite some way. “

‘I know.’

“How long did they say?’

“The standard. Within four hours.’ I rolled my eyes, but he just nodded. Of course – an old man in a castle had probably never needed the AA.

‘Do come through – keep warm.’ He’d already turned away and headed out of view.

Well, that was settled, then. I licked something from my lip into my mouth. It had a mealy texture – a small fly? Too late: I’d swallowed it, so I grimaced to myself and headed across the flagged floor tiles towards the yellow rectangle.

Pleasebeahouse pleasebeahouse pleasebeahouse: I’d belted it out all the way down that gravel path, mainly to drown the rasps of a dying engine but also in to summon up whatever gods or demons might exist in the nether regions of this nethery land. Serendipity (the goddess of shouty singing it would appear) repaid me with a country estate slap bang at the end of the driveway, one which had broad steps tapering to a mahogany door, a façade like a wedding cake and a curly crest embedded in stone above the first-floor windows. Two wings either side retreated into darkness, like stepsons, knowing their place. It was in to one of these wings that I now headed, along a narrow stone corridor, feeling like Scooby Doo and thrilling at the reality in which I now found myself.

‘This is a beautiful house.’ I whispered. ‘Do you live here?’

‘Yes. It’s been in the family since the 17^th Century.’ His voice was soft, a low blend of highland burr with a drawl inherited from a public schooling south of the border. I’d seen it in his face when he opened the door; the soft chin, the downturned mouth, satisfied as if savouring a good vintage. Be-yond posh. So, when he stopped short ahead of me I dropped a curtsey, a girlish maid in a mansion.

He flicked a light switch and turned to face me. ‘Here we are!’ A lupine smile before he retreated into a small room, a room dominated by the smell of damp digestive biscuit and bum-worn horse saddles. It took me a while to adjust to the dim wattage, but even when I did, the room stayed murky and brown and orange, so stuffed with belongings that I was thrown back through the years to desultory days with my grandad, mooching around on the outskirts of cobbled towns looking at bric a brac in fading shops, German exchange trip weather purging all vitality out through the ends of my fingers.

In light of what happened afterwards, the details are hard to recall, but I remember seeing the man with his back to me, hands plunged into a white plastic bookcase, fiddling between a food processor and an old Encyclopaedia. Next to the bookcase there was a pan of congealed baked beans on top of a small camping stove which was slumped across some floral photo albums. Other details swam up through the soup; a brood of blown glass piggies on a rusty dumb bell doorstop, a badger’s head on the wall wearing a purple baseball cap which bore the logo: ‘Dunny Construction’; plates and paintings of horses, fruit bowls, country cottages, all hung too low to be anything but in the way. Tin huntsmen rode a disconnected car radio. Doilies! On the other side of the room, almost hidden beneath piles of newspapers and sleeping bags, was a camp bed. There was a pottery pug on the floor beside it, its concave belly filled with dark yellow piss. I noticed it just as the man turned, holding a silver tray, a crystal decanter and glasses which he placed on a scuffed tapestry footstool. What had happened here?

He swept a pile of papers from a camping chair on to what may have been a piece of gym equipment and gestured for me to sit. ‘There – whiskey – no ice, I’m afraid.’ He poured the drinks, then, pulling up the knees on his rust brown cords, settled back into the deck chair opposite. He beamed at me, then remembered why I was there and shifted down a gear to serious-face. ‘Four hours, you say?’

‘Could be.’ I raised my glass and we drank.

‘Where are you headed?’

‘Inverness. I’m interviewing a band up there.’ His eyes followed the movement of my face, his mouth open. He licked the creases at the corners of his lips before he spoke. ‘Music?’

‘Yes.’

‘What sort of music?’

‘All kinds’. This wasn’t true, but experience told me that explaining would force us down a strange route.

‘Aha’.

We drank again. The window rattled. And then I remembered what I’d heard.

‘Do you live here alone?’ It was the only way I could think to raise it. He looked frail; I could feel his bones lurking, pressed up close to the skin’s surface, waiting to break through.

‘Yes’.

‘And – do you own the – whole bit? I mean the land?’

‘Up to the high road.’

‘Okay’ I puffed out my cheeks, but had to hold back a smile at the sheer camp of it all – in a creepy mansion with an old posh man – I thought of Scooby Doo again, then straightened my face. ‘I think there’s someone out there.’

He kept smiling, so I kept going. ‘When I came up the track, I mean I was singing to myself but still – I heard something – from the thicket on the left. It was quite close to the house. And it sounded like laughing. Like men laughing.’

‘Right.’ His voice was clipped, no inflection to suggest concern or alarm. It was a cautionary full stop and it irritated me; I like to supply my own punctuation.

‘Was it an animal?’

‘No, no, probably not an animal.’

‘Well – what was it? ‘

‘We have guests at the moment.’

‘Right. Is it an event or something?’

‘Yes. They’ve rented the house for a stag party.’ He smiled. ‘Would you like some more whiskey? Ah no! You have your concert. What sort of music is it this time?’

‘I don’t know.’ I was exasperated by his politesse; I meant to offend, yet he showed no sign of withering. He drank. We both drank. We both looked at our glasses, and then the party came to us.

I think I heard it first. Maybe he dozed off, though in light of what he was expecting to happen, it seems unlikely. But I heard it: a bundle of man-noise, rasping and burbling with alcohol, most of it shouts and hoots, but assembling sometimes to produce a surprising melody in a way that only random mob sounds and a fertile imagination can. Bloody men. My ear traced their movement across the lawn, then the gravel and then the final act: a strong slam on the front door. At this, the man pitched forward. ‘Do excuse me.’ He left and shut the door behind him.

I put down my glass. There was an egg stain on the corner of the footrest and this, of all things, made me uneasy, so I looked at the bookcase, which is when the funny thing caught my eye. Up close, I could see what it was: a pair of antlers, shaved down, the edges exposed and sharp, to about half a metre in height. They were glued and then stitched on to a red woollen beret, which had little bells hanging from its brim. It was beautiful and strange and the fabric felt soft and the antlers cool and clean.

The man returned. ‘There we are – all sorted’

‘I was looking at your hat.’ I said brightly.

‘Sorry?’

‘Your hat – are they real antlers?’ I held it out in front of me.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

He moved closer to me then. He was actually very tall when he stood close. He crooned in my ear. ‘It’s a silly thing, isn’t it? We played with it as children. It made us feel like clowns.’ He tipped his head to one side in a coy gesture of curiosity. ‘Do you like it?’

‘Ha. Yes. Yes, I do.’ I turned it around in my hands, but kept one eye on the man’s face, which had grown large next to my shoulder. His breath was shallow and rapid against my collarbone.

‘Well– would you like to try it on? There’s no one else to – see – you know.’ His voice was a thin needle of a whine, a man child, pleading with nanny. I should have gone then, right then, but a combination of things was acting upon my will; the whiskey, the hat, that crusted yellow egg and finally, the need for something to happen in this house. I probably wouldn’t make the gig, but I would have a terrific bit on the crazy upper classes for the website.

So I put on the hat and felt its weight.

Reader, there was no thunderbolt; I didn’t vaporise into blue smoke and return as Artemis – I remained a woman in a shitty room, just with antlers on her head. But the man took a step back and clapped his hands together, once. From man child to boy child, he was transformed.

‘You look majestic!’

‘Yes, I feel noble.’ I did not feel noble.

He brightened. ‘I know – would you like to see a painting of my father with the stag. With – your stag?’

Not really, I thought. ‘Ooh yes!’ I said.

He guided me by the elbow out of the doorway and back down the corridor, hunching his shoulders and ducking his head as he walked before me. I realise now that I had, in that moment, become his queen, he a gleeful supplicant. But I was the one with the bells, which leapt and danced and made merry about my head –was I a jester? I’d decided to definitely leave by the time that we arrived in the hallway, where he led me to the painting. He stepped back.

‘My father – with your antlers.’

The painting was hard to see, because the gloss of the oil bounced back the light and obscured the surface. But there he was. The stag, my stag, was eye height, his head, poor slack eyed thing, slung back over a small mound on the sandy earth beneath him. The hunter, wearing tweed and a familiar dreary expression, stood alongside his quarry, thinking about teacups and velcro for all I could surmise from his expression.

‘Those are my antlers?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Oh’. And suddenly I didn’t want a dead animal on my head. And I didn’t want to be in the house at all. I moved to take the hat off. He put a hand on my shoulder to stop me and shook his head. I had to leave.

‘I should call to see about the car people.’

‘But it could take four hours, couldn’t it?’ A glint of the tooth in his voice.

‘I might peep out and see if everything is okay’. A whisper.

He unbolted the door.

‘Good idea, my lady. You might get it going again, might you?’ His voice grew to a cackle from a bubble, the manchild – boychild – devilchild – his full form revealed. I was just too late to see his face.

He opened the front door and thrust me through with such force that I stumbled, the antlers pulling me forwards down the steps. I yanked the hat and threw it, poor thing, away from me – again too late – I’d been marked. Torchlight blinded. I turned to see the man, but he was mahogany again. Incantations rose out of the dark and antlers or not, I knew that I would have to run and soon.

Fresh grass

The smell of fresh grass. As far away from the big building as can be. I’m lying down, it’s magnified; the foil from a cigarette pack in front of me, it brings a smell to my nose that isn’t really there, I’m sure of it – some kid staggers away into the glare of the sun, skinny tie askew. He’s on a slant because I’m lying down. Everyone laughs. One of them passes me a large brown plastic bottle of shandy, but my angle is wrong and I don’t want to move, so I shake my head, no. Gravel leaves a pattern in my knee – an indentation of an asteroid belt. The bells and whistles and shouts are coming but they’re so far away. We look elsewhere – who lives in the house over the other side of the fence? I never seen them. Probably a pervert. I saw a ghost at the window once. No you fucking didn’t.

A loud echoey belch, beautiful. We’re all silent. Another little kid comes up and he squints into the sun or he’s got narrow eye holes like those slits they use to fire through in old castles. I don’t look at him for long because I don’t like the way my throat feels when I hold my head up but I hear him.

‘Can I have a fag?’

‘What?’

‘I want a fag off you?’

‘What year you in?’

I look up then – do I know him now he’s closer – but he’s at the sky, glancing between clouds. Then he turns and wanders back to the other side of the field, between the netball courts.

One of us throws a balled up can at his back, but it’s light in the breeze and lands far away from him, far enough for him to keep walking.

We’re the kings of this corner and for this moment we’re kings of all time. Our gestures and words and feelings are real and elegant and there’s not one of us now, wherever we are, who doesn’t feel their breath stop and heart catch, once a year or more, or less, to return to that flash, that moment, and feel the whole of it.

Midget Baby

‘Well, spit it out then –you don’t have to swallow’ Chloe flipped the water bottle 360 degrees. Yvette kissed her teeth in agreement. How nice, a rare moment of solidarity between two rival gang bosses, she thought.

‘Right, thanks for that, Chloe. You could do that, Skye, if you were concerned. Or you could just not do it all if you didn’t want to. Use your assertiveness – remember our assertiveness from last term? Well use that to say, no thank you Lawson’

‘His name is Dawson, Miss’

‘No thank you Lawson, that’s enough for now. Let’s watch a film or hold hands or …something else. You could say that and not do it at all.’ She looked at the clock – why hadn’t it moved? Sweat sprung along her hairline and spread in her armpits – not the menopause, was it? How bloody apt. Sex Education withered my ovaries.

Chloe voiced her inner scream.

‘Miss Nesbitt, man, this is long!’

‘I know, Chloe, but we need to do it – just try to stay calm, could you?’ She looked at the pile of word-searches teetering on the edge of her desk. Remnants from a cover lesson: Religions of the World, they were called. Could she make them last till break if she explained them slowly?

‘Does…anyone else have a question?’

‘I do’. The voice was sing song, smartarse.

‘Yes Patricia?’

‘If only a little bit of sperm gets in, do I get a midget baby?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Like that guy on Games of Thrones?’

‘Yes like the guy on Games of Thrones!’

‘Or the adverts.’

‘Yeah the adverts.’

She closed her eyes in a slow blink, as if in thought. When she opened them,

15 year 10 girls were looking back at her, waiting for her to answer.

It made sense. They knew enough about sex to roll their skirts up to their knicker line, but not enough to close their legs when they sat at the bus stop, enough to giggle at men who stared at them through car windows but not enough to understand the casual violence of the words flung in their direction. Enough to demonstrate blowjob etiquette but not enough to grasp basic reproduction.

They were still looking at her.

‘No it doesn’t matter about the sperm. It’s only one sperm that gets you pregnant.’

‘Do you have kids, miss?’

‘No’

‘Do you want them, though?

‘Man, shut up, that’s personal to Miss, isn’t it?’

‘It’s okay. Grace. This is an honest space. We’d like to, and we’re trying. Now, enough of the questions. I have a word-search for you to complete. Religions of the world! It is, however, a little bit tricky, this one, so I’ll just talk you through it, okay?

Eventually, they settled.

She cast her eyes over Francesca and Ruby, who were stooped together, sharing headphone buds. Chloe was applying blusher.

‘Miss, can I talk to you?’ asked Oliva, a new girl from another borough. She was tall and awkward and her mouth hung open.

‘Of course – here?’

‘No – after.’

‘Okay’.

She hoped it wouldn’t be for long – she hoped that Olivia might forget – she needed coffee and a silent scream in the ladies’. But once the bell had rung and the girls departed with nary a glance in Miss Nesbitt’s direction, Olivia was still waiting. In fact, she was sitting down in a chair opposite her desk.

Miss Nesbitt stooped to the floor and began raking the blank word-searches towards her.

‘Okay, what’s up?’

‘I was wondering – can you be just a little bit pregnant?’

Olivia had put her notepad on the desk and was fiddling with the strap on her rucksack. On the pad there was a biro drawing of a boy in a baseball cap, like a Duplo figure, lines and circles.

‘Well, you’re either pregnant or you’re not.’ She scrunched up a loose sheet.

‘Yep, but can you be a bit pregnant and then it go away?’

‘you can miscarry or have an abortion, but, no, otherwise, you’re pregnant.’

‘Even if it’s just a little bit?’

Miss Nesbitt stood. Her knees creaked. She looked at the girl in the chair.

‘Is there something that you want to tell me? Remember, if you are in trouble, I may have to let somebody else know. I can’t keep it a secret, okay, Olivia?’

‘It’s this.’ She bent down to her rucksack and banged her forehead on the edge of the desk in her hurry. She muttered ‘God’ and tears jumped.

She held out a white cylinder, the length of a pen, and gave it to her teacher. Miss Nesbitt knew what it was and she knew what she saw.

Two lines. One fainter than the other. But two lines nonetheless.

‘Is this yours, Olivia?’

‘I did it this morning.’

‘Right’

‘I thought, because it’s just a faint line, it might be, not really, you know?

‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

Olivia nodded.

Yes, she should get the counsellor, or the girl’s head of year. But she’d never seen the two lines before.

‘Is he here?’

‘We only did it once. Before I left my old school. I’ve only done it once.’

‘Right.’

‘So, because it’s only a bit there, it could be wrong, I thought?’

Miss Nesbitt put her hands in front of her lips in prayer position. Her eyes moved from side to side; to the girl, it looked like she was reading a very serious text message. Finally, she closed the classroom door, threw the word-searches near the bin, smoothed her hands over her skirt and came to sit next to the girl.

‘Okay, Olivia. Thank you for coming to me, that must have been very difficult for you, so well done, okay? I think I can help you with this, but what we need to do is trust each other – no-one else – for the time being – can you do that?’

The girl closed her mouth and nodded.

Soho Walk Up

The first sign was the handshake at the door. For a tall man, he had small cool hands and skin as soft and plump as my old home economics teacher’s. Waterfall: the hand slipped out of my grip before I had made my impression, the one I’d honed on my dad, which told everyone that I was firm, in control, serious about the work.

We were in Soho, but not the Soho that I wanted, that I saw my friends and peers getting familiar with: Bond girl receptionists, fresh flowers, coffee you could look forward to. I was in the Soho of shimmer curtains and cartoon eyes urging you to ‘look!’, drawn thickly in magic marker on fluorescent cardboard. Alleyways that you’d swear where not there the week before last. Shit smells. Not even DVD, but VHS.

We were on the first floor above an open doorway next to a Chinese Herbalist’s, teetering on the brink of Wardour Street. It was scuffed, scraped and cracked, dust trails and polyester curtains lending a sort of dingy glamour if you really searched for it. This room told me everything that I needed to know about the job – and still I was here.

So, I guess that tells you everything that you need to know about my career.

Despite not being a car, I made an unnecessary three point turn in to a boxy fuchsia pink bucket chair, so low to the ground that my knees bounced up to my rib cage. Obviously, I felt that this wasn’t awkward enough, so I looked down between my legs in surprise, noticing a big bruise of a water stain on the lower half of the chair as I did so. What on earth was I doing? I was seized by the sudden desire to let out a huge vaginal yawn, but I didn’t know what that meant and I doubt it would have led to anything other than an escalation in self diminishing acts from me.

He sat opposite, sleepy cat, endless legs crossed and contrived in unfathomable ways. Sordid, born to it. One hand cradled his phone, the other caressed a label dangling on a beaded plastic tie from the arm of the chair. Caution: Flammable. It was the only new thing in the entire room. A double bed gave a Gallic shrug in the corner. I could hear Soho outside, so I knew I hadn’t died, but the very air in the room shrunk out all life, charisma and energy.

Someone had to, had to, say a something.

‘Thanks for seeing me. I really admire your work.’

‘Great.’

‘It’s an interesting job. Lots of possibilities I think.’

‘I can smoke in here.’ Statement of fact, to himself: the day was looking up for him. He moved his attention to a pocket in his skinny jeans, pulled out a tin and started rolling a cigarette. His eyes flicked back to his phone screen.

‘Would you like to know about the work that I’ve done?’

My voice was girlish and shrill, creeping higher as I inched my way through the sentence, a trait first observed in me by a bitter choir leader at Brownies, one which had persisted (due to my failure to address) into adulthood.

It’s worse when I feel like I’m struggling. I pulled my skirt down towards my knees – damn bucket chair – and with no response from him I kept talking, a desperate, rickety Beckett-y monologue which took in and spat out details of my training and first gigs, inspiration and ambition pumping like pistons to cover the cracks in my resume.

My voice sank upwards, joining an exclusive frequency enjoyed only by electrical hums and dog whistles. The clip clop of a phone alert barely made the chorus. I knew it wasn’t mine, ringer off at the door of course, but I did take a break from all the great faces that I was pulling as I sold my tarnished wares to see him glance down to his phone hand. Glance then stay, rooted, finger twitching over the keypad, tapping in his response.

‘In an audition mate. This girl’s a dick’. Probably, probably that, I imagined, all the while teeth and eyes and tiny voice keeping it bright and right.

I’d decided to tell him how rude he was, that I’d spread the word about him to others, because I had that much about me, by God I did– until I remembered that I didn’t need to do any such thing. I pressed my hands into the sharp arms of the chair and levered myself up to standing. My skirt rode up and over my bandy, low-lying gusset, revealing no doubt to the observant eye all those tiny little white elastic worms that wriggle free to escape a dying pair of tights. It helped – all true warriors wear little skirts, don’t they? Better to take charge in, of course.

‘Do you want this job?’ I said.

He looked at me. Then my gusset, then back at my face – he did have lovely eyes. I pressed.

‘Because if you do, put down the phone, take your top off and get on the bed. The room doesn’t pay for itself and neither do I.’

He shuddered, muttered sorry and stood up, stuffed the still smouldering fag butt into his jeans pocket and started undoing his shirt buttons. I moved over to the bed, opened my toolbox and started laying out the kit.

When I turned around he was ready, the shirt stuffed in haste down the side of the bucket chair. Too brightly he struck a pose, nipples rosy, fingers splayed, hands outstretched. Ta-da.

I looked at the water stain and gestured towards the bed.

“Let’s get this done.’

Sometimes I just need to remind myself that I am, in fact, the boss.

Write

Write, it tells me in the top corner. So I write. What has happened to me recently? I stayed in Britain’s most haunted hotel for two nights – and if that doesn’t sound like a Woman’s Own (or maybe Chat) headline, what does? I did what I do everywhere to find comfort – I channel surfed, looking for episodes of Law and Order broadcast between the hours of 11.30pm – 3.30, when I relented and settled on Suits and Dance Moms. I may get myself a t-shirt emblazoned with the single descriptor: ‘Survivor’.

I found some terrific recipes and a new old favourite chef; Marcella Hazan. I learnt to eat more consciously. I did very little exercise and thought about food, good food. I enjoyed the flesh roll gathering at the top of all trousers purchased before October 2014. I thought about Carrie Fisher, even going as far as to read one of her books (really!) and it gave me courage just to write and see what happens.

I had some time, less time than I thought, but some time, time which I maximised by de-prioritising work and focusing on fun, creative fun that my dutiful mind had reframed as flippant or arduous in turn, anything to stop me from engaging.

I looked at my son; furious, defiant, learning, gorgeous.

I could have looked at skies and clouds but I don’t feel bad for not doing so. I did enough.