Category: Creative Writing

A to Z Blog Challenge – April 2025 – B

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B is for — Behind the green door.  A game show with a difference

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It was the anniversary of my mother’s death and a day when my father usually just remained in bed and refused to get up.

He had never quite coped with it, and now, quite a few years later, he was still struggling.  The pity of it was my birthday was the same as the day she died, and I guess it was why for years he had not celebrated it

However, this year was different.  I was looking forward to turning 30, a milestone and something of an achievement in our community, considering what we had all endured.

But it was what it was.  We were alive, reasonably well, and looking forward to the time when we could once again go outside, though no one really knew what that meant.

We had photographs of how the planet looked before the cataclysmic seismic events of 2031.  Overnight, volcanoes erupted, and huge fissures appeared. And poisonous gas filled the air.  It happened so suddenly and so quick that most of the planet’s population died.

So much smoke and dark particles got into the atmosphere it drowned out the sun, and after that, it didn’t take long for everything that wasn’t killed by the sulphuric acid to die from lack of light.

Fortunately, my family was one of the lucky groups that were given a ticket to the huge underground facility built for just such an event, one of thousands all over the world, a completely self-contained microcosm of human life.

Waiting for the air to be clear and for life to reappear.  We had been waiting 400 years.

That was as much as we knew or cared to.  We all had other things to worry about, like getting through the day with the cheerful disposition my mother brought to everyone who knew her, and in her stead, by me.  Everyone had said how much I was like her, and that perhaps didn’t help my father’s disposition.

It was also the day I was being brought into my father’s circle of friends.  I mean, I knew them already and frequently met them when we all got together as a group of families.  But this, he had said, was something different, and I would have to swear on a bible, of all things, that I would keep it a secret, a secret that I would take to the grave.

It had me intrigued.  There were no secrets among the people.  Everyone basically knew everyone else’s business, not hard in a place that only houses 25,000 people, roughly the size of a small town.

This group, he said, had people from all of the work groups, like medical, sanitation, engineering, communications, and community services.  There were about 50 in all, and now that I was a detective, I was going to be confirmed as the newest member of the team, adding a new field and expertise.

It was a team I didn’t know until he first told me, but being formally introduced to all of them was going to be exciting.  These people, I discovered were basically the ones who made our community work.

It also meant my father wouldn’t be wallowing in self-pity today.  He would have better things to do.

I was surprised to discover the meeting place was a gymnasium.  It was reasonably large and looked rather old and worn out.  A new one had been built not far away, but people still preferred to use this one. The reason I discovered later was that there was no surveillance.

Yes, that was just one of the things about our existence that was a nuisance.  It was everywhere and you had to be on your best behaviour at all times.

The other 48 members had already arrived, and my father and I were the last two. I had to sit up at the main table until the others voted to formalise my addition to the team.

My father rang a bell, and silence took over from the low roar of my simultaneous conversations.

“Welcome, fellow members of the brains trust.  For the edification for what I hope will be our newest member,” A glance in my direction followed by 39 other sets of eyes, “we are a group of experts in our fields and when there a problem the brains trust will come together and brain storm a solution.”

“Our main business today is to formalise the inclusion of my son, Michael, as a member.  He will bring the expertise of a Detective and the use of his skills as one to help us find resolutions to future problems.  If anyone has an objection, make it known now.”

We waited for a minute of so, then he continued, “As there are no objections, it is now time for the oath.”

He motioned me to stand as he took a musty looking volume off the table where he was standing.  I’d seen it before but never took much interest in it.  Now I knew it was a bible, one hardly of any use because religion, though not banned, was frowned upon

Equally, neither of my parents was interested or showed any interest.

He held the book in his hand and asked me to put my right hand on it.  I did.

“Do you swear to work with and help in every way possible as a member of the brain’s trust.”

“I will.”

“Do you swear never to tell anyone else, no matter what relationship you have with them?”

What sort of a secret society was this?

“I do.”

“Do you swear that no matter what duress you are under, you will never tell anyone what you have observed, heard, or performed for the group?”

OK, now it was getting a little scary.  Being a detective, I knew the rules by heart, and if this group was doing anything illegal, I was going to have to break the oath I made to become a detective.

What was more important?

“I will.”

“Then welcome to the brain’s trust.”

He shook my hand, and then everyone of the others did likewise.  It was like swearing an oath to each one of them.

That was the business out of the way.  Now, it was time to celebrate, and the wives and daughters had made food and set it out for all to partake.

There was one woman there who was different from the rest. When I asked one of the other girls who she was, she said her name was Elsie and a friend of another of the girls.

She also said she was new to the community, having come with her mother from one of the other communities nearby.

I was curious.  My father had been at me to find a nice girl and settle down but having been to school with and known most of the girls of my age since we were young children, I had not been able to form a rapport with any particular one.

There was only one reason why a woman came from another community, and that was to marry one of our men.  There were rules around marriage, and everyone had to be careful whom they married.

Not that I was thinking about that right then, but it did occur to me that she would be automatically eligible.

I picked a moment when she was alone and went over.  She saw me coming and I thought she might disappear, but she didn’t.

“Hello,” I said in a slightly breaking voice, nerves almost getting the better of me, “my name is Michael.”

She held out her hand, and I took it in mine.

“Hello, Michael.  My name is Elsie.”

“I have not seen you around.”

“I have only just arrived here with my mother.  She is ill at the moment, and I’m staying with my prospective stepfather’s relative.”

“How do you like this community?”

“It is exactly the same as the one I came from, just different people and different rules, but more or less the same.  Have you lived here all your life?”

“Yes.”

She took her hand back, but not in a way that made me think she didn’t like me.

“What do you do?”

“Science, mostly geology.  I study rocks.  Lately, it’s been monitoring seismic activity.  All numbers and lines, boring stuff.  What do you do?”  Then she smiled, and it was transformational.

“Of course, silly me, you’re a detective.  What do you detect?”

“Not a lot because I’m only new, but one day, murders or missing persons.  We didn’t have many murders or deaths, but we do have minor crimes.  Boring stuff, actually.”

“Well, I’m sure we’ll see each other again.  I must go now.”

I saw a man at the door looking sternly at her, perhaps for talking to me.  She walked quickly but not hastily towards him, and then they left.

My father appeared at my side.  “Interesting, young woman.  Do you know who she is?

“Someone from another community.  I believed her mother had come to marry one of us.”

He frowned and shook his head.

“That man at the door was a relative of the prospective groom,” I said.

“Then I suggest you keep your distance from them.  They’re trouble.”

That sounded ominous.  There were not many people my father didn’t like, so there was going to be a problem if, in the unlikely event, we met again.

For the next month or two, I worked on improving my skills as a detective and kept an eye out for Elsie.  When I didn’t see her again. I put my missing person skills to good use and tried to track her down.

I learned very quickly that what I thought was good work was nothing of the sort.  I told myself that I was not going to be much of a detective if I couldn’t find someone who was not even missing.

It never occurred to me that she might be hiding or keeping away from the general public for private reasons.  Whatever it was, I gave up trying because I assumed if she wanted to see me again, she would come and find me.

Then suddenly, she reappeared, at my favourite cafe and was ordering a takeout coffee.  I joined the queue behind, then touched her on the shoulder.  She both jumped and squealed but was genuinely surprised to see me again.

“Did you go back to your community?  I have been keeping an eye out for you,” I said

She hesitated, what I might have called confused, then said, “Yes, I had to go back.  Mother married and stayed here.  Now I’m back for good.  I didn’t get your last name, so I couldn’t find you.”

Although pleasant, I sensed something reticent in her manner.  Twice, she had been looking around but trying not to.  As if someone was watching her.

“Are you alright?”

She smiled, but there was no warmth in it.  “A relative is somewhere near here.  I’m just waiting for him.  So that I can find you again, can you give me your last name?”

I gave it to her along with my address, which she carefully folded and put in her bag.

Then she caught sight of the person she was looking for.  “Got to go.  Sorry.  We will talk again, I promise.”  And then she was gone.

Cloak and dagger were words I read in a book that I’d found in a suspect’s residence, a book from a long time ago, one that was banned and shouldn’t exist.

Instead of submitting it as evidence, evidence I knew would disappear, and to be told I should not speak of it again, I kept it.  It also told me there must be a cache of such volumes somewhere in the facility and added it to my secret mission list.

I didn’t tell my father, knowing it would set him off on another rant, that we were kept in the dark, that we were being manipulated by an unseen group of pf murderous people who didn’t care about us.  The death of my mother by them had turned him into a bitter old man.

But the courtship, if you could call it that, with a woman named Elsie Myers, was every bit of a cloak and dagger operation.  We would both sneak away to various locations we knew of that rarely saw other people.  At first, we talked about my community and about her community, how much she didn’t like ours and wished she could go home.

It wasn’t long before I realised that her community was the same one my mother came from.  Did she know this?  I knew she couldn’t be related to my mother because she’d know the rules about inter-community relationships.  And if there was, the recording of any relationships would be investigated.

But, whether or not I was supposed to know this, I decided not to speak of it.  She didn’t seem to want to be forthcoming.

Whatever it was we were doing, it proceeded to the point where I took her home to meet my father.  He was now in the twilight of his years and thinking about Rule 71, the one that decreed that everyone turning 65, took a last trip to the community headquarters, spent a week being debriefed ready for the next person to take over their job, and they move into the next phase of their life.

In other words, put bluntly, you reach 65, and you die.  It was an arbitrary age, the beginning of the end, and that age where everything went wrong.  The thing is, in 400 years, medicine had not improved to the point where we could sustainably live past 65 and be useful

We were told it had something to do with having to live under a mountain, the lack of fresh air and sunshine, and the processing of our food.

Besides, I got it.  Who would want to live longer than that?

My father had got a reminder of his human frailty that morning in a card from the administration advising him that he was due for a check-up.

It was a bad choice to pick the same day to introduce Elsie.  It wasn’t until we were outside the door that I remembered what he had said about her all those months ago.

I unlocked the door and ushered her in.  Once, we didn’t have to lock the doors, but there had been a growing discontent between the haves and have-nots.  He was in his favourite chair, reading the newspaper.

“Dad, this is Elsie.”

Rather than him becoming the polite host, he simply glared at me and said, “I told you what thought ages ago.  Take heed or don’t, I don’t care.”

Thus began a long-running and strained relationship between the two of us, and perhaps I should have heeded his advice from the beginning.  It never improved from that day.

When I should have considered what was behind his attitude I didn’t and on top of the indifference he had for everything since mother had died, I decided to strike my own path, neither participating with the brains trust, and continuing to be disappointed with my workplace, not realizing that it might have had something to do with Elsie.

It wasn’t until sometime after I married her and I was complaining about yet another missed opportunity that one of the other detectives intimated that I should wonder how it was a woman like Elsie had deigned to marry someone so inferior to her station.

She had never mentioned anything about her station, but it was about the time when I started to get better cases, and we moved into better accommodation, and then, she had apparently got a promotion, more and important work.

Perhaps that might never have mattered. I had not seen her out and about with another man, not behaving in the manner I would have expected.  I knew she was a flirt as at some of the parties we were invited to, I saw her being friendly with her fellow workers, but I put that down to her manner.

And while I might have dwelled on it longer than I should, it soon became equally apparent that the new cases I was being allocated were leading me down a dark path whether intentionally designed to distract me from questioning her behaviour, or whether I was meant to discover there was a whole other side to our community that no one else could see.

Had Elsie facilitated that, or was I just imagining it?

Whatever the reason, my life took a very different path, for a period a very intense relationship with Elsie as if we only had a very short time left together, I had uncovered a series of missing persons and subsequent deaths that were linked, something I could not report because there was a possible link between them and my father and other members of the brains trust.

Then my father’s time was up, and I took him to the judiciary, trying to make up for those years since I chose Elsie over him, only for him to cryptically tell me that things happened for a reason, and I would soon learn what that reason was.  He was not bitter, not anymore, and was glad to move on.

Then, in one stultifying moment, Elsie was gone.  I had, on occasion, followed her out and about, seeing who she met, who she was more friendly with, and finding out who they were.  It was interesting that they were all top-level scientists and the sort of men she should have married.

And then, it was one of them that killed her in a jealous rage.  It was not the story they told me, a bunch of shadowy men in black calling, explaining, and then leaving with the ominous threat that I should accept the findings of the investigation and get on with my life.  A CCTV video gave me the real answer much later, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

In the end, I got to my retirement date, rather satisfied in the end that I had done my job to the best of my ability, I had met and lived with the woman I believed I was meant to be with and that I was probably the only one of the 25,000 inhabitants in our community who knew what had happened over the last 400 years that got us to the point where we were now.

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©  Charles Heath  2025

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to write a war story – Episode 24

For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.

Whilst I have always had a fascination with what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.

And, so, it continues…

 

While waiting for Carlo and Chiara to return with the villagers, and taking some time to consider the plan that had almost formed in my mind, I went back to my room, which, I was guessing was once used for wine storage, because now that I had taken a moment to stop and consider my surroundings, I could smell the aroma of spilled wine.

With a little more light, I could see the arches within which the bottles would be stacked.  I’d also noticed while I’d been outside, that there were vines everywhere, albeit in bad shape as the people who tended them had either left, or been taken away, or shot.

Red grapes if I was not mistaken, though I had no idea what the variety might be.

If the war dragged on much longer, it would do a lot of damage to the wine-growing districts, and I doubted, when the Germans were here, they had any interest in tending the vines, but just drink the wine, and then probably not with the appreciation it deserved.

That had certainly been the case up at the castle before fate turned against me.  Perhaps that was where all of the wine from this cellar had been taken for safekeeping, once the locals thought the Germans had gone forever.  Maybe that was the reason why Leonardo spent so much of his time at the castle, the free wine.

Jack had returned from what I assumed was an inspection of our new quarters and was sitting on the ground next to me.  I wondered what he made of everything he had seen.  It was certainly not a dog’s life being caught in the middle of a war.  

“It’s a fine mess we’re in,” I said to him, and he looked back with uncomprehending eyes.  I would have to brush up on my German.  Or maybe Italian.  It only just occurred to me that he was probably someone’s dog from around here.  We’d only run into each other a few miles away.

“Yes, and I’m sure if you spoke English you could tell me a thing or two.  But, alas, you can’t, so a piece of advice.  Try to keep out of trouble, and by that, next time I go out, you might want to stay here.”

I shrugged.  Things must be bad; I’m talking to a dog.

Martina stopped outside the entrance.  “I heard voices.  Who are you talking to?”

“The dog.  He’s the only one who’s making any sense at the moment.”

“Are you sure he’s not a German spy.  Or, in fact, it’s a he?”

“You probably know as much as I do.  Anything happening?”

“Carlo’s back with a dozen or so of those who want to stay alive.  Chiara has a few more.  The rest have other places to hide if they need to.  We’ve told them to expect a raid.  Leonardo and a few of his men have been out looking for you and told everyone that you are a German spy and that he’ll pay them a lot of money for information about where you are or who’s hiding you.  He doesn’t understand everyone hates him, they always have.”

“Good to know if I run into him, he won’t be happy to see me.”

“This plan of yours?”

“Wallace will be getting edgy about the men he sent out, those men we ambushed at Chiara’s place.  It depends on who he sends, and where they go, but I was thinking we could prepare another ambush at Chiara’s.  All we have to do is wait because I’m sure they’ll get there eventually.”

“And if I know Leonardo, he’ll send them straight to my farm.  He knows that both Carlo and I, and the other two you’ve met were the other four who refused to join him in going up to the castle to make peace.  It seems he’s made a bad choice.”

“Wallace didn’t.  He needs someone like Leonardo to find us.  You’re probably right.  I was thinking Carlo and I could go.  No sense sending all of us, and if anything happens, there will be someone left to carry on.”

“You don’t sound too confident.  You are a soldier, aren’t you?”

“In a manner of speaking.  But I was not trained to be a commando, and not necessarily on the front line, or in this case behind enemy lines.”

“You’re not one of those rich kids whose father bought a commission, so you didn’t have to fight?”

Interesting the ideas foreigners had about elements of the army.  I was not sure if that was done anymore, at least not in this war.

“I have poor parents, that is if they have survived the bombs falling on London.  Refused to give in to Hitler’s aggression.”

I tried to convince them to go to the countryside, just to be safe, but one of the places they thought of going, had also been bombed, so as far as they were concerned, nowhere in England was safe.

“But yes, they did teach me how to shoot, and I know my way around several different types of gun.”  My mind flicked to the sniper rifle and the damage that could do.  

I’d be definitely taking that with me.

I saw her turn her head, and then heard the sound of new arrivals.  Chiara had returned.

“Time’s up for planning.”

I told the dog to stay, but as usual, he ignored me.  We went back into the main cavern where a dozen more people were settling in various places along one wall.  They looked as though they’d packed for a reasonably long stay.

But what worried me was the way they looked at me.  Those rumors Leonardo spread, I was hoping no one believed him.  Above the sound of voices, I could hear Marina speaking to them in Italian, hopefully, to tell them I was not a threat.

I found Carlo. 

“I have a small job to do.  After our last exercise at Chiara’s my old commander will no doubt send someone down to the village to seek answers, and I’m hoping you’ll come with me so we can convince them of the error of their ways.”

He smiled.  There was no mirth in it, and I knew I didn’t have to say anything more.

I saw movement coming from a group of people, and among them the boy I’d met earlier, Enrico.  He had jumped up off the floor when he saw me and came over.

“What are we going to do now.  I mean, we’re not going to sit here and do nothing.”

Boyish enthusiasm.  He had not been shot at yet, and to him, it was all a bit of a game.  I remembered back to the start of the war, and the number of boys who lied about their age, hardly waiting for the war to be declared.  They had no idea what a real war was, and if they had known, they would not have been so recklessly enthusiastic.

“You’re going to stay here and protect your family and all the others here.”

“No.  I want to be useful, fight the bastards.”

Carlo gave him one of his dark stares.  “You will stay here and help others if anything goes wrong.  Out there,” he pointed towards the entrance, “out there, if you’re not careful, you will die.”

Martina had seen him talking to us and came over.

“Enrico, we’ve talked about this.  Go back to your family.”

A last pleading look in case we changed our minds, then he reluctantly returned to his group.

Carlo handed me the sniper rifle and a pistol, a luger, probably captured from a German earlier, when they were in occupation.

“Good luck,” Martina said.

© Charles Heath 2019-2020

“Uncanny good luck shines upon me…” – a short story

I never did take advice very seriously.  Especially when they were issued by old man Taggard, a man of some mystery that we all, adults and children alike wanted to know about.

Everyone in the street knew him as he had lived in the almost derelict mansion at the end of the cul-de-sac forever, way longer than anyone else in the neighbourhood had.  In fact, it was rumoured he had owned all the land around and sold it off bit by bit over time, the reason why there were so many houses of varying age in the estate.

Ours was one of the older houses, a few doors up from it.  We were close enough to observe Taggard’s habit, like sitting on the porch on an old swing chair in the afternoons, to the late-night wanderings in the street.  Some said he was accompanied by the ghost of his long-dead wife, which led to stories being told of the house he lived in being haunted.

As children, we had been brought up on a diet of TV shows such as ‘The Munsters’ and ‘The Addams Family’, and had invented our own make-believe show called ‘The Taggard Mansion’, the house with ghosts, and the neighborhood center for strange goings-on.

And as children were wont to do, we had to ‘investigate’.

There was a ‘gang’ even though we didn’t refer to it as such, about seven of us who lived in nearby houses, and all of whom had very active imaginations.  We also met in the cubby house out the back of our house to plan forays to find out whether the rumours were true.  The thing is we never got very far as he seemed to know when we were sneaking in and scared us off, so for years, the rumours remained just that, rumours.

But as grown-ups, and by that I mean, middle teens, our plans became bolder and more sophisticated, based on a whole new breed of TV shows, where the seemingly impossible was no longer that.  And Andy Boswell, my older brother’s best friend, his father was a private detective, or so he told us, and he had managed to ‘secure’ some of his father’s tools of the trade; a camera on the end of a wire that could connect to a cell phone, a listening device that could hear through walls, and in-ear communicators.  We could now, if we were close enough, see under doors, and hear if anyone was in.  We could all keep in touch, though I couldn’t see how this would help.

But a plan was formulated.  All seven of us had a role to play.  My brother Ron and Delilah, his girlfriend, were taking point, whatever that meant, Andy and I were going to take point, while Jack, Jill, and Kim were going to run distraction.  The theory was, they’d make enough noise to keep the old man occupied chasing them.  No one had been inside the house, ever.  Andy and I were going to be the first.

Andy had drawn up a plan and it was up on the wall.  He had charted the house, and had a very accurate picture of the house’s footprint, where doors and windows were, likely entrance points, including a hatchway down into what he assumed was a basement, though he preferred to call it the dungeon, and a layout of the grounds.  Apparently under the undergrowth were paths and gardens, even a large fountain that once graced the grounds of the three-story mansion made of sandstone, and built sometime during the middle of the 1800s.

Andy had done some research, mostly from old newspapers, and also discovered that the old man had once been married, they had a half dozen children, three of whom had died, the others scattered around the world.  It explained why no one ever visited the place.

The distraction team would be going in through the front gate, easy enough because it had come off its hinges and just needed a shove to open.  The old man usually emerged from the house via the driveway, or what was once a drive where cars could enter one side of the property, stop under a huge canopy, and emerge onto the road further along.  But it’s overgrown stare, the width of the pathway was now about six feet.  The fact it was once an amazing feature was the roadside lights, now all but disappearing behind the undergrowth.

Andy had found a photograph in the paper of it, and it had looked magnificent, as had the gardens, the overhanging canopy, and all the lights.  To think such magnificence was now lost.  And having seen it for what it once was, it was not hard to imagine any number of scenarios, my favourite, rescuing a damsel in distress from the tower.  Yes, it even had a tower, two, in fact, at each end of the house.  My brother always said I had an overactive imagination.

Andy and I would be going in by the less-used car exit, and heading for the left side of the building where Andy said were several floor-to-ceiling windows that looked to him like French doors.  Of course, none of us knew what French doors were, and my brother cut Andy short when he tried to explain.

Failing that, there was a door at the rear that seemed to be open, and we’d try that next.  We would get into position, advise the distraction team, and the operation would be a go.  The only debate was about what time of the day were we going to do it.  My brother preferred late in the afternoon.  Andy said it was better at dawn, or soon after if we were looking for maximum confusion about the target.

Dawn, confusion, tactics, target, Andy was in his element.  He was going to be a spy when he grew up.  My brother said he would never grow up, but then, my brother said I was a dreamer and would never amount to anything.  We ignored his advice, well, we pretty much ignored everything he said.

We were going in at dawn.

At 5 a.m. on Saturday morning, we gathered at the cubby house ready for action.  We all took a communicator and put it in our ears, and then had fun saying stupid stuff, and hearing it through the earpieces.  It was weird but added an exciting element to the adventure.  I know my heart was beating faster in anticipation.  Andy was pretending to be cool and failing.  I suspected my brother and Delilah had other plans when we left them alone in the cubby house.  The distraction team was ready to go.

Shortly after the sun came up, it was cool and the air still.  It was going to be a hot day, and in that first hour, everything was almost perfect.  It seemed a waste to do anything but let the early morning serenity settle over us.  Not today.  Andy and I went to our position, slowly feeling our way through the bushes, taking bearings from the light poles, and every now and then seeing the guttering and what looked to be a concrete path.  Beyond that was once a garden, and I tried, more than once, to imagine what it was like.

In my ear I could hear the others in the distraction team setting up at the start of the driveway, ready to go.  We reached our position, about twenty feet from the so-called French windows, the view into the house blocked by curtains, but beyond that, what we could see was darkness inside the house.  Taking in the whole side of the house, there were no lights on behind any of the windows.  If we didn’t know better, we could have assumed the house was empty.

I heard Andy say, “Ready.  Start making noise.”

A minute later we could both hear the distraction team in the distance and through the communicators.  It took two minutes before we heard the old man, yelling, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”  Their job done, getting him out of the house, all they had to do was retreat.

Time for Andy and I to go.

Working on the basis that no one else was at the house, and the fact we had no evidence there was, we were not overly worried about making a stealthy approach.  I could hear in my earpiece, the gasping of those in the distraction team, having just made it outside the gate, and to tell us the old man had stopped them at the gate.  I doubt he had been running, but his yelling was just as effective.

That had stopped, and a sort of silence fell over the area.

We were now at the French doors, and Andy produced another tool that he’d forgotten to tell us about, a lock pick.  The fact it didn’t take long to unlock the door told me he was either very talented, or the lock was old and presented no problems.  Either way, he opened the door and ushered me in.

I brushed the curtains aside for him to follow, then moved in as he followed, closing the door behind him.

I’d taken five steps before I heard a woman’s voice say.  “Uncanny good luck shines upon me.  My knights in shining armour.  You’ve come to rescue me, no?”

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2023

Writing a book in 365 days – 76

Day 76

Write as you speak

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If I did, it would be a jumble of words that might not make any sense. But, for the purposes of this exercise, I shall try…

…

I’m guessing that the point of this is that conversations have to sound natural, and often the words running around in my head sound fine but it’s when you read them out aloud that’s when it sounds wrong.

More than once, I’ve read out a sentence I’ve written and cringed. “Who talks like that?”

More than once, someone has said to me, “Did you just hear what you said?” and of course, we don’t listen to what we say, especially when we are angry and just spitting out words.

Kids make you see red, and once I did actually hear what I said, and if the neighbours had they would no doubt call the police. My eldest son had made me so angry I think I threatened to kill him in several different ways.

Not long after I read an article that said parents frequently threatened their kids with death or worse, and it was the reason why the just laughed at them. As if we were going to kill them.

But it did strike a chord about the sort of conversations my characters would have, and when I read over some of the stuff that I’d written, how much it sounded like me. In fact, one of my relatives was beta-reading a story I’d written, and she said how much it was like me to the point where she could see me as the character.

IT made me think twice every time I write conversations, and now I deliberately listen to other people and pick up on their speech patterns, words used, and manner of speaking to get a better feel for what is needed.

Of course, I’m not perfect, but it’s fun trying to assume different identities and imagine how they would react in any given situation, and particularly what they might say.

Searching for locations: The Longjing Pearl Factory, Beijing, China

The Longjing Pearl Factory is located at:
No.2 Zuoan Gate Inner Street, ChongWen District, Beijing 100061 China.

This Pearl Center specializes in both freshwater and seawater pearls, with a reputation backed by the government of China, with a big selection and of the highest quality.  There were all kinds of jewelry made of pearls in different colors, shapes, and sizes.

They also had, as an interesting sideline, famous Chinese traditional cosmetics such as pearl cream and pearl powder, reputed to make your skin smoother, tendered and most importantly, younger.

We were advised of all of this well before we arrived at the factory, and of course, one suspected the glowing review, with emphasis on the fact it was a government operation and therefore trustworthy, suggested we should buy, meant the tour guide would receive a commission on each sale.

This is nothing new, it’s the same the world over, so it’s up to the visitor to buy or not to buy.

As soon as you get in the door you are taken to the group’s guide for the tour (and afterward, available for help on making purchases). who gives you a rundown on the different types and colors of pearls.  This briefly is,

Pearls come in two main categories: freshwater cultured pearls and saltwater cultured pearls. Various types of pearls are the result of the environment in which they live, and different cultivation techniques used by the pearl farmers. 

Freshwater cultured pearls are grown in lakes and rivers, whereas saltwater cultured pearls are grown in bodies of saltwater such as bays.  The most commonly used pearls are Freshwater pearls. 

Freshwater Pearls come in various pastel shades of white, pink, peach, lavender, plum, purple, and tangerine.  
South Sea cultured pearls come in shades of lustrous white, often with silver or rose overtones. 

Black pearls are known as Tahitian pearls and come most often in shades of black and gray. While a Tahitian pearl has a black body color, it will vary in its overtones, which most often will be green or pink.

Then there’s a demonstration, where one of the tour group is selected to pick an oyster out of the tank, and then there’s the guessing game as to how many pearls are in the shell, with the winner getting a pearl.

Guesses ranged from 1 to 23 and the answer was 26.  Nearest wins, and one for the person who picked the oyster out of the tank.  After this demonstration, we move on to the ways we can tell the difference between real and fake pearls.

It seems strange that they would, but we were guaranteed by both the tour guide and the lady delivering the lecture that the pearls we were about to buy were real, so how could we suspect there was anything dodgy about them?  Besides, now we could tell real from fake!

We then move onto the showroom floor where there are casements of pearl products, in the form of necklaces, earrings, and any number of variations and uses.  And, just to let you know, the prices are very, very expensive, even if they say they have a special.

Perhaps the best products, and those that found favor with many of the women on the tour, was the pearl cremes and powders.  These were not expensive, and, as we discovered later, actually worked as described.

NANOWRIMO – April 2025 – Day 2

…

The Fourth Son

…

So here’s the thing.

Our protagonist’s parents have decided they want him back home, and he’s not playing the game

They talk to some reporters, and a large weekend spread about the royal family is published with photographs.

If he’s not coming back, then everyone should know who he is, and the media will then hound him into returning.

Royal parents are like that.

Of course, there is always one reporter who puts two and two together, one who had no compunction in hounding the victim to the ends of the earth for a story, and one who does.

Confronting him and his girlfriend, in his favourite restaurant, on the day he decided that it was time to make his intentions known.

Even knowing that ousting was going to be sooner rather than later, it’s still a shock, to him and his girlfriend Ruth, who is very dismayed at the braveness of the media on pursuing their pretty.

But the jig is up.  No matter how many denials, the truth is the truth, and now a whole restaurant full of diners is left to wonder.

His charmed life till now is gone.

Searching for locations: Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China

Some interesting facts before we get out of the bus…

Tiananmen Square or Tian’anmen Square is in the centre of Beijing name after the Gate of Heavenly Peace, a gate that one separated the square from the Forbidden City.

The Square contains,

   the Monument to the People’s Heroes
   the Great Hall of the People
   the National Museum of China
   the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong.

The square is about 109 acres and was designed and built in 1651, and since then been enlarged four times since, the most recent upgrade in the 1950s.

The Monument to the People’s Heroes

This is a ten-story obelisk built to commemorate the matters of the revolutions.  It was built between August 1952 and May 1958.  On the pedestal are reliefs depicting the eight major revolutionary episodes.

The Great Hall of the People

This was opened in September 1959, and covers 171809 square meters.  The Great Hall is the largest auditorium in China and can seat up to 10,000 people.  The State Banquet Hall can seat up to 5,000 diners.

The National Museum of China

This is one of the largest museums in the world and the second most visited museum in the world after the Louvre in Paris.   It was completed in 1959, and sits on 65 hectares, and rises four floors.  It has a permanent collection of over 1,000,000 items.

The Mauseloum of Mao Zedong

This was built shortly after his death, and completed on May 24th, 1977.  The embalmed body of the Chairman is preserved and on display in the center hall.

My own observations
This is huge; one of the largest public squares in the world, and if you’re going to walk it, like we did, make sure you’ve been exercising before you go.  It covers 44 hectares, borders on the Forbidden City, and has a memorial to Chairman Mao in the center of it.  But you cannot go near it, it’s fenced off, and it is guarded.

That’s both the statue and the square as there are random guards marching in random directions all the while watching us to see that we don’t misbehave.No one wants to find out what would happen if you jumped the fence around the statue, but I’m guessing you’ll have a few years to contemplate the stupidity of your actions with some very unhappy government officials.

Around the edges of the square are huge buildings, on one side is the museum 

and on the other is the Chinese equivalent of parliament.

Around the sides are also large gardens

At one end, where the Forbidden City borders on the square, there’s a huge flag pole flying the Chinese flag, and this too like the monument is fenced off, and guarded by members of all of their armed services.  No tanks rolled out during our visit much to our disappointment.  There is no entrance to the Forbidden City from the square

At the other end is the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, which was closed the day we were there, as was the museum. 

There are four sculptural groups installed outside the mausoleum.

Other than that, it’s just another square, albeit probably one of the largest in the world.  It can, we were told, hold about a million people.

“The Devil You Don’t”, she was the girl you would not take home to your mother!

Now only $0.99 at https://amzn.to/2Xyh1ow

…

John Pennington’s life is in the doldrums. Looking for new opportunities, and prevaricating about getting married, the only joy on the horizon was an upcoming visit to his grandmother in Sorrento, Italy.

Suddenly he is left at the check-in counter with a message on his phone telling him the marriage is off, and the relationship is over.

If only he hadn’t promised a friend he would do a favour for him in Rome.

At the first stop, Geneva, he has a chance encounter with Zoe, an intriguing woman who captures his imagination from the moment she boards the Savoire, and his life ventures into uncharted territory in more ways than one.

That ‘favour’ for his friend suddenly becomes a life-changing event, and when Zoe, the woman who he knows is too good to be true, reappears, danger and death follow.

Shot at, lied to, seduced, and drawn into a world where nothing is what it seems, John is dragged into an adrenaline-charged undertaking, where he may have been wiser to stay with the ‘devil you know’ rather than opt for the ‘devil you don’t’.

newdevilcvr6

Writing a book in 365 days – 76

Day 76

Write as you speak

…

If I did, it would be a jumble of words that might not make any sense. But, for the purposes of this exercise, I shall try…

…

I’m guessing that the point of this is that conversations have to sound natural, and often the words running around in my head sound fine but it’s when you read them out aloud that’s when it sounds wrong.

More than once, I’ve read out a sentence I’ve written and cringed. “Who talks like that?”

More than once, someone has said to me, “Did you just hear what you said?” and of course, we don’t listen to what we say, especially when we are angry and just spitting out words.

Kids make you see red, and once I did actually hear what I said, and if the neighbours had they would no doubt call the police. My eldest son had made me so angry I think I threatened to kill him in several different ways.

Not long after I read an article that said parents frequently threatened their kids with death or worse, and it was the reason why the just laughed at them. As if we were going to kill them.

But it did strike a chord about the sort of conversations my characters would have, and when I read over some of the stuff that I’d written, how much it sounded like me. In fact, one of my relatives was beta-reading a story I’d written, and she said how much it was like me to the point where she could see me as the character.

IT made me think twice every time I write conversations, and now I deliberately listen to other people and pick up on their speech patterns, words used, and manner of speaking to get a better feel for what is needed.

Of course, I’m not perfect, but it’s fun trying to assume different identities and imagine how they would react in any given situation, and particularly what they might say.

An excerpt from “One Last Look”: Charlotte is no ordinary girl

This is currently available at Amazon here:  http://amzn.to/2CqUBcz

…

I’d read about out-of-body experiences, and like everyone else, thought it was nonsense.  Some people claimed to see themselves in the operating theatre, medical staff frantically trying to revive them, and being surrounded by white light.

I was definitely looking down, but it wasn’t me I was looking at.

It was two children, a boy and a girl, with their parents, in a park.

The boy was Alan.  He was about six or seven.  The girl was Louise, and she was five years old.  She had long red hair and looked the image of her mother.

I remember it now, it was Louise’s birthday and we went down to Bournemouth to visit our Grandmother, and it was the last time we were all together as a family.

We were flying homemade kites our father had made for us, and after we lay there looking up at the sky, making animals out of the clouds.  I saw an elephant, Louise saw a giraffe.

We were so happy then.

Before the tragedy.

When I looked again ten years had passed and we were living in hell.  Louise and I had become very adept at survival in a world we really didn’t understand, surrounded by people who wanted to crush our souls.

It was not a life a normal child had, our foster parents never quite the sort of people who were adequately equipped for two broken-hearted children.  They tried their best, but their best was not good enough.

Every day it was a battle, to avoid the Bannister’s and Archie in particular, every day he made advances towards Louise and every day she fended him off.

Until one day she couldn’t.

Now I was sitting in the hospital, holding Louise’s hand.  She was in a coma, and the doctors didn’t think she would wake from it.  The damage done to her was too severe.

The doctors were wrong.

She woke, briefly, to name her five assailants.  It was enough to have them arrested.  It was not enough to have them convicted.

Justice would have to be served by other means.

I was outside the Bannister’s home.

I’d made my way there without really thinking, after watching Louise die.  It was like being on autopilot, and I had no control over what I was doing.  I had murder in mind.  It was why I was holding an iron bar.

Skulking in the shadows.  It was not very different from the way the Bannister’s operated.

I waited till Archie came out.  I knew he eventually would.  The police had taken him to the station for questioning, and then let him go.  I didn’t understand why, nor did I care.

I followed him up the towpath, waiting till he stopped to light a cigarette, then came out of the shadows.

“Wotcha got there Alan?” he asked when he saw me.  He knew what it was, and what it was for.

It was the first time I’d seen the fear in his eyes.  He was alone.

“Justice.”

“For that slut of a sister of yours.  I had nuffing to do with it.”

“She said otherwise, Archie.”

“She never said nuffing, you just made it up.”  An attempt at bluster, but there was no confidence in his voice.

I held up the pipe.  It had blood on it.  Willy’s blood.  “She may or may not have Archie, but Willy didn’t make it up.  He sang like a bird.  That’s his blood, probably brains on the pipe too, Archie, and yours will be there soon enough.”

“He dunnit, not me.  Lyin’ bastard would say anything to save his own skin.”  Definitely scared now, he was looking to run away.

“No, Archie.  He didn’t.  I’m coming for you.  All of you Bannisters.  And everyone who touched my sister.”

It was the recurring nightmare I had for years afterwards.

I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the thoughts, the images of Louise, the phone call, the visit to the hospital and being there when she succumbed to her injuries.  Those were the very worst few hours of my life.

She had asked me to come to the railway station and walk home with her, and I was running late.  If I had left when I was supposed to, it would never have happened and for years afterwards, I blamed myself for her death.

If only I’d not been late…

When the police finally caught the rapists, I’d known all along who they’d be; antagonists from school, the ring leader, Archie Bannister, a spurned boyfriend, a boy whose parents, ubiquitously known to all as ‘the Bannister’s, dealt in violence and crime and who owned the neighbourhood.  The sins of the father had been very definitely passed onto the son.

At school, I used to be the whipping boy, Archie, a few grades ahead of me, made a point of belting me and a few of the other boys, to make sure the rest did as they were told.  He liked Louise, but she had no time for a bully like him, even when he promised he would ‘protect’ me.

I knew the gang members, the boys who tow-kowed to save getting beaten up, and after the police couldn’t get enough information to prosecute them because everyone was too afraid to speak out, I went after Willy.  There was always a weak link in a group, and he was it.

He worked in a factory, did long hours on a Wednesday and came home after dark alone.  It was a half mile walk, through a park.  The night I approached him, I smashed the lights and left it in darkness.  He nearly changed his mind and went the long way home.

He didn’t.

It took an hour and a half to get the names.  At first, when he saw me, he laughed.  He said I would be next, and that was four words more than he knew he should have said.

When I found him alone the next morning I showed him the iron bar and told him he was on the list.  I didn’t kill him then, he could wait his turn, and worry about what was going to happen to him.

When the police came to visit me shortly after that encounter, no doubt at the behest of the Bannister’s, the neighbourhood closed ranks and gave me an ironclad alibi.  The Bannister’s then came to visit me and threatened me.  I told them their days were numbered and showed them the door.

At the trial, he and his friends got off on a technicality.  The police had failed to do their job properly, but it was not the police, but a single policeman, corrupted by the Bannisters.

Archie could help but rub it in my face.  He was invincible.

Joe Collins took 12 bullets and six hours to bleed out.  He apologized, he pleaded, he cried, he begged.  I didn’t care.

Barry Mills, a strong lad with a mind to hurting people, Archie’s enforcer, almost got the better of me.  I had to hit him more times than I wanted to, and in the end, I had to be satisfied that he died a short but agonizing death.

I revisited Willy in the hospital.  He’d recovered enough to recognize me, and why I’d come.  Suffocation was too good for him.

David Williams, second in command of the gang, was as tough and nasty as the Bannisters.  His family were forging a partnership with the Bannister’s to make them even more powerful.  Outwardly David was a pleasant sort of chap, affable, polite, and well mannered.  A lot of people didn’t believe he could be like, or working with, the Bannisters.

He and I met in the pub.  We got along like old friends.  He said Willy had just named anyone he could think of, and that he was innocent of any charges.  We shook hands and parted as friends.

Three hours later he was sitting in a chair in the middle of a disused factory, blindfolded and scared.  I sat and watched him, listened to him, first threatening me, and then finally pleading with me.  He’d guessed who it was that had kidnapped him.

When it was dark, I took the blindfold off and shone a very bright light in his eyes.  I asked him if the violence he had visited upon my sister was worth it.  He told me he was just a spectator.

I’d read the coroner’s report.  They all had a turn.  He was a liar.

He took nineteen bullets to die.

Then came Archie.

The same factory only this time there were four seats.  Anna Bannister, brothel owner, Spike Bannister, head of the family, Emily Bannister, sister, and who had nothing to do with their criminal activities.  She just had the misfortune of sharing their name.

Archie’s father told me how he was going to destroy me, and everyone I knew.

A well-placed bullet between the eyes shut him up.

Archie’s mother cursed me.  I let her suffer for an hour before I put her out of her misery.

Archie remained stony-faced until I came to Emily.  The death of his parents meant he would become head of the family.  I guess their deaths meant as little to him as they did me.

He was a little more worried about his sister.

I told him it was confession time.

He told her it was little more than a forced confession and he had done nothing to deserve my retribution.

I shrugged and shot her, and we both watched her fall to the ground screaming in agony.  I told him if he wanted her to live, he had to genuinely confess to his crimes.  This time he did, it all poured out of him.

I went over to Emily.  He watched in horror as I untied her bindings and pulled her up off the floor, suffering only from a small wound in her arm.  Without saying a word she took the gun and walked over to stand behind him.

“Louise was my friend, Archie.  My friend.”

Then she shot him.  Six times.

To me, after saying what looked like a prayer, she said, “Killing them all will not bring her back, Alan, and I doubt she would approve of any of this.  May God have mercy on your soul.”

Now I was in jail.  I’d spent three hours detailing the deaths of the five boys, everything I’d done; a full confession.  Without my sister, my life was nothing.  I didn’t want to go back to the foster parents; I doubt they’d take back a murderer.

They were not allowed to.

For a month I lived in a small cell, in solitary, no visitors.  I believed I was in the queue to be executed, and I had mentally prepared myself for the end.

Then I was told I had a visitor, and I was expecting a priest.

Instead, it was a man called McTavish. Short, wiry, and with an accent that I could barely understand.

“You’ve been a bad boy, Alan.”

When I saw it was not the priest I told the jailers not to let him in, I didn’t want to speak to anyone.  They ignored me.  I’d expected he was a psychiatrist, come to see whether I should be shipped off to the asylum.

I was beginning to think I was going mad.

I ignored him.

“I am the difference between you living or dying Alan, it’s as simple as that.  You’d be a wise man to listen to what I have to offer.”

Death sounded good.  I told him to go away.

He didn’t.  Persistent bugger.

I was handcuffed to the table.  The prison officers thought I was dangerous.  Five, plus two, murders, I guess they had a right to think that.  McTavish sat opposite me, ignoring my request to leave.

“Why’d you do it?”

“You know why.”  Maybe if I spoke he’d go away.

“Your sister.  By all accounts, the scum that did for her deserved what they got.”

“It was murder just the same.  No difference between scum and proper people.”

“You like killing?”

“No-one does.”

“No, I dare say you’re right.  But you’re different, Alan.  As clean and merciless killing I’ve ever seen.  We can use a man like you.”

“We?”

“A group of individuals who clean up the scum.”

I looked up to see his expression, one of benevolence, totally out of character for a man like him.  It looked like I didn’t have a choice.

Trained, cleared, and ready to go.

I hadn’t realized there were so many people who were, for all intents and purposes, invisible.  People that came and went, in malls, in hotels, trains, buses, airports, everywhere, people no one gave a second glance.

People like me.

In a mall, I became a shopper.

In a hotel, I was just another guest heading to his room.

On a bus or a train, I was just another commuter.

At the airport, I became a pilot.  I didn’t need to know how to fly; everyone just accepted a pilot in a pilot suit was just what he looked like.

I had a passkey.

I had the correct documents to get me onto the plane.

That walk down the air bridge was the longest of my life.  Waiting for the call from the gate, waiting for one of the air bridge staff to challenge me, stepping onto the plane.

Two pilots and a steward.  A team.  On the plane early before the rest of the crew.  A group that was committing a crime, had committed a number of crimes and thought they’d got away with it.

Until the judge, the jury and their executioner arrived.

Me.

Quick, clean, merciless.  Done.

I was now an operational field agent.

I was older now, and I could see in the mirror I was starting to go grey at the sides.  It was far too early in my life for this, but I expect it had something to do with my employment.

I didn’t recognize the man who looked back at me.

It was certainly not Alan McKenzie, nor was there any part of that fifteen-year-old who had made the decision to exact revenge.

Given a choice; I would not have gone down this path.

Or so I kept telling myself each time a little more of my soul was sold to the devil.

I was Barry Gamble.

I was Lenny Buckman.

I was Jimmy Hosen.

I was anyone but the person I wanted to be.

That’s what I told Louise, standing in front of her grave, and trying to apologize for all the harm, all the people I’d killed for that one rash decision.  If she was still alive she would be horrified, and ashamed.

Head bowed, tears streamed down my face.

God had gone on holiday and wasn’t there to hand out any forgiveness.  Not that day.  Not any day.

New York, New Years Eve.

I was at the end of a long tour, dragged out of a holiday and back into the fray, chasing down another scumbag.  They were scumbags, and I’d become an automaton hunting them down and dispatching them to what McTavish called a better place.

This time I failed.

A few drinks to blot out the failure, a blonde woman who pushed my buttons, a room in a hotel, any hotel, it was like being on the merry-go-round, round and round and round…

Her name was Silvia or Sandra, or someone I’d met before, but couldn’t quite place her.  It could be an enemy agent for all I knew or all I cared right then.

I was done.

I’d had enough.

I gave her the gun.

I begged her to kill me.

She didn’t.

Instead, I simply cried, letting the pent up emotion loose after being suppressed for so long, and she stayed with me, holding me close, and saying I was safe, that she knew exactly how I felt.

How could she?  No one could know what I’d been through.

I remembered her name after she had gone.

Amanda.

I remembered she had an imperfection in her right eye.

Someone else had the same imperfection.

I couldn’t remember who that was.

Not then.

I had a dingy flat in Kensington, a place that I rarely stayed in if I could help it.  After five-star hotel rooms, it made me feel shabby.

The end of another mission, I was on my way home, the underground, a bus, and then a walk.

It was late.

People were spilling out of the pub after the last drinks.  Most in good spirits, others slightly more boisterous.

A loud-mouthed chap bumped into me, the sort who had one too many, and was ready to take on all comers.

He turned on me, “Watch where you’re going, you fool.”

Two of his friends dragged him away.  He shrugged them off, squared up.

I punched him hard, in the stomach, and he fell backwards onto the ground.  I looked at his two friends.  “Take him home before someone makes mincemeat out of him.”

They grabbed his arms, lifted him off the ground and took him away.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a woman, early thirties, quite attractive, but very, very drunk.  She staggered from the bar, bumped into me, and finished up sitting on the side of the road.

I looked around to see where her friends were.  The exodus from the pub was over and the few nearby were leaving to go home.

She was alone, drunk, and by the look of her, unable to move.

I sat beside her.  “Where are your friends?”

“Dunno.”

“You need help?”

She looked up, and sideways at me.  She didn’t look the sort who would get in this state.  Or maybe she was, I was a terrible judge of women.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Nobody.”  I was exactly how I felt.

“Well Mr Nobody, I’m drunk, and I don’t care.  Just leave me here to rot.”

She put her head back between her knees, and it looked to me she was trying to stop the spinning sensation in her head.

Been there before, and it’s not a good feeling.

“Where are your friends?” I asked again.

“Got none.”

“Perhaps I should take you home.”

“I have no home.”

“You don’t look like a homeless person.  If I’m not mistaken, those shoes are worth more than my weekly salary.”  I’d seen them advertised, in the airline magazine, don’t ask me why the ad caught my attention.

She lifted her head and looked at me again.  “You a smart fucking arse are you?”

“I have my moments.”

“Have them somewhere else.”

She rested her head against my shoulder.  We were the only two left in the street, and suddenly in darkness when the proprietor turned off the outside lights.

“Take me home,” she said suddenly.

“Where is your place?”

“Don’t have one.  Take me to your place.”

“You won’t like it.”

“I’m drunk.  What’s not to like until tomorrow.”

I helped her to her feet.  “You have a name?”

“Charlotte.”

The wedding was in a small church.  We had been away for a weekend in the country, somewhere in the Cotswolds, and found this idyllic spot.  Graves going back to the dawn of time, a beautiful garden tended by the vicar and his wife, an astonishing vista over hills and down dales.

On a spring afternoon with the sun, the flowers, and the peacefulness of the country.

I had two people at the wedding, the best man, Bradley, and my boss, Watkins.

Charlotte had her sisters Melissa and Isobel, and Isobel’s husband Giovanni, and their daughter Felicity.

And one more person who was as mysterious as she was attractive, a rather interesting combination as she was well over retirement age.  She arrived late and left early.

Aunt Agatha.

She looked me up and down with what I’d call a withering look.  “There’s more to you than meets the eye,” she said enigmatically.

“Likewise I’m sure,” I said.  It earned me an elbow in the ribs from Charlotte.  It was clear she feared this woman.

“Why did you come,” Charlotte asked.

“You know why.”

Agatha looked at me.  “I like you.  Take care of my granddaughter.  You do not want me for an enemy.”

OK, now she officially scared me.

She thrust a cheque into my hand, smiled, and left.

“Who is she,” I asked after we watched her depart.

“Certainly not my fairy godmother.”

Charlotte never mentioned her again.

Zurich in summer, not exactly my favourite place.

Instead of going to visit her sister Isobel, we stayed at a hotel in Beethovenstrasse and Isobel and Felicity came to us.  Her husband was not with her this time.

Felicity was three or four and looked very much like her mother.  She also looked very much like Charlotte, and I’d remarked on it once before and it received a sharp rebuke.

We’d been twice before, and rather than talk to her sister, Charlotte spent her time with Felicity, and they were, together, like old friends.  For so few visits they had a remarkable rapport.

I had not broached the subject of children with Charlotte, not after one such discussion where she had said she had no desire to be a mother.  It had not been a subject before and wasn’t once since.

Perhaps like all Aunts, she liked the idea of playing with a child for a while and then give it back.

Felicity was curious as to who I was, but never ventured too close.  I believed a child could sense the evil in adults and had seen through my facade of friendliness.  We were never close.

But…

This time, when observing the two together, something quite out of left field popped into my head.  It was not possible, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I thought she looked like my mother.

And Charlotte had seen me looking in their direction.  “You seem distracted,” she said.

“I was just remembering my mother.  Odd moment, haven’t done so for a very long time.”

“Why now?”  I think she had a look of concern on her face.

“Her birthday, I guess,” I said, the first excuse I could think of.

Another look and I was wrong.  She looked like Isobel or Charlotte, or if I wanted to believe it possible, Melissa too.

I was crying, tears streaming down my face.

I was in pain, searing pain from my lower back stretching down into my legs, and I was barely able to breathe.

It was like coming up for air.

It was like Snow White bringing Prince Charming back to life.  I could feel what I thought was a gentle kiss and tears dropping on my cheeks, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Charlotte slowly lifting her head, a hand gently stroking the hair off my forehead.

And in a very soft voice, she said, “Hi.”

I could not speak, but I think I smiled.  It was the girl with the imperfection in her right eye.  Everything fell into place, and I knew, in that instant that we were irrevocably meant to be together.

“Welcome back.”

© Charles Heath 2016-2019

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