ooopsie

It has been pointed out to me that Daniel is sometimes Arthurs son and sometimes his brother...the man is a temporal paradox! seriously thought they are brothers - I just suck at editing :) sorry.

Electra

Arthur to the rescue! Sorry for the unrelenting suspense, but it was worse for me at the time.
After I have paid for my room and half eaten breakfast I go out onto the deserted streets. It’s barely morning and most of the shops are still closed. I start to walk, directionless, before going to a coffee stand on the street. I manage to dredge up enough change for a cup of tea and a packet of sweets. Taking a seat on the wide sandstone steps of a library I balance the cup next to me and methodically stir in sugar.
The time passes slower than I have ever known it to. The level of tea slowly diminishes and I go in search of a bin. Bored out of my mind I look through the windows of a dozen shops and hop from foot to foot nervously. The lights come on in a HMV across the street and I go in. I look over the spines of glossy DVD cases, scuffing my feet over the grey linoleum. Some rock-trance-gibberish weaves through the air and seems to get louder with each passing minute, making me tetchy. My phone begins to rig, making me jump. I had half convinced myself in the empty world that I was the only survivor of a global catastrophe.
“Emma? I’m outside Starbucks on Bridge Street.”
“Ok, I’m near there….I think.”
“Great, sorry I’m running out of credit.” abruptly the phone goes dead.
Smiling ironically to myself I slip my phone into my pocket. It takes me an embarrassing twenty minutes to find the right street, and even then it seems the longest street in the world. A hovering Starbucks sign, crouching like a parasite on the side of a three story building, guides me to the one car parked on that side of the street. It’s a kind of flatbed truck (I still know nothing about cars) painted green, but peeling. Arthur waves at me through the dirt tinted window. I yank open the door and settle myself in the seat, squirming on the wrinkled, age burnished leather and disturbing a cloud of tobacco scented dust motes.
When I slam the door shut the car feels very small, the space between us in particular is minuscule. Arthur seems to feel the same because he snaps the key round in the ignition and reverses out sharply, putting exaggerated focus on the road. I let my eyes stray to the mirror suspended between us and study Arthur closely for the first time. Only the top half of his face is visible, tanned and weather beaten, faintly traced with lines. His eyes continually move on the road, frowning at road signs, his heavy brows drawing together and strands of hair falling forwards over his face.
His eyes flick up to the mirror casually, casting a glance behind us, but they catch my gaze and hold it. Caught out my face flames and I look down, fiddling with the sweet wrapper and pulling out a few colourful pieces of sugar. The car moves forward again and, when I risk a glance from behind my hair, Arthur’s attention is back on the road.
“Smartie?” I offer the packet awkwardly and he takes a few, popping them into his mouth in between shifting gears and twisting the wheel. Ahead of us a junction is clogged with traffic and gradually we coast to a stop behind a scarlet hatchback full of people wearing baseball caps at odd angles. Arthur huffs deeply and turns off the engine. Silence congeals around us as we sit in the motionless car listening to the revving of engine and shuffling of tires outside. I’m very conscious of every movement, and so sit unusually still, but of course this makes me want to move around more.
“Well this is fun” Arthur says ironically, mouth turning up in a lopsided grin.
“I’m glad you find this funny” I crumple up the sweet wrapper and stuff it into an ashtray.
“Let’s face it, we’re not going to get a better opportunity to talk are we? When you get out of this car there’s a good chance I won’t see you again.”
“Not if I can help it” I can’t help smiling at his expression “I haven’t exactly made the best impression have I? First you see me with half my clothes off on the beach, then I punch you in the face, then you had to save me from my own bread, after which I slept with your brother, disappeared so you thought I was dead and then had to have you rescue me again. I don’t know how I’m going to top that, so I might as well just go home.”
“I don’t know…there’s another two hours of journey time, anything could happen.” His smile has grown into a full grin now and I thank God I can still deter serious discussion with humour.
“Emma…” he begins, his expression becoming grave again and causing me to mentally ask God why he insists on torturing me, it can’t all be the witchcraft thing…which come to think of it, I have yet to tell Arthur about.
“Emma…I really have no idea what to do about this.”
“This meaning…..” I meet his eyes and hazard a guess “The possibility of an us?”
He nods, “I mean, aside from the fairly monumental obstacle of age…there isn’t really anything to stop us.”
My heart leaps a few notches higher in my chest and thumps furiously against my ribs as if it’s trying to speak for me, because I can’t seem to say anything.
“If you wanted to do something, when we get back” he falters “You probably don’t want to…”
“Yes I do!” I blurt, then calm myself forcibly. “I do”
“I’m afraid I’m not really a clubbing, drinking kind of person” He frowns a little “the age gap rears its head again….”
“Who likes clubbing?” I shrug, I really don’t anyway, I’m more of a hot chocolate and a book kind of person, not a glow stick and aspirin….chic.
“We could just get a film and some dinner…” I suggest.
“I’ll cook” he interjects, managing to keep a straight face.
“Fair enough, but I get to choose the film”
“Good”
“Great”
I’m trying not to smile, but failing miserably, so that when he closes the gap between us and kisses me, our teeth bump. For a few seconds it’s totally, utterly perfect, almost worth dying-but-not-really-just-vacationing. Then the idiots in the hatchback catch sight of us and start piping the horn and yelling things about robbing the geriatric wing and Electra (which I’m quite surprised they know about, a classical education being wasted on the twats of the world, makes me glad I don’t pay taxes).
Arthur pulls away and glares through the windshield, looking so much like a crotchety old man I can’t help the splutters of laughter that escape through my nose. The guys in the car in front are still shouting and the hatchback is now visibly rocking, as if it’s filled with chimpanzees not chavs (there is a difference…I may have to look it up). I turn to look out the window, just as Arthur winds his down and we shout, in unison.
“Shut up you wankers!”
I get the feeling this is going to work out just fine.

:)

After the vanishing act

So off to Glastonbury with my morbid moods, I had to write this when I got back, having no internet access on the lam, so forgive me for adding some dramatic detail.
The journey takes an age and I wait it out, staring at the rain washed windows of various trains and busses whilst ignoring the passengers. I drink vending machine tea, which tastes dead to me after weeks of the home brewed, copper kettle variety. I munch on a few miniature packets of biscuits, feeling the food bunch in my stomach like wet sand. After only a short time I have become acclimatised to life on an island in a period before electricity, now it’s hard taking trains seriously.
I am the only passenger to disembark in Glastonbury, and the street is otherwise empty, a residential street. I walk for ages trying to find the shops, but discover only rows of houses and gardens. Eventually I stop at a corner shop and buy a newspaper as cover for asking directions. I follow these and eventually go through an improbable gap between some houses. There the street dead ends in a neat square of grass with a droopy birch, bordered solidly on all sides by houses. One of the houses however is not a house, but the back of a shop with a huge arch, like an underpass, through which I go. Stretching out on either side of me is the high street, with it’s colourfully fronted shops and little cobbled recesses leading to restaurants.
I wander around for a while, going in and out of shops full of glittering touristy rubbish and others selling the paraphernalia of the serious witch. The scent of handmade incense clings to me as I walk the open street, the smell of ground resin and singed herbs which reminds me of home. I run my hands over racks of thick coloured candles without interest and sift polished gemstones from hand to hand. But there’s nothing to really grab me, I feel as if I’m not entirely present, as if my real body is still on the island being shouted and gawped at.
I decide to stop somewhere for some dinner, and then check into a bed and breakfast or something. The restaurant I eventually choose is a dusky blue with hanging canopies of translucent fabric. I sit alone at an indigo draped table, eating a kind of Moroccan thing with apricots and couscous. The candle on the table burns down to its cheap glass holder and goes out. I still feel separate, as if none of these things are real. Already I want to return to the island, to get on with my real life. But I stubbornly seek out a hotel for the evening, one of the chain motorway ones with cream walls and green carpets in every room. I know that, despite my longing to return, once I do go home I will feel that same as I did before I left, ashamed, lonely and miserable.
I turn on the television as soon as I get to my room, skipping through the channels until I settle on a film that seems vaguely familiar. Flipping off the glaring fluorescents, I crawl underneath the green duvet and manage to keep my eyes open for another hour before succumbing to sleep.
I wake up the next morning and for a few awful seconds forget where I am. The television is still on, the sounds of a news broadcast filtering into the humid air. I struggle upright just as a knock comes at the door. I retrieve the breakfast that I ordered yesterday. A plastic bottle of orange juice and a plate of uniformly produced lukewarm pancakes clotted with too much syrup. As I settle myself into bed to pick at my oozing meal, I prod the remote and the faint voice of the presenter becomes audible.
Just as a preface to this – I didn’t believe it either, I still can’t.

“....Following the dredging there has been no sign of any remains, but the police statement implies that none are expected given the devastating weather conditions.”
Nothing to cheer you up like a little death with your breakfast, I twist the cap from my juice irritably. Why is there never any good news in the morning? It’s always doom and death and economic downturns.
“....Locals report that the victim had been behaving erratically and seemed unhappy, at this point suicide has not been ruled out”
Well that’s bloody typical. So you’re not leaping around with a basket full of cookies and a herd of tiny bunnies, therefore automatically it’s your own fault if something bad happens to you.
“.....It seems that the missing woman had been behaving strangely for some time, now we go live to a close friend of the woman in question.”
Wheeling out a grieving friend or relative to raise the ratings, it says a lot that I’m not surprised by this. Any further thoughts are cut off when the screen changes to show an image of Vikkie, standing in my garden on the island looking drenched and tearful beneath the presenter’s umbrella.
A cold wave of shock makes every hair on the back of my neck stand on end. They think I’m dead. Dead. It’s surreal to be sitting in the unfamiliar room watching a report on my own suspected suicide, almost as if I really am dead and this is a bizarre afterlife. Maybe it really is and....no, stop, I’m alive.
Vikkie is still being interviewed and I watch because I can’t think of anything else to do. Then a horrible thought occurs to me, my parents will have seen this. Setting aside the fact that they are probably upset, understandably so given my sudden death, they will be furious when they realise that I am not dead, but am in fact a liar and a dropout. I know that at some point it will all have to come out, I have to tell someone that it was a mistake.
I dig my phone out for beneath all the clothes in my bag, flip it open and scroll down a list of numbers. I can’t decide who to call first, my parents will be furious, which puts me off phoning them straight away, but Vikkie is still on camera which makes me reluctant to call her and give the reporters a real story.
At the bottom of the list of numbers are the contact details for Daniel Shield. Arthur, I realise, might be down there, on the beach, watching as they dredge up my sodden clothes and thinking....what? The truth is I have no idea, is he relieved that it’s all over, that his embarrassing lapse of judgement so neatly tidied itself away? Or does he feel sad, guilty, remorseful or horrified. I cannot face the last alternative, that he is simply indifferent, hardened against any concern for my welfare by my own stupid thoughtless actions.
I quickly return to Vikkie’s number and wait for the reporter to leave her alone. This takes a good five minutes as the interviewer is going in for the kill, his voice bending greasily into feigned sympathy, whilst still accusing enough to imply negligence on Vikkie’s part. At last I can’t take it anymore and dial the number just to give her an excuse to leave. As the phone in her pocket begins to chirp and she excuses herself, I feel once more the strangeness of the situation, as if she is just a character on the screen, coincidently answering a call I am making to someone real.
Her voice comes over the crackling line, “Hello?”
I hear no similar voice from the television, and assume she is safely away from the television crew.
“Vikkie? It’s Emma.”
“Emma?!” she blurts loudly “Emma, where the hell are you? We thought...”
“Yes I know, I’m watching the news right now, in Glastonbury.”
“Why are you in Glastonbury? Just how many secret lives are you leading?”
“Just the two that I know of” I joke weakly.
“I’m serious” she growls “I came up here to visit you, like I said in my message, but I couldn’t get over to the island because of the storm. The next thing I know you’re house is empty with no sign of a note...”
“What message?” I cut in
“The one I left on your phone.”
“I didn’t get a...” as if sensing my confusion, the phone, which only too late I remember has been off for over a week, gives a beep, and a brief check of the display informs me I have nine messages from Vikkie. Vikkie takes advantage of my stunned silence to continue her story.
“Anyway, I tried to find a number for that Daniel Shield guy to see if he knew where you’d gone, and all I could get was this weird number that turned out to be a house on the island. So I went there and you’ll never guess what!”
I closed my eyes and waited, feeling sure that I already knew where this was going.
“That git with the permanent scowl lives there, turns out they’re related. Anyway, he seemed a bit concerned that you’d just left, so that got me more worried and I called your parents to see if you’d gone to visit them.”
“You didn’t!” I exclaim “well done; now they’re going to hate me...”
“I think at this point they are just going to be happy that you’re breathing...and not being eaten by seals”
“Yeah, but sooner or later my being alive isn’t going to be a novelty anymore and they can get back to cursing the name of their lying, dropout daughter.” I pile my things back into my bag with the phone still clasped to my ear, then pause in dismay as something occurs to me. I grab my purse and open it, confirming that the worst has indeed happened.
“Shit! I left my cash card on the island, and I only have enough to pay for my room...just.”
“Why did you leave it behind?”
“I was in a bit of a hurry ok? Things have happened in the large space of time we weren’t speaking, oddly enough.” I throw my purse back into my bag and start going through the outside pockets.
“There’s no need to snap at me.” Vikkie snaps, causing the phone line to crackle.
“I’m sorry, stressed out. Can you pick me up?” Sudden hope lances through me, only to be shattered when she says,
“I can’t, it just about killed my car coming all the way down here so I had to take it in for a once over at a mechanic. Last time I saw it, it was up on blocks with the steering wheel missing.”
I slap a hand across my eyes in frustration and try to think of a way around the problems that keep mounting up around me. I can’t get back to the island, Vikkie can’t come and get me, I can’t get my parents to collect me because it would mean being in an enclosed space with them...
“Hang on a minute” Vikkie’s voice grows faint and I can hear her talking to someone else behind the hiss of static and constant bluster of the wind. Suddenly a voice returns, but it isn’t Vikkie.
“Emma?” Arthur’s voice comes through the tiny speaker, shock evident even with the terrible reception.
“Hi” I acknowledge weakly “It’s me...sorry about the...” how the hell do you apologise for accidentally faking your own death? “misunderstanding” I finish, mentally flinching at the poor wording.
An odd sound comes down the line and I realise he’s laughing.
“Well, personally I am very disappointed, but I’ll get over it.” He pauses for a moment “I was very worried, when you disappeared.” Any hint of humour is gone now, every word carries a weight of seriousness and I realise he’s being totally sincere.
“I’m sorry” I reply instinctively “I didn’t...I wasn’t trying to make a statement or anything, I really didn’t mean to drag you back into things, I’m sorry”
There’s a long silence.
“You’re kidding right?”
“Excuse me?” I blurt incredulously.
“Emma, you didn’t do anything you need to apologise for, you went away without telling me, so what? I’m the one who said you weren’t anything to do with me. If anything I should be sorry, and I am. I shouldn’t have shouted at you, it was just a bit of a shock, you and Daniel”
“Not me and Daniel!” I realise with a start what he must think, what neither myself (nor Daniel apparently) had told him. “Me and Daniel aren’t together...I mean we were for about three hours, which were probably the low point of my entire existence....no offence to your son.” I wince at my rambling.
There’s another silence as he processes this.
“I didn’t know that” he says finally, quietly.
I can’t think of anything to say, so I just sit, listening to the interference and a soft regular sound that I think is Arthur breathing.
“Your friend says you’re stuck in Glastonbury” his voice comes back across the line as if I have only just picked up the phone.
“Yeah” I sag in relief, finally an adult who can help me.
“I’ll come down and pick you up, it’ll take a few hours, but I’ll call you when I get there to tell you where I am.”
“Ok”
“See you soon”
“Bye”
His voice disappears and I hang up.