Halfway up the stairs - story. Part eight (end)

When I got back on Saturday afternoon, the children were already home. Mother was sat in the living room with a mug of tea. "We thought we'd be home to welcome you, Catherine," she explained. "And why don't you have a teapot and teacups? I'm drinking out of a mug. It's all wrong."
"I'm not a tea drinker, Mother." I moved to the window. Liam was drawing a goalpost on the shed wall with chalk. "You know that."
"Well, you should still have one for guests. I'll bring you one of my older ones when I next visit."
"It'll only get broken."
Mother tutted as she fingered a chip on the mug's edge. "You really should take more care of your belongings, Catherine. You can't blame all these breakages on the children!"
"I don't." Liam spotted me through the window, and waved excitedly, gesturing with both hands at the chalked shape on the shed, and expressively mouthing "Goal posts! Is that okay?" I nodded my agreement at him, and he grinned and gave me a thumbs up sign, before disappearing into the shed to fetch his football.
"Where's Mel?"
"Oh, upstairs or something. She went straight to reunite Mr Bear and Dolly-de, or so I gathered. Or maybe she's on the stairs."
"On the stairs?" I turned to face her. "Mother, I asked you to keep her away from the stairs! Even you said they were dangerous to play on. For goodness sakes!" I started for the living room door. Mother sighed, "Well I'm sorry! It's not like anyone's needing to use the stairs. I thought she'd be fine." I'd stopped listening, marching out into the hall. I stopped when I got to the foot of the stairs. Mel was sat halfway up with Mr Bear and Dolly-de perched on the steps next to her, singing a little song as she played with Dolly-de's hair. It wasn't a song I recognised. "Halfway up the stairs is a staaair where I sit. There isn't any other stair quite like it. It's not the bottom, it's not at the top!" There was a pause as she lifted Dolly-de onto her lap. She hummed the tune, in the broken way I knew meant she'd forgotton some of the words. Her thin voice echoed off the wooden walls of the big hallway. "And all sorts of funneee thoughts run around my head!"
"Mel!" I called softly."Mel, I'm home!" She didn't respond. Just kept playing with Dolly-de's hair and singing. "It isn't really anywhere, it's somewhere else instead!" I stepped up onto the first step. Step: one. "Mel?" She ignored me, her head turned away, her attention diverted. She was tugging at Dolly-de's hair in time to the song. "It's not at the bottom!" Tug. "It's not at the top!" Tug. I went up to her, put a hand on her shoulder. "Mel, honey?" She turned to face me. Green eyes glinted. Cute little mouth open. Head tilted to one side.
"Who's Mel?"


She sits on my lap and I tell her stories. My bony hands clutched at her dress, her soft, pudgy arms wrapped around my sharp elbows to keep her from falling off. While Liam watches. Protective. Towards the end of their visit, I show her the little sweet tin from the table next to my armchair, and let her wriggle her way off my lap and onto the floor. "Now you go and count the stairs. Go on! Just to make sure. Go and make sure there's still fourteen steps." And I smile. As if it's a game.

Halfway up the stairs - story. Part seven.

After the children had gone to school the next morning, I moved the children's beds and favourite toys downstairs. I made a blanket fort in the living room, rearranging the furniture so that there were three sleeping areas. One on either side for Liam and Mel, and one in the middle for me. I set up a treasure hunt along the bottom floor, and set a barrier across the bottom of the stairs. I gathered together our explorer outfits - finding Grandpa's old "Captain Jack" coat for Liam, and sewing big brass buttons and gold braid, and a flower patch, onto an old purple jacket of mine for Mel - and hung them on the coat hanger by the door, with our newly cleaned wellies arranged underneath, and our explorer hats perched on top. I phoned the school and arranged for the children to have a few days off. Then I phoned my Mother. "Of course Liam and Mel can stay with me for a bit! Is this over the weekend?"
"No, Mother. They'll spend the weekend with me, then come to yours on Monday for a few days. Is that okay?"
"That would be lovely, dear. I think your Father and I would appreciate a little young life around the place for a bit! Planning a holiday, are you?"
"No, no. I just thought that the children would benefit from spending some time in an old favourite place of theirs, after having to settle into the new house so quickly." The flattery softened my Mother up, as I knew it would. "Well, that's lovely. Of course they can stay. As long as they like! You make sure you take a break too, Catherine. Don't spend all that time working!"
"I shan't. Thanks Mum. I'll drop them round Monday morning, at about 11."

The weekend was perfect. Mel didn't go near the stairs, accepting my explanation of the barrier without arguement. "That's cannibals up there - we can't go up there, they'll eat us! We have to stay in the jungle down here." We camped out in the living room, toasting bits of bread over Granma's open fire, and telling jungle stories till the fire died down to glowing embers. We drew pictures of the animals we encountered along our expedition, and made juice-cocktail antidotes when Liam got poisoned by a snake. We found the cure for the dreaded Jung Disease, and caught the last living specimen of the Fire Moth, which Mel kept in a glass jar by her bed till I told her we needed to let it go before it became the last dead specimen. Then on Monday morning, we clambered into the back of our Jungle Jeep, and made our way back to "civilisation", laden with our spoils and discoveries.
I spent the next four days mostly at home. I cleared away our jungle. I caught up on the paperwork that had built up. I phoned Mother every morning to talk to the children, and went to see them twice. Mel and Liam seemed more content in my Mother's house. Mel was not as quiet, not as withdrawn, and Liam seemed happier to be around her than he had been at home. I thought maybe we were making progress. That all they'd needed was a break from the stress-residue of moving into a new house. On the last night, I locked up the house and checked myself in to the local hotel for a night. I figured I needed a break too.

Halfway up the stairs - story. Part six.

It was true that Mel was quieter, though. She appeared to have withdrawn into herself a little. As the days went by, she became more withdrawn, her behaviour more erratic. She'd forget where rooms were in the house, or there'd be a moment of confusion on her face when I asked her to go and find Liam, or she'd be sitting at the table and forget to eat. I'd sit in the kitchen and listen to her, playing on the stairs, going up and down, up and down, counting the steps out loud. Always she would get the number wrong. And always she'd get to step seven, and there'd be a pause. A minute of silence. Before the eighth step.
One night I counted the steps with her. We made it all the way to the top. Fifteen. Then all the way back down. Three times. I showed her that she was wrong. She cried herself to sleep that night.
Then one day, Liam came to find me. "Mum?" He stood at the kitchen door, fingers twisting round themselves. His face was white. He jigged nervously up and down on this toes. I put my pen down and turned my chair to face him. "Liam? What's the matter? Are you okay?" I put my arms out and he clambered onto my lap. He put his skinny arms around my neck and I held him close, stroking his curls down smooth. "Mum," his voice was muffled in my shoulder. "Can I sleep in my fort in the loft tonight please?" I leant back and turned my head towards him, and he sat up and stared at his hands in his lap. "It's a school night, Liam."
"I know. I won't stay up late or anything, promise!" He looked up at me, pleading. "I've set up a proper bed and everything, come and have a look!" He slipped off my lap and grabbed my hand, dragging me out of my chair and to the stairs. Mel was sat at the top of the stairs, with Mr Bear sat next to her, conducting some serious conversation with her favourite cuddly toy. Liam let go of my hand and ran past her without looking at her. He didn't pause when he knocked the toy off the step and down the stairs. I caught Mr Bear and handed him back to Mel as I went past. When I got upstairs to the loft, Liam was sat on his makeshift bed amongst cardboard walls, hugging his knees. His body cast a long shadow against the back wall from the desk lamp he had plugged in next to his pillow. I gently pushed aside one of the boxes. "That wasn't very nice, Liam. You should have apologised to Mel for messing up her game."
"Sorry," Liam muttered into his knees. I carefully manuvered myself into position on his mattress, tucking my feet close to my body to avoid knocking over a wall. "So why'd you want to sleep up here?" Liam shrugged. "I just wanna."
"Liam?"
"I don't wanna sleep next to Mel. That's all. Can I sleep up here, pleeease, Mum?"
"Liam, what's wrong with Mel?" I turned to face him. "Something's wrong, but I can't work out what." Liam shrugged. His face still buried in his knees. "I dunno."
"Liam? Please help me out here."
"I don't know. But..." He turned to look at me. "Something's wrong with her eyes." I nodded. "Okay." I stood up, keeping my head bent to avoid knocking it on the low ceiling. "Of course you can sleep up here. Stay here as long as you like. But if I see the light on past 8 30, you're moving in with me, got it?" I smiled down at him. His face echoed mine. "Thanks Mum!"
"Don't forget to brush your teeth."

Mel was still playing on the stairs with Mr Bear. The hallway light was off. The street light from outside created a sharp shadow pattern through the banisters that sat in crooked shapes across Mel's shoulders. I sat down next to her. "Bedtime, Mel-bell." Mel hugged Mr Bear close to her chest. "But I don't wanna go to bed."
"It's a school night, Mel. You know the rules." When she didn't move, I put a finger under her chin and tilted her face towards me. She stared at me with those big blue eyes. "Bedtime." For a split second, the eyes flared green. I let go of her chin and flinched back, shocked. Then she blinked, and her eyes returned to blue, and she tilted her head back and screwed them up and whined, like she usually did, about how Liam got to go to bed later than her, and anyway, she wasn't sleepy at aaall yet! But for that spilt second, I'd seen in her eyes an anger and annoyance that was competely out of proportion with the situation; an anger that was almost adult-like in its strength.
I put her to bed. Tucked her up with Mr Bear and Dolly-de, and a bedtime story. She wriggled and giggled throughout the whole process as normal, and I found myself wondering if I'd imagined it. If Liam's remark about her eyes had me seeing things. It was ridiculous.
After I'd checked Liam's light was off, I made my way slowly to the stairs. I counted them as I went down. Step: one. Step: two. Step: three. There were fifteen steps. Always had been, always will be. The trees outside tapped long fingers against the pane of the kitchen window, and the sound skittered along the floor of the empty hall and up my legs and back. The wind shook a dirge out of the leaves. I turned. Put one foot on the first step. Counted out loud. "One." Next step. "Two." Next step. "Three. Four. Five. Six." When I got to step seven, I held the word and the step like Mel did, prolonging each before bringing my foot down towards step eight. "Seveeen..." My foot hovered in thin air, my body almost tipping itself over in its attempt to keep its position. Then just as my foot began to come down towards the eighth step, I found myself falling. Falling through blackness and cold, with the air whistling past my ears, my arms and legs flailing out, my mouth opened in a scream- my foot hit the eighth step with a jarring thud that echoed throughout the hall. I toppled over, my hands slamming onto the ninth step. My breath came short and ragged. "Eight." Pulling myself upright, I continued up the stairs. "Nine. Ten. Eleven." There were fourteen steps. I sat on the top step, staring at the stairs, my body shaking, until the grandfather clock in the hall struck twelve. Then I dragged myself to my feet, and made my way to bed.

Halfway up the stairs - story. Part five.

The weeks passed. School started. The children loved coming back from their days at school to their new home. We each found our own favourite spots. Mine was the kitchen. The Aga in the corner kept the room toasty warm, and the huge old table was a perfect space for me to spread out all the papers and files that constituted my work. And with the biscuits and kettle within reaching distance.
Liam's was his room. He made a whole world of imagination up there. Using the many cardboard boxes left over from moving house, we built a fort there one weekend. A fort that covered almost half of his substantial-sized room. We also extended it up the secret passage to one side of the loft, so that he had a mini town of carboard houses spreading over a full corner of the house. I bought him packets of oversized marker pens, and he decorated the cardboard walls with dragons and aliens, cityscapes and mountains. There was even a Tardis hidden down one cardboard street.

"What about Melanie?" my mother asked me. "Where does she like to spend her time? I imagine that Liam doesn't always appreciate having his little sister getting in the way of his games in his City." She smiled fondly out of her living room window, where Liam was kicking a football against the garage wall, often missing the white goalposts painted on it. "She likes the stairs, strangely." Mother took a sip of her tea. "The stairs? What an odd place to get attatched to."
"Mmm." I brushed some cake crumbs off my lap. They peppered the green carpet, and Mother's songbird flew down from its perch to peck them up. "We painted her room together last weekend. In pink and yellow, of course. And we set up her toys and belongings on shelves that I put on the walls at her height. But she has a habit of moving her games into the hallway, to sit at the top of the stairs and spread down the steps.
I tried to discourage her. The amount of toys that were left to trip people up and generally cause havoc was ridiculous. But nothing I said or did would change her mind. In the end, it's nice to have her there. She's learned how to tidy up after herself now. And I can hear her playing from the kitchen when I work."
"Stairs are dangerous, Catherine. Little children should not be allowed to play on them." Mother put her cup down on its saucer and looked reprovingly at me. "You should really put a stop to it." I nodded in halfhearted agreement. "How is she otherwise though? Is she settled in?"
"She's quiet." I stood up, and went to the window. Mel was squatted on the grass, poking bits of stick into the dirt to make a circle of wooden pieces, then laying brightly coloured flowers picked from the flowerbeds in the middle of the circle. "She's quieter than usual. I think maybe she hasn't properly settled in just yet. Sometimes when she's playing on the stairs and I'm working in the kitchen, it goes all quiet. When I look over at her, she's sitting completely still on the stairs. Aways the same place, exactly halfway up. Not making a noise. When I get up to go and talk to her, she starts, and looks at me as if I've appeared out of nowhere. All shocked and surprised. It's odd."
Mother rattled her cup in its saucer. "Well I know a good child psychiatrist if you think it's necessary, Catherine."
"Mother!" The shock registered in my voice, and Mother looked at me crossly. "Well, you never know, dear! Moving house can be very unsettling to a child, and after your divorce..."
"Mel does not need a psychiatrist, Mother. She just needs more time." As I left the room, I heard Mother sigh. "Poor Melanie. I never did like those stairs."

Halfway up the stairs - story. Part four.

Time passed quickly. There was alot to do. The children helped as best as they could with the cleaning and tidying. We made it into a game. Every morning we put on our explorer hats - mine was a straw sunhat, Liam's was a fireman's helmet, and Mel's was a bright pink wooly bobble-hat - and collected our equipment, and went to unearth treasures. We cleared out the rooms one by one, throwing away and donating dozens of binbags worth of junk, coming down each evening covered in cobwebs, and carrying armfuls of treasures to be stowed away in the spare room. Once the house was set to rights, the children would be able to play with, dress up in, and make a mess with all of the bits and bobs put in the spare room. But not till then. A kind of bribe to help get the house done.
One Saturday, we finished at lunch time, and I gave the children leave to play at will in the few tidy rooms. Liam disappeared into his bedroom to organise his belongings. I sat in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, and watched the rain slick grey patterns on the thick glass of the kitchen windows. The cup was burning my hands, but it was a relief from the cold water I'd been sluicing down the furniture with upstairs. I could hear Mel playing with her dolls at the top of the stairs. "How lovely of you to come, Mr Bear! Would you like some tea? Sit up, Dolly-de. Sit ups! There. I pour the tea, shall I?" I closed my eyes. Weariness laid a heavy hand over my eyelids. Mel's voice chattered on in the background; a backdrop set of chords for the melody of the raindrops. "Your dress looks pretty today, Dolly-de! Is it from Sainsburys? I thought so, I got my dress from there too, see? More tea, Mr Bear?" There was a series of bouncing clinks as a teacup escaped and skipped down the stairs. I heard Mel put the teapot down with a clank. "Oh BOTHER."
Her steps tripped their way down the stairs. "One, two, three!" she sang. "Seveeen... eight! Nine, ten, eleben, twelves. Erm. Firteen. Fourteen!" The teacup chimed as it rolled over the uneven planks at the foot of the stairs. I heard Mel pick up it up and start her way back up the stairs. "Ooone, two, sree, four, fives. Six, seveeen..." There was a pause. Silence from the stairs. I opened my eyes. Silence. I waited. Silence. I put down my cup and pushed out my chair. "Mel?" There was a small sound from the stairs. Mel said, "Oh!" She was stood on the step, her foot raised above the next one, her eyes wide and shocked. "Mel? Mel, are you okay honey?" She turned towards me. Eyes blue and round. "Mummy?"
I ran up the stairs and knelt on the sixth step so that my face was just below hers. "You okay?" She blinked. "I'm... I forgotted the number." I hesitated. "It's number eight, honey." She blinked again. "Eight!" She turned away from me and stomped up the stairs. "Eight, nine, ten, elebens, twelve, firteen, fourteen!" She reached the top of the stairs and plonked herself down next to Mr Bear. "I has your teacup Mr Bear! More tea?"
I made my way back downstairs. I'd told her the wrong number, she must have been on step nine. She must have missed counting one of the bottom steps or something. I shook my head and poured the rest of my coffee down the sink. Tomorrow I would send the children to their Grandmama's for a few days. They needed a break from this house.

Halfway up the stairs - story. Part three.

When it came to bedtime, we went up the stairs together, counting them one by one. Step: one. Step: two. Step: three. All the way to fifteen. She pouted a little at the unfairness of it, as I tucked her into the makeshift bed between mine and Liam's on the floor of my room. "But there was fourteen Mummy, there was! Cause you goooes..." She lifted her hands in the air above her head. "Five, six..." Her right hand patted the air. "Seveeen..." Her right hand stretched towards the ceiling. "EIGHT!" She dropped her right hand as her left hand shot up towards the ceiling. "Nine, ten, elebens..." Her left hand continued patting the air till she got to fourteen. Then she smiled at me triumphantly, as if she'd proved a mystery of the universe. "See?" I said that I did. And apologised for the apparently wrong number of steps that evening. Liam clambered between the layers of his sleeping bag next to Mel. "I'm sleeping here tonight cause I've got to look after you and Mum," he explained unnecessarily to an uninterested Mel. I left them counting the cobwebs on the ceiling, to the yellow glow of the hallway light, and went to continue unpacking the saucepans and crockery in the kitchen.
When I finally went upstairs to bed, it was past midnight. My feet carried me up the stairs one tired step at a time, my eyes half closed, and when I got to the top of the flight, I stumbled. My foot had lifted itself in preparation of another apparently nonexistant step, then fell with sickening speed and weight to slam against the wooden floor of the hallway. My body swayed with the shock of the unbalance, and I clutched at the wall to steady myself. My bed was welcome in its sleep-inducing comfort. I fell asleep to the snuffly sounds of Mel's breathing, and the shuffling of Liam as he continued to move, even in his sleep.

Halfway up the stairs - story. Part two.

It wasn't till I was in my thirties, had been married, divorced, and had two children, that I moved into Granma's house. We opened the heavy wooden door, and I watched the dust rise around my children's feet as they scampered into the big hall and ran circles through the downstairs rooms. I supervised the removal men as the children made a racket upstairs. When they came down for drinks and biscuits, panting and flushed, they were covered in cobwebs and had dust balls clinging to their clothes. "Children! You look like you've found the messiest part of the house to play in!" Their replies were indignant. "We weren't playing!"
"Yeah, we weren't playing!"
"We were exploring!"
"I'm an explorer, Mummy!"
"We found such coooool stuff!" Liam leant forward over the table towards me, while Mel stuck her grubby hand into her glass of orange juice to fish out a broken section of biscuit. "Mum, I found a sword in one of the rooms! A sword! And there's a wardrobe that's still full of clothes - I found a coat that looks like Captain Jack's from Dr Who, can I have it pleeease, and I found a hat with roses on it that Mel was wearing, but then she sat on it, but I think it's okay, and there's a lion's head on the wall in the hallway, or maybe it's a tiger's - Mum, why is there a lion's head on the wall? - and I found my room!" Liam paused to take a breath, and I took Mel's drink off her and fished the soggy biscuit out with a spoon, which she took off me and sucked contentedly. Outside, the removal men were manhandling a running machine out of the van, and Liam stood up on his chair in his excitement. "Muuum! Did you hear me? I found my room!"
"Sit down, Liam. Which room was it?" I tipped Mel's drink down the plughole, watching as it made an orange track through the layer of dust on the surface of the china sink, leaving behind islands of biscuit, then poured her a fresh cup. Liam had sat down, but was now swinging back and forth on his chair, the legs making rattling noises against the uneven grey tiles. "It's the one next to the bathroom. Can I have that one? It has a huuuge window in it and a secret passage to the loft!"
I remembered that room. It used to be Granpa's study. I only went in there twice as a child. The window was the same in Granma's bedroom, reaching from floor to ceiling, looking out over the now overgrown garden. "Yes, you may have that room, Liam. Go tell the removal men that's where you want your bed and your boxes to go." He leapt off his chair and disappeared out of the door, and I sat to watch Mel gulping down her juice. "What did you find on your exploring, darling? Did you find your room?" Mel swiped her mouth with the back of her hand, leaving a smudge of grey dust across her chin. "Liam founded a hat! With flowers on it, but it was all dirty so I didn't like it so I left it... somewhere. Um. And I found aaa..." She rolled her eyes up and opened her mouth wide in an effort to remember. "I founded a thing. It was quite big and had things on the side..." She gestured vaguely with her hands. "And it was all metally, kind of. And it was really heavy!" A bright smile. "So I left it. Errrm. And I found aaa... bed! It was huuuge! It was a biiig bed, Mummy, can I have a biiig bed?"
"Maybe when you're older."
"Aaaw, okays. And I founded a room that Liam said was mine and it had a pink carpet." I picked up the dishes from the table and started to rinse them at the sink. "And there's a lion in the hallway, and the bathroom door has flowers on it, and I founded a broken cup in the sink in your room, and the door to the downstairs toilet creaks alooot! And I founded a mouse nests in the wardrobe, and I counted the stairs and there was fourteen! And then I also founded a dead butterfly, which was sad. I put it in the hat. I'm going to tell the removal mans where Liam's room is."
I smiled as she scrambled down from the chair. I'd have to go and find the mouse nest and relocate them before Mel got too attatched. It was cute the way she counted the stairs, considering the amount of times I used to do it. Stomp stomp stomp, up and down. And then to Granma to collect my sweetie. "There's still fifteen stairs, Granma!" And how she'd go on about the odd number of stairs.
My smile faded. Fifteen? But... My feet clacked across the hallway floor as they carried me to the door. "Mel? Mel, where are you, honey?" Liam was outside with the removal men, getting in their way as they threw boxes at each other, and swung around our furniture. He hadn't seen her, and I issued an automatic safety warning, which the removal men batted aside with a goodnatured "We're keeping an eye on him, Mrs D", before going back into the house. She wasn't in any of the downstairs rooms. I clattered up the stairs. My mouth automatically formed the numbers as my feet hit the steps. Stamp: one, stamp: two, stamp: three. My heart beat faster the nearer I got to the top. Stamp: nine, stamp: ten, stamp: eleven. I tripped on the thirteenth step. There were fifteen steps. Of course there were. Childish error, that's all.
She wasn't in any of the top rooms either. My voice bounced off the old panelled walls. She wasn't locked in any of the wardrobes mistake. She hadn't fallen through the broken slats of the old king-sized bed. She hadn't tripped over an uneven floorboard and knocked herself unconcious. I went back downstairs. Fifteen steps - once fifteen steps, always fifteen steps.
As I reached the front door, her voice caught my attention. "Mummy?" She was standing halfway up the stairs, one hand clutching the banister, peering through the wooden poles. "Mel! Where've you been?" I ran up the stairs and sat her on my lap. She poked my cheek with a finger. "I been exploring!" Her body was warm and soft against my chest.

Halfway up the stairs - story. Part one.

"Never get a house that doesn't have an odd number of stairs."
That's what my Granma always said. "You don't want a house with an even number of stairs, oh no." She'd shake her head and purse her lips. "You want a house with an odd number of stairs. Like eleven. Eleven is a good number of steps for a house. Or fifteen. My house in Cransbury used to have fifteen steps. That's why I bought this house, as well. Fifteen steps is a good number. But you don't want an even number, no no."
I'd be sitting on her lap. Her bony hands clutched at my dress, my soft, pudgy arms wrapped around her sharp elbows to keep me from falling off. She would lean back in her chair and tap her fingers against my knee. "You pay attention to your old grandmother, now." She'd smile at me, her eyes crinkling around the corners. "You listen to your crotchety old grandmother now. She knows what she's talking about!" Then she'd show me the little round sweet tin from the table next to her chair, and let me wriggle my way off her lap and onto the floor. "Now you go and count the stairs. Go on! Just to make sure. Go and make sure there's still fifteen steps." And she'd smile again, like it was a game. And I would go and count the steps. Stomp: one. Stomp: two. Stomp: three. All the way to the top. And then back down again. Stomp: one. Stomp: two. Stomp: three. Just to make sure. Then I'd go back to my Granma, and she'd give me a sweet from the tin, and let me choose if it was a pink one or a yellow one. Then I was free to go and play while she and Mama talked.
When I was eleven, I asked her why. Why should I only have a house with an odd number of steps? And she said, "Well, it's bad luck, isn't it child?" And looked at me all surprised, as if I should have known.
When I was thirteen, I told her that the number of steps in the house wasn't going to change. If there were fifteen steps, there were always going to be fifteen steps. And she looked at me as if I had thrown a stone at her in the street, her thin fingers tight and white and tangled in her lap, and I went and counted them again for her. All the way up to the top and back down, and then again. Just in case.
When I was fifteen, my Granma died. She left me the house in her will. It was dusted and cleaned, and covered and locked up, and left for when I turned twenty-one. Twenty-one was a respectible age to own a house, Granma said in her will.

The Park of South.

I remember, when our family first started talking about moving house last year, we started discussing what we’d want in the new house. My sister said her own room. My mum said a bigger kitchen. My dad said an extra room to use as an office. My youngest sister wanted a garden big enough to house our trampoline. My brother just needed more space. I didn’t care. All of that sounded lovely, sure, but I didn’t want to think about what I wanted in a house. Because to do that was to admit we were moving. And if you start asking for something in particular, you are more likely to be disappointed. I said nothing when these discussions popped up.
But there was one thing I did want. Tucked away in the back of my head, there was this one tiny little part of me that just repeatedly said, “Let us move closer to South Park.”

Our new house. Everyone has their own room. A kitchen diner twice the size of our previous. An office for dad. A decent garden for the trampoline. And space, space, space. And it’s 15minutes closer to South Park. A gift.

I took a walk to the park yesterday evening. It only takes at most 10mins to get to the top of the park now. The sun was starting to set behind the trees. It cast elongated shadows across the grass. The park had a strange other-wordly feel about it. It was completely empty. From the top of the hill, the shadows cast by the trees at the edges of the park weren’t visible, and the leaves didn’t even shiver in the slight breeze, making them appear as if they had been photoshopped in on top of the strangely bright grass, reminiscent, somehow, of the main room in Willy Wonka’s factory. Seagulls with dusty-black heads strutted in pairs, their jerky movements making them seem robotic and toy like. When I saw one fly off, it did so laboriously, as if unaccustomed to the effort. Three partly deflated balloon perched, stranded, on one of the top branches of a tree. They hung like oversized, exotic fruits against the dark green.

The park has so many different… characters. Somehow. This is why I didn’t want to miss it. Give me a camera, world, and I’ll document its changing life.

Gallows.

You don’t notice at first what she sees. She’s blocking the window with her body, but she gasps, and you see the flinch of tension as her body reacts before her mouth has even spoken his name. Her hair flicks out behind her as she moves, its tips catching your cheek. White-blonde waves swish through your vision, then disappear out the door after her. The meal started on the side stands forgotten.
The cream paint is desert-cracked, the edges digging into your fingertips as you lean on the window frame to peer out the window. And you see her stumbling across the road, hands reaching forward, as the stained, rickety black cart judders forward, her lover sitting, bound and silent, on the rough boards. The mismatched brown horses pulling it snort and toss their heads against the bite of the whip, and her lover’s body jerks with the movement of the cart as it pitches over a pot hole. She is left in the middle of the road, half hidden by the swirl of dust kicked up by the cart’s wheels, her fists clenched and her body leaning forward as she screams. Hot tears hiss as they fall onto the dirt road.
Your knuckles are white, your hands clenched tight to the window frame. Somehow you knew she was expecting this. Knew the possibility of this was one that had been haunting her for months. But to have your fear become reality is a deathly thing. Your breath is tight in your throat, and each heartbeat is painful in your chest. Thump thump thump, loud in your ears as you watch her cry. Unable to move. Blood trickles unnoticed between your fingers from where a sharp splinter has dug a jagged cut in your palm.
She’s still standing in the middle of the road, shoulders hunched. In the distance the cart rumbles further and further away, its sharp black corners half hidden by the dust. It passes over a hill on the horizon, and is gone. And suddenly she’s moving. Skirts dragging in the dirt, feet pounding at the surface of the road, she’s running, fast and frightened, towards where the cart disappeared.
In your haste to follow her, you trip on the doorstep and stumble forward. Your hands slam into the ground and your knee scrapes along the stones, but you’re back up and running before you’ve even registered the pain. She’s moving faster than you, somehow. You’re running as fast as you can, your breath rough against your tongue, rasping through your teeth. Your feet smack against the rough road, your legs already ache with the unaccustomed work you’re forcing them to do. And yet she is moving steadily away from you. The landscape moves past you slowly, and although you double your efforts, til your lungs are tight with lack of air and your legs are weighted-heavy with the extra work, you only seem to move slower. Ahead of you, she’s getting smaller. She’s melding into the dust cloud that is dragged behind the fast-moving cart.
You slow down. Close your eyes. Your feet stumble and scuff in the dirt. Your breathing is heavy and jagged. With each step you ache, but to continue to follow her seems like less of an option than a necessity.

At first when your feet come down to meet dry grass instead of stone, you don’t notice. Then the cold seeps through your closed eyelids and you open them to see darkness. You’re on a hill crest. Below you, stretching out in a vast space of shifting dark, are fields of black grass. Like living things they move in the wind, long sharp blades that swish and slick against each other so that their movement echoes the waves on the sea. They stretch to both sides. To your left a line of trees, sable bark and twisted boughs, stand guard before the drop of land into grey ocean. A clean, sharp salt smell drifts up from the damp ground.
She’s below you. Struggling through the waist-high grass, her hair whipped side-to-side by the wind. Her dress is torn and it catches continually on the thorns of the black flowers hidden in the grass. Scraps of it tear from the hem and flutter away in the wind like ragged moths. She’s still running. Moving as fast as she can, though the grasses whip at her legs and the roots snatch at her ankles and rip the soles of her feet. She’s reaching with her hands. A nominal, ghostly-pale shape in a sea of shifting darkness.
Ahead of her is her goal. Tall and rickety, it lurches away from her across the field like an oversized misshapen insect. Your stomach clenches as you see it. Built like a ladder to the heavens, the massive wooden structure has four levels. The first three levels are inhabited. Large woven baskets sit supported in holes in the heavy wooden flooring, each basket lined with dirty rags and rough grey material. They shed scraps of fabric so that the air around the structure is broken by tiny fluttering shapes that are whipped away in spiralling circles. And each basket holds a man. This you know. Despite its distance, you can see the hands that reach from the edges of the baskets into the thin air. You can hear the quiet sobbing and the despairing moans of these broken men, as it mixes with the creaking of the twine-bound joints and is swept towards you by the howling wind in a discordant melody.
Suddenly you are as desperate as she is. Desperate to see her reach her goal, to see her win this race. You try to move forward, but your feet are rooted to the ground, sunk into the bruised-plum mud, and you cannot. For you’ve seen her lover. Shadow skin and eyes deep as the night. He stands, his head held high, on the top level. The gallows swing free. Three loops of twisted rope. Dark against the purple-red clouds of the sunset.
Stop watching. But even with your eyes closed you can still see her, imprinted on your eyelids; a pale moth fluttering, struggling, on a background of black motion. As your eyes reopen, the sun falls. A sudden bright light from the horizon silhouettes her lover, the twisted rope, the creaking structure, in a graffiti painting of black on bright white. Stark and clean and terrible. Then the top rim of the sun sinks into the sea. She screams. A thin sound. And blackness falls.

In the early hours.

Hush your chatter, young lady. You find yourself here sometimes, and admit it, you kinda enjoy it. These random occasional nights bring you back to those months of insomnia and midnight conversations.
The weight of heavy weariness pressing against your forehead. the restless shivers travelling along your fingers and legs. The pain behind your eyelids with every slow blink. The way your bed's soft comfortable folds feel like a prison. The way you can't avoid watching the slow sliding of minutes from one to the next. So slow.
The thoughts that run in dizzying circles round and round in your head. Memory after worry after wish after sorrow after memory. A flashing merry-go-round with music that repeats itself over and over, refusing to give you any rest.
Your body and head are heavy with desire for sleep.
All of this you recognize. Like an old friend. There is some strange comfort in it's familiarity. You recognise how you'd be if you allowed yourself. Up in the early hours, ink on your fingers or paint under you nails, obsessive in your desire to escape the throbbing, unavoidable irritation of inability to sleep. Or pacing the floors of the silent, cold house, listening to every creak, alert to every sound. But that habit is one too easy to slip into.
Oh, stop this inane chatter. God give me rest.

I have this theory.

Each of us exists in our own world. "Reality" is a word that means little - it is created of a combination of each individual person's perception of the world. This perception creates an individual existence.

But each person's world also includes the people they know, live with, and come across as their life continues. Therefore there must be many, at least ever-so-slightly different versions of us. One version for the world of each person who knows us. Each version will differ because of each person's different perceptions of us, although the versions of those who know us best will overlap. And all those many versions of ourselves branch from the existing original around which our own world rotates. And all will be us, just slightly distorted.

This means that you are living many different existences, all at the same time.

Chess.

Unlike in a game of chess, the squares are not just in black and white. The greys merge and overlap in a subtle changing mess of shades. The black Knight has made his final move. It is a risky one at best, leaving him open to danger from both sides. It is the white Queen's move. She stands, tall and pale. She has one final chance, but though she trembles with the choice she knows she made years ago, she elects to stand her ground. And wait as her white King moves a step closer.

Smithy.

Your forge has been silent for a while now. Or maybe it's just that your creations are not being revealed. Despite being unable to enjoy what you whip into existence from the thin, cold air, there is hope that your little gems are still tumbling from the fire to clink with satisfactory glee on the flagstones of your hearth.

My answer.

I’m hiding behind all these words
I cannot afford to say.
Answers gone ungiven.
Questions left unasked.
They’re holding me captive.
I’m not the answer
for all the questions you have.
An argument with no end,
that stretches in my minds eye
into all eternity.
This isn’t how I want to remember you.
The interrogation is building up.
Brick by boring brick;
a wall of question marks.
They keep me occupied,
they keep me alone.
The answer you wanted,
but I’m long gone.
I’m lost behind all these words
I cannot afford to say.

Release.

And when at last it came, it was a flood. The waves shuddered and juddered and rocked the walls, so that the cracks drove deeper and deeper into the brickwork. The cement was dissolved in the tainted waters, and with sighs and groans the walls crumbled into rubble. One corner at a time. Murky black with the remnants of adorning paint, the ripples left stained streaks, tide marks, on each piece as it swayed through the water to sink, shattered and tired, into the sand of the bed.

First one.

I’m held down by thin chains of glittering silver. I finally did it. I stopped straining long enough to sing you a song, to pour out my heart to you. You’d waited so long for that. And your hands reached for the chains. I flew prematurely. Before you’d even finished I had spread my wings; my body buoyed up by relief, I tried to flee the hurt that was threatening to strike me down. But with a snap I was pulled back. You’d only released one chain. The other yanked at my foot, the silver cutting into my veins, and my relief came crashing down around my fluttering wings. I don’t know if you even noticed you still haven’t let me go, let me go. Can’t you see? Your bird is trying to fly away.

Last one.

I wrote you a letter in blue ink.
It sits under my mattress,
between the pages of a Wallace and Gromit annual.
The tones and subjects clash rather.

I imagine them fighting it out,
like all the thoughts did,
round and round my head, conflicting with each other.
I think Wallace and Gromit won.

I'll hand the letter to your sister.
Then she can hand it over to you.
Then you can read it and argue it and throw it away.
I'll sleep on it tonight.

Promises - Part three.

Sometimes when they came to me, to tell me their troubles next to my small fire, the ones who had already been would tell me a little of what had happened. Hands clasped over their faces to hide their shame, they would speak. Not full accounts, just broken snippets. Always, when they had gone, I would leave myself and make my way to the safety and freedom of my Emme’s beautiful house.

She took her time to sort out their practise. She moved back and forth, right and left, her body between me and the counter. I closed my eyes and listened to the clink of the objects she was handling. When I opened them again, he was standing there also. He was wearing a mask over his mouth and nose. A shadow made it impossible to see his eyes. She put a mask on herself, and then he nodded towards me, indicating he was ready. She picked up a silver object and stood beside me. He tapped his gloved finger against the counter top. Then turned towards me.

I was very careful as I folded the picture up, out of the way. The space underneath was smooth and clean. I took the pen Emme was holding out for me. Bekka and she moved around me: They unfolded pieces of paper that were lying on the floor; they opened some of the tins and drew out more pictures, more drawings; they rifled through the pages of books and picked up photos and poems and paintings. I uncapped the pen, pressed it against the wood, and began to write.

Even when the people have gone, their confessions still talk to me. They repeat what they’ve seen. “He just reached out-” “no preparation…” “It glinted in the light...” “So sharp you won’t feel a thing.” “I sold it. Ah, it’s gone, it’s gone!” “…like quicksilver.” “No feeling. You’re left with no feeling.” “…an empty space…” “…as if your soul..” “…cut in half…” “It was so dark…” “Oh, oh, oh! No! What have I done?” “He was so quick…” “No eyes! Oh, no eyes!” “…so dark…” “…and then she said-”

“A lick and a promise.” She took my hand and held it up to her mouth, drew her tongue over the veins. Then she spat onto her fingers. The moisture gathered in a droplet on her index fingertip. She stroked the wet fingers around the edge of the hole. Her fingers pressed against the sides of my empty socket, round in a circle. Then she placed her hand flat over it.

I wrote our names. Emme. My name. Then Bekka. Then I drew a line and started on the other names. Hana. Juliette. Guinnie. All the girls, all the ladies, all the women. The memories of the house in one list of names. As I did this, Emme and Bekka pinned up the papers on the back wall all around it, covering the old wood. The new owner’s loud voice was a soundtrack to our work.

They were waiting for me as I walked out, my shame tracking tears down my cheeks. I remember one woman in particular. The sister of Mr Farner. She was all in white; a dirty, faded white, her pale hair in a mussed up bun, the thick skirts and lace-edged bodice smudged with grey, the pink ribbon lining the lace like lines of faded blood stains. She was wearing one of the fashionable, new, mini top hats, in an off-white colour that was not unlike the colour of her dress. The small lace veil just skimmed the edge of the deep hole that lead a path into the depths of her desperate soul.

The promise was handed to me in a glass phial. Bright green-blue powder sprinkled into thick liquid, then shaken into a paste. The same bright, bright green-blue of my eye. She took my hand and pressed my fingertips into the colour, before she sealed it and put it into a paper bag. A lifetime of colour in one small glass phial. Just one lifetime. My promise.


We covered the back wall. When we had finished, the man’s shouting had been reduced to a suspicious, awe-filled silence. His daughter stood at his knee, hands grasping at the thick material of his trousers. I pulled the original child’s painting back over the names so that he wouldn’t see them. We stood back. His daughter had the biggest, biggest grey eyes. “For your daughter,” we said. Then we left them staring at the collage of colour.

They parted before me. There was a sense of relief, a sense of release. As if I had been the final clause, the sealing part of the promise. I stumbled as I walked through them. My towns people smiled at me, encouragingly, with sorrow written in their empty sockets and remaining eyes. As they drifted away it was with a growing sense of purpose. Emme caught me as I tripped. Her arm slid, strong and firm, around my waist. She turned her head to me, and with my half-a-gaze I caught sight of her two, beautiful, purple eyes. In this crowd of half-people, her completeness made my cry. “I’m so proud of you, Emme. So proud.”

They came out onto the steps to watch me go. Her white coat and his black shirt. Her peroxide hair and his dark curls. Her long, pale fingers and his heavy, olive hands. Her ice-blue eyes and his black-open sockets. Blind as the day she’d been born, empty as the day he’d succumbed. I never saw them again.

We walked down the worn steps of Emme’s beautiful house for the last time. The towns people were ranged at our feet. Their houses in the hands of others, their belongings in cracked leather cases at their feet. They stood in silence, watching as Emme helped Bekka and I down the steps and onto the mud road. Then, as one, they picked up their cases, and with one last look around the broken town, started to walk.

We became the people who had passed through our town for years and years before. With our lives in our suitcases, we walked from settlement to settlement. We became known as the Half-Town. A name as unimaginative as it was true. People shied away from us. They saw only our empty eyes and the shame that was carved into our faces. When we reached the city, however, everything changed. In that place of broken people and unfinished spirits and crippled souls, noone noticed yet another set of incomplete people. We could hide here.

The years have dragged on. Emme and I share a house. We sit in front of the fire in the evenings, in the dark, twisted rooms of our abode, and share our stories in the silence. Always, nowadays, I find myself holding my promise. I stare into the colour depths, press the colour onto my fingertips; that bright, bright green-blue. The colour that lasts a lifetime. Sometimes I think that it is fading, or that the paste is running low, and the certainty of my oncoming death grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me hard.

Sometimes I look at my promise, my special return, my empty guarantee, and sometimes I know what it is. Sometimes I know that it is the promise of long life. I have lived a long time. Sometimes, instead, I know that it is the promise of a single life. No returns. That the end will be the end. And a blessed darkness, in which I am already half immersed.

When I sink too deep into these thoughts, Emme comes over to me and takes the glass phial from my hands. She opens the lid and presses my fingertips into the colour. My beautiful, bright, green-blue. Then she puts my promise away. And then, sometimes, I realize I don’t know what it is. I only know that it must come soon. So I close my eyes. Hide from the half-darkness and the colour on my fingers. And I listen instead to her stories; her voice winging its way out of the shadows cast by our small fire, painting images on the walls of our twisted room. And I know, then, that in the end, it will not be so dark, after all.

End.

Promises - Part two.

As time went on, the town sunk into depression. From my house on the hill, I watched it happen. The misfortune spread along the houses like a brown fog. As the misfortune grew, so did the number of appointments made, so did the misfortune… and the circle continued.

At first when I walked into their clinic, they ignored me. She continued to measure out those liquids, green liquid sparkling in the polished glasses as she held them up to the light. He just sat in his corner, his back to me, bent over the counter, the muted light from the candle next to him sliding off his hair and falling onto the floor in broken fragments.

Her house was coated in memories. As I walked up the steps, they would slip up from between the slats and from under the floors and from deep in the walls and pull a smile from the corners of my mouth. Emme would always be waiting in the doorway, behind the screen door, laughter hidden in her eyes. She had the most beautiful, deep purple eyes.

I was held in high regard by the towns people. I never quite understood why, but often they would come to me for assistance or a kind word. I often didn’t even have to say anything. My listening to their troubles would be enough. But what they didn’t know is when they came to me and released their troubles, they left them sitting in crumpled piles in my rooms, and crawling with chipped claws across my floors. They came more and more often as the time went by and my house got more and more full.

When she dipped the syringe into the green liquid and pulled the stopper to suck it in, I saw the swirl of turbulence made by the suction in sea-blue tension lines. She lifted the syringe to the light and pushed the stopper gently, letting a single drop of liquid slip down the metal tip.

As I walked up the steps of her house for the last time, I held tight to the hand of my half-sister, and her thin fingers in mine comforted me. My Bekka; she strengthened me. I think even though it was Emme’s house, our weakness meant that we suffered more than she did. Emme’s ability to hold onto what was hers meant that what was no longer hers did not cause her as much pain.


People began to talk of moving. What else was there to keep them here, they asked each other. They had no lives left, only the promises they had bought, tied in their hearts and hopes with broken pieces of lace and ribbon and string. They rustled by each other in their long skirts and nodded to each other, heads low in their humiliation, and their shame gave birth to a restlessness and fed the hope in their centres until it raged with unfulfilling anger.

Finally she turned towards me. Her white shirt was fastened up over her neck, the brass buttons glinting as she moved. Her peroxide hair was rolled back to the nape of her neck. Her lips still as red as blood. Her eyes were as pale blue as ice. And behind their cold mask, I could almost see the triumph.

The man who now owned the house stood with his small daughter on the steps and talked loudly of his plans for it. Emme met us at the door as she usually did. She smiled as she saw us coming, held out her hands towards us. Behind her calm posture was an urgency we both understood.

They came so often to my house on the hill. They came because of the depression, because of the misfortune, because of the growing trouble. They came because of their uncertainty, because of their fear, because of their own lack of confidence. And afterwards they came because of their shame, because of their guilt, because of their humiliation.

She wrote my name down in black ink; spidery letters scratched across the dull page. The nib of the pen spurted splats of ink if she pressed too hard. My name looked so insignificant. Just another name on another page of the book.

We went straight to the cupboard in the hall. I pushed the door open; it slid sideways on its runners with a rusty screech. The cracked, pale paint flaked off and flittered to the floor with my touch. We shoved aside the dusty tin boxes and old, half-forgotten things that sat under a layer of dirt and grit on the floor of the cupboard. We flung them with reckless abandon on to the floor; they rolled and jumped and shuddered across the uneven tiles, trailing clouds of dust and cobwebs.


Their troubles piled up around me. They sat chattering quietly in the corners of my rooms and lay crumpled in piles around my furniture. They lined the edges of the walls and the door and window frames, blocking out the light and making it hard to move. They lay discarded, and all of them reeked of the depression and let off the fumes of fear, so that they choked the air. They made it hard, so hard, to breathe.

I had to wash my hands and my face. The water was an odd, light blue colour. She gestured to an old, leather patients chair and I sat, obediently, my hands folded in my lap. I remember I was shaking slightly.

We flicked away the dirt and strands of spiders web and I wiped a hand across the back slats of the cupboard. My hand came away grey with dust. There it was: the child’s drawing was still hanging on the rough wood. The edges of it caught at my fingers as I swept them over it. Emme leaned over my shoulder and blew at the dirt; it cleared as if it had never existed, leaving clean, dry wood and a clearly visible picture.