BLANK DOCUMENT

 Alan Dent

            Mildly infuriated by hearing a multi-million sales crime writer explain on Radio 4 why the first sentence of a book is always the most important, into Culpepper’s mind slid the idea for a story which had been emerging from the darkness and disappearing for a week. It reappeared late in the afternoon, after his sofa-snooze, and as his wife was busying herself with mince pies and mulled wine for her inevitable bridge evening; her impending departure and a silent house inviting him to his laptop. By the time he’d cleared the kitchen of the flour which made Mr Pastry (would his grandkids know who he was talking about?) look tidy, scrubbed away the hardened icing sugar, cleaned the food processor, the slow-cooker, six pans, the hob, dessert spoons, chopping knives, teaspoons, plates, saucers, brushed the ageing laminate floor which made his ageing back ache, the idea had scurried like a water vole and was comfortable in its unreachable hideaway.

            He clicked on blank document and tried to retrace the thoughts which had sparked the inspiration. Was the idea lost for good? Often, seemingly unretrievable vagrant notions eased their way back into the light. Nothing. He sat for a while, idle, disappointed by his lack of productivity. Productivity? He was thinking like a politician. What did it matter if the document stayed blank today? What did any of the millions of words he’d typed matter? Most of the words printed on pages or displayed on screens, would have no significance at all. Perhaps the only meaning was their capacity to keep him from despair. Dishonest. He was nowhere near despair. That was for the people of Gaza or Sudan or Ukraine or any of the billions who couldn’t, like him, switch off the computer, sit on the sofa with a book unread for fifty years, and let the gentle evening sink into night.

            Images from decades ago, each one enough to give birth to a story, eased in from various directions. He landed on an idea and wrote the first, apparently, most important sentence…

            The cottage lay at the end of a darkened lane, but she had no fear of walking it at night, alone. It didn’t occur to her anything might happen so close to home, among her familiarity. Sometimes, when she’d spent the evening with Irene, whose dad was landlord of the Lamb and Packet, her friend would accompany her to where Parry’s Lane bore right from the tarmacked road; but that meant Irene had to walk the half mile back to the main road on her own, and Sally had to negotiate the unmade, unlit three quarters of a mile to her front door. For most of the way, the cottage was hidden by hedges and trees. She was safe in the dark. She new the path so well, even after heavy rain, she could avoid the mud. A hundred metres from the front door, Coco would start barking, which made her laugh inwardly.

            One Thursday evening, at nine thirty, as she and Irene were giddily on their way, at the bus stop by the Farmer’s Arms, which sat opposite the Lamb, separated by the busy road between the two principal towns twenty miles apart, they were surprised to see two boys. At a distance they didn’t recognise them, but approaching, they could give them names. Yet the fact of recognition didn’t ally the strangeness. They were lads from the suburb ten miles away. They’d met at the youth club which took place each Wednesday and Sunday. What were they doing here?

                                    “Hello,” said Irene, “are you lost?”

            The girls pressed their shoulders one against the other and giggled. The boys smiled and looked slightly unnerved.

                                    “We’ve had a nice evening, haven’t we Sal?”

                                    “Very nice.”

                                    “Good company.”

                                    “Very good.”

                                    “Otis Reading.”

                                    “We like him.”

                                    “We love him.”

                                    “Aretha Franklin.”

                                    “Soul sister.”

                                    “Stevie Winwood.”

                                    “Hole in my shoe.”

                                    “Get it fixed, girl.”

            They giggled uncontrollably but Sally, without volition and under cover of her laughter, cast a hard glance into the eyes of the taller boy. He was dark but had stunning blue eyes with heavy lids and was too good-looking to be true. Taller and skinnier than his mate, she’d been struck by him on their first meeting in a way that disturbed her.

                                    “We’re waiting for the bus,” said the other, who was blonde, heavily built and with a prominent jaw which bore a little purple scar.

                                    “Well, you’ve chosen the right place,” said Irene.

                                    “Yes, look,” said Sally pointing to the sign.

            Irene craned to read.

                                    “Bus-stop. What an amazing coincidence.”

            They giggled again, in fits. But Sally was wondering how they came to be here. It was true, she’d thought about Frank. She didn’t like rugged boys and he was anything but; and he was a nice boy, or seemed to be. Yet, that made her squirm inwardly. She was fifteen. Imagine, falling for a boy and that being it. But what was he doing here?

                                    “Have you been for a drink?” she said.

                                    “Yeah,” said Frank. “In the Farmer’s.”

                                    “Oh, you chose the wrong pub,” said Irene. “Much classier drunks in ours.”

            The boys looked on as they grabbed one another in their hilarity.

                                    “Anyway,” said Irene, wiping her eyes, “I’ve got to walk her home, she’s afraid of the bogeyman.”

                                    “Unless he’s nice.”

                                    “Oh, yes, if he’s nice she’ll take him home and put him on the Welsh dresser.”

                        Kev looked to his right down the barely-lit lane.

                                    “Do you have far to go?”

                                    “No,” said Irene, “about twenty miles.”

                        In spite of their mad amusement he remained serious.

                                    “We can walk you back if you like.”

                        A jolt ran through Sally.

                                    “Oh, we’re used to it,” said Irene, “nothing to worry about, only the odd wolf and axe-killer.”

                                    “It’s pretty dark,” he said.

                                    “This is Blackpool illuminations compared to the lane to her house.”

                                    “I’ll come with you,” he said.

                                    “Bus is here, Frank,” said Dave.

                                    “Don’t miss it,” said Irene, “there isn’t another till a week next Tuesday and if you’re late home your mum’ll stop your pocket money.”

                                    “See you at the youth club,” said Kev.

                        Sally looked hard into his face as if she could find her answer there.

                        Arm in arm the girls went down the lane, laughing high and happily.

                                    “He’s nice though, isn’t he?” said Irene.

                                    “He’s okay.”

                                    “Okay? You moo, he’s bloody gorgeous.”

                        They parted at Parry’s Lane and as she walked alone Sally turned the question over. Had he come hoping to bump into her? Did he fancy her like mad? Excitement fought with disturbance. When she heard Coco barking, she quickened her step. He leapt up as soon as the door was open.

                                    “All right, all right. Calm down, I’ve only been out for two hours.”

                        Over the next five months, Sal let herself get to know the visitor through their mutual presence at the youth club but her interest was balanced by reserve and she dealt with him coolly. Oddly, she enjoyed the feeling of keeping him at a short distance, just as she enjoyed his obvious delight in seeing her. Finally, there came the moment when he invited her. She expressed interest in Amen Corner’s first hit and he offered to lend it, though he hadn’t bought it himself: it was a birthday gift from his elder sister whose affection for him was greater than her discernment about his tastes. It was less than half a mile to his house. They set off under the October mizzle.

                                    “Oh, your hair’ll get wet,” he said. “Here, you can put my jacket over your head if you like.”

                                    “You’ll get soaked, you nit.”

                                    “I’ve got a sweater .”

            They walked Abbott Lane, turned after three hundred yards into Prospect Avenue and from there took the short cut along Kings’ Court which was accessed by a twenty-yard darkened, unmade path between hedges. The darkness gave him the boldness to take her hand and to pause for a kiss. Before his house, one of those modest but attractive inter-war semis in a pleasant avenue, she waited while he nipped indoors, and handing over the disc, he placed his hands on her waist and kissed her again.

                                    “You know,” he said, when they paused for the last time before the final stretch, “if you write your initials above mine, they read horizontally and vertically SF and FS.”

                                    “So they do.”

                                    “We were made for each other.”

                                    “Maybe we were.”

            She didn’t know why, though thoughts of this encounter charmed her and part of her liked her calm sensibleness, her ability to direct his enthusiasm, her sense of herself as the adored girl responsible for handling the unbounded affection of her boy, it brought also a feeling of restriction, and especially of missing out on the high pleasures of the late sixties. Frank was a nice boy. All her friends were awed by her conquest. She lay in bed and imagined them as an admired couple. She would meet his family. He would meet hers. They would be almost forever together. After three or four years they would marry..Oh, no. She turned over and buried her head under the covers. There was so much fun to be had and above all, there was sex.

            The following June, having kept him interested but at the same time delivering minor rebuffs to test him, she agreed he should come and see her one evening. He was to meet her at the end of Parry’s Lane. It turned out, fortunately, to be very warm which permitted her to wear only a short, thin cotton dress. It was her territory. He had no knowledge of the lanes, but she knew the quiet places and, in particular, the copse, thick with greenery in the summer, where they could easily conceal themselves and where, there having been no rain for a fortnight, the ground would be dry enough to lie on.

            She led him. He held her hand and with a little tug brought her to a halt so they could kiss.

                                    “Come on,” she said.

                                    “Where?”

                                    “It’s nice down here. It’s quiet.”

            She stopped where the gap in the rhododendrons made an entrance to the copse. He took her by the waist and kissed her. They were pressed against one another and she could feel his erection against her belly. She pulled away and ducked down to peer between the shrubs.

                                    “I wonder what’s in there,” she said.

            But he didn’t pick up the hint. They walked on, they kissed two or three times more. She went home disappointed. What did she want? Would she have stopped him if he’d lifted up her skirt? She might, but she would have been glad. In the kitchen, dominated by the big, farmhouse table her sister was listening to pop on her transistor and making desultory assaults on trigonometry while Coco dozed at her feet.

                                    “What’s a cosine, anyway?” she said as if it was of the most minute significance.

                                    “A what?”

                                    “A cosine, you know, trig.”

                                    “I don’t understand any of that stuff,” said Sally.

                                    “I thought I did,” said Diane, “but it’s gone from me. I can’t concentrate.”

                                    “Maybe you should turn the music off.”

                                    “Oh, I can’t face trig without Reg Presley.”

            Noticing her sister’s expression, which struck her as a combination of arousal and disillusion, Diane’s flatness of mood was replaced by intense interest.

                                    “Where’ve you been anyway?”

                                    “For a walk.”

                                    “Get far?”

                                    “The lanes.”

                                    “On your own. What were you up to, bird-spotting?”

                                    “Get on with your maths.”

                                    “What’s his name?”

                                    “Reg Presley.”

            Sally was gone. She lay on her bed and wished her mind would calm. He was a nice boy. Maybe too nice. And his erection against her was exciting. Of course, she wouldn’t have gone the whole way, but would it have been so bad if he’d fondled her breasts or run his hands over her backside? He was ready but restrained. Maybe he was capable of extraordinary self-control. Maybe until marriage. Marriage? She was fifteen. Would she be married at twenty? Or nineteen? Four years. Oh, she couldn’t wait that long. After all, Christine Larner was already doing it with Colin Redpath, or so Irene said. Her friends thought Frank a nice boy, and everyone admired his looks. Did she want a nice boy or would it be better to have someone a bit wild, someone who tried it on? She got up and threw off her clothes. The thin dress, crumpled on the floor, accused both him and her. She’d been right, it was nice to feel his hand on her waist through the flimsy material. Oh, it would have been so easy for him to slip it over her hips and slide his fingers in her knickers. How wet she was down there. She could have stopped him with a word. “No.” He would have desisted. Would it have been nice? Surely it would. But she was fifteen, not even legally old enough. Like Christine. Her thoughts ran on in this torturing fashion. She pulled on her dressing gown and went to the kitchen for a glass of lemonade.

                                    “Want one?” she said to Diane.

                                    “A dash of vodka in mine, I think.  Dad’s been asking where you were.”

                                    “What did you say?”

                                    “You’ve been out in the lanes canoodling with a boy.”

                                    “What sort of word is canoodling?”

                                    “What sort of activity is it?”

                                    “You should know.”

                                    “I may be two years older but you’re ahead of me in that department.”

                                    “I’ve never canoodled.”

                                    “How far did he get?” said Diane conspiratorially.

                                    “The end of Parry’s Lane.”

            The heat kept Sally from falling asleep till after midnight. She dreamt she was walking the lanes naked followed by a line of boys. She ducked between the bushes, into the copse, where her father was waiting for her, also naked, his pipe in his mouth. Christine Larner appeared with Kev who began kissing and fondling her. She was at the youth club. Frank came in sporting a fine erection which all her friends admired. She was under the rain, outside his house, in her thin cotton dress. He handed her a record before putting his hand up her skirt. “No”, she said and he dissolved. She was at the back of a maths class baffled by the problems. “Where were you last night?” said the teacher.

            For weeks, she struggled. Should she accept him, be the dutiful girlfriend or should she strike out for excitement? There were rumours of the great nights to be had in the town’s pubs; she could let go, leave steadiness behind, enjoy the delights of self-abandonment.

            She left the youth club with Irene and Hermione. Frank caught them up.

                                    “I’ll walk you to the bus-stop, if you like.”

            Facing him, she was invaded by a sudden disgust.

                                    “You only want me because you can’t have me,” she said.

He didn’t respond. She held his eyes for a few seconds, turned away and walked on with her friends.

                                    “Sal, you moo,” said Irene.

                                    “Well, now he knows.”

                                    “He knows, all right.”

            Subsequently, she managed to avoid him, more or less. There were occasions they were in the same pub. He was forever with the same few friends, in particular the lad she’d seen him with at the bus-stop. When she mentioned it to Irene, suggesting it pointed to dullness, her friend replied:

                                    “Look at us. We’re never apart.”

            Because it was what girls like her did, girls who had been failed by the 11-plus and left school at fifteen or sixteen with no or few qualifications, she found a job with a mail order company. Their offices were in town. She travelled in on the bus which grew more crowded the nearer they came. All these people smoking on the upper deck and heading for work created the right sense of activity. She’d lived for sixteen years down a lane where no one came but the postman, family and friends. If she looked out of her bedroom window, there were miles of emptiness over the marshes to the distant river. Gulls, plovers, oystercatchers, geese, but no people, no noise, no chatter, no fun. Emptiness and silence.

            She had no interest in the work. It was easy. There were eighty girls like her doing the same thing all day. Tick this. Check that. Add these few figures on the machine. But she adored the friendship. Stu, the twenty-one-year-old office manager, who wore a silver-grey suit with flares, wide lapels and a double-breasted jacket and whose frizzy, blonde hair touched his shoulders, was easy-going.

                                    “Sally, you’ve got this wrong, again. You need to record returns in this column.”

                                    “Oh, silly me,” and she smiled, cocked her head and Stu, who couldn’t stop believing all the girls were in love with him, smiled in return and left her alone.

            The town was entrancing because it was full of people doing things. What did most of them do all day? She had no idea and didn’t care. They were part of her landscape and she loved them because they were human, alive, busy. Among the new friends she made was Maggie who came from the terraced streets where Sally had never been. Visiting her home was a revelation. Sixty houses pressed close. No gardens. No trees. No flowers. No marshes. No silence. Downstairs, two rooms.

                                    “Do you have three bedrooms?” she asked Maggie as they sat on the bus into town.

                                    “No. I have one, my brother has one, my parents sleep on the sofa bed in the living-room.”

Sally thought of the five bedrooms in the cottage, the kitchen which was as big as the entire downstairs of Maggie’s house, the four acres of land. Her dad might be only a tenant farmer, but they had the use of a fine house and thousands of square metres of space. All the same, she loved the town. Maggie had neighbours. Lots of them. Apart from the Stringers at the big farm, her nearest neighbours were at least half a mile away and most of them she’d never seen. Even the scruffy streets where Maggie lived were lovely because they were wick with people.

            It wasn’t long before Maggie displaced Irene as Sally’s best friend and the two of them, together with other lasses from work and some of Sally’s old pals, hit the pubs every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The haunts of the youngsters were packed. They got to know, in passing, dozens of people. They were invited to parties. Everybody knew everybody. Sally had left behind forever the darkened lane, the quiet village, the small circle. She was a town girl. She couldn’t walk through its centre without meeting people she knew. Every pub was full of acquaintances.

            The landlord’s son in The Variety was Rob Fletcher. He was twenty, tall, long-haired, had trained as a joiner but now worked full-time in the pub. He was reputed to be a bit of a hippy, which appealed. He had a van and the talk was, he and a few others were to throw in their stuff and head off to St Ives for the summer. Sally had never been to Cornwall. Apparently, there were late-night beach parties, dope, friendship, a live-for-the-moment culture. She went to the pub every Friday and Saturday, smiled at him, went to the cinema with him, met his parents. When the van set off for the south-west, she was in the front seat. She hadn’t told her parents.

            They were an easy-going group of fifteen. They found jobs in cafés, hotels, pubs, slept on one another’s floors or in tents or cheap caravans. Their jobs were tedious but they provided the funds for parties, booze, dope. It seemed to Sally she’d left behind the conventional, work-a-day world. To sit on Porthmeor Beach on an August evening as the darkness began to fold in, to listen to the waves, to be exempt from the petty humiliations that caused her so many little wounds, to be away from parental admonition and to drift into a dream-like state where between desire and fulfilment there appeared to be no delay, cleansed her mind of worry. Where would this lead? Would she have money? Would she have a house in a good area? Children? When? What about schools? All those intrusive ideas which seemed like arrows fired by an inimical tribe to kill her joy had disappeared.

            And there was sex.

            She and Rob were between the sheets as often as possible and her climaxes were as frequent. One evening she was talking to Pam who shared a caravan with Colin, son of a builder whose modest business kept a Jag in the garage and a swimming pool in the garden.

                                    “I’ve never had a climax, have you?” she said.

Sally was somewhat shocked and puzzled.

                                    “But you have sex with Colin,” she said.

                                    “Oh, yes, all the time. He gets his satisfaction, but I can’t get aroused.”

Sally tried to imagine. She drew on her spliff, to give her time.

                                    “Don’t you like him?”

                                    “I like him. He’s all right. I mean, I don’t know if I love him. I’m not sure what it means, really. But I’ve had sex with another boy and that didn’t work either.”

Was there something wrong with her? Sally experienced orgasm on virtually every occasion. She pondered. Was there a time when she didn’t? How odd. She’d assumed it must be the same for all girls. She wasn’t going to share the facts of her intimacy, but she was intrigued.

                                    “Do you enjoy it, though?”

                                    “I suppose so. In a way. It’s nice to have attention paid. And he’s very affectionate. So it’s all right.”

            Before she went to sleep that night, Sally said to Rob:

                                    “You know what Pam told me?”

                                    “What?”

                                    “She never has a climax.”

                                    “Poor girl.”

                                    “I find it hard to believe.”

                                    “I think many girls might say the same thing.”

                                    “Why?”

                                    “Why don’t they have climaxes? I don’t know. I’m not a biologist.”

                                    “Do you think it might be Colin? Maybe he’s premature.”

                                    “Who knows. I’m not asking him.”

                                    “No,” she laughed.

            She and Rob were diligent in their use of condoms but she was amused by the joke about washing your feet with your socks on. She wanted Rob to know how it felt without a barrier and she wanted to know too, so occasionally they rode bareback. Always, the day after, she would think of his sperm swimming inside her. How likely was it one would get through? It must surely be pretty remote. Hadn’t she read somewhere that most of them died? But till the day she came on, a dreadful fear haunted her, small, distant, but persistent. Wouldn’t I be horrible to have a child. She’d be like her mother. She’d be tied down. What would Rob do? No, they should stick to the condoms or she should try to get the pill. All the same, the abandon would arrive and he’d slide into her uncovered, and oh, how nice it was.

            In September they went back home, took up their old jobs if they could, found others if they couldn’t, and so three years passed. It was towards the end of the summer when she was nineteen her period didn’t arrive.

                                    “I think I’m pregnant, Rob.”

                                    “How do you know?”

                                    “Guess.”

                                    “Yeah, but you’re sometimes late.”

                                    “Nine days.”

                                    “That’s not too much, is it?”

                                    “How much is too much?”

                                    “You’d better go to the doctor.”

                                    “We’d better go home.”

            She told her mother who put her arm round her.

                                    “You’ll be all right, love. You can come home if you need to.”

                                    “No, I won’t need that, mum.”

            Though it passed through Rob’s mind they didn’t have to bring the child into the world, he said nothing. His parents lent them the deposit for a house. Rob took up his duties behind the bar. They were married in the little Anglican church at the end of the lane. They called their daughter Ella.

            Sally discovered she loved being a mother, but Rob had to work long hours, the house was in a quiet suburb two and half miles from the town centre, most of the wives worked. She took Ella out in the pram in the morning hoping to bump into someone interesting. Muriel, who lived two doors away, stopped her one day and said:

                                    “Have you seen? Pakis have moved in. That’ll bring the value of our houses down.”

                                    “Will it?”

                                    “Course it will. They shouldn’t be round here. Nice area.”

                                    “They have to live somewhere.”

                                    “Their own country. Ours is full.”

            What a curious idea, the country being full. She thought of Parry’s Lane as she walked, the vast expanse of openness. It was all marshes and no doubt they couldn’t build on it, what did she know? But there was lots of space. Muriel had no idea how much land was available. It was just a silly comment to justify her prejudice. The idea depressed her. How many more of her neighbours had similar views? She wished she could hear the Atlantic breakers, taste the salt on her lips from the waves, get the odour of a spliff mixed with the tang of night. Sweet days. But they had led her here. She experienced a sudden confusion which made her heart skip and brought a horrible sense of loneliness. For a terrible instant she thought Rob a stranger. She walked a little faster. The nights of sex in the caravan by the beach returned. He was her husband. She loved him. Surely she did.

            Ella was twenty months when Simon was born. She discovered that having two small children to look after was more than twice the effort of looking after one. Little by little, the alienating experience after the exchange with Muriel was repeated. It diminished in terror until after a few months she was sitting on the sofa smoking, both the children in their cots for their afternoon naps, when she looked towards the window which gave out on the tedious view of the house opposite, the mirror image of the one next to it, and said to herself: “What am I doing here?”

            Rob was home late. The pub had been busy, there was a lot to clear up and barrels to change. He fell asleep quickly and turning to look at his head on the pillow she was struck by the thought his behaviour had become selfish. Or perhaps it always was. Or maybe selfish wasn’t right. It was more he simply didn’t notice her. He lived at the centre of his experience and seemed oblivious to her.

                                                “I’d like to work in the pub,” she said to him in the morning.

                                                “You do.”

                                                “More than just a few hours. Full-time.”

                                                “What about the kids?”

                                                “I don’t know.”

            Her mother-in-law agreed to babysit twice a week. Diane would do another evening. Three nights was a relief. The people, the noise, the jokes, the fags, the juke box, the darts, they all helped lift her mood; but she was still faced with a terrible thought. She didn’t love Rob. They still had sex regularly. Her climaxes were as frequent as ever. But something had gone, if it had been there in the first place.

            On Rob’s night off, she went out with Maggie. Sometimes Irene tagged on, or a few of the girls from the mail order office. It was the one time of the week she felt fully alive. Maggie had got pregnant by a monumental stone mason, had a boy and moved to a big house out of town. They shared stories of child rearing and laughed at how unready for motherhood they’d been. They were in the crowded  Harvesters on a Friday, squeezed around a little circular table by the door.

                                                “You know what I heard?” said Irene. “Frank Staveley has gone to university.”

Sally sucked hard on her cigarette.

                                                “Where did you hear that?”

                                                “That friend of his, you know, the blonde one with the scar on his chin. He came in the pub.”

            Sally was at a loss to understand why she was shocked.

                                                “He’s a bit of a dark horse,” said Maggie.

                                                “What’s he studying?” said Sally.

                                                “English, apparently.”

                                                “He was a reader, wasn’t he?” said Maggie.

            A memory returned to Sally: she met him in a café or pub, probably a café. Which one? Anyway, she had a copy of The Glass Bead Game in her bag. She bought it in the Discount Book Store, a big untidy second-hand place where the volumes piled up, tumbled and spilled out onto tables on the pavement, because someone had mentioned Hermann Hesse and she was eager to know about writers. She’d managed the first hundred pages.

                                                “What do you think of this?” she’d said.

He shook his head.

                                                “Haven’t read it,” and he took it from her, examined the cover, flicked through and read a paragraph. “I’ve read Steppenwolf and Strange News From Another Star.”

When was that? She must’ve been sixteen or seventeen. Why didn’t she realize? A terrible blankness invaded her mind. She lit another cigarette and took a swig of her vodka.

            The next day, she dug out her copy of the Hesse and read the first page.

                                                “What’s that?” said Rob, hurrying to leave for the pub.

                                                “A novel.”

                                                “Where’d you get it?”

                                                “I’ve had it for years.”

                                                “You don’t usually read novels.”

                                                “I like reading.”

                                                “Anyway, I’m off.”

She lay the book beside her on the sofa. The children were playing on the carpet, so she couldn’t light up. It occurred to her she’d never seen Rob reading anything but a newspaper, and that was mostly the sports pages. He could draw, and now and again took up a pencil and produced an impressive sketch, and he had a good sense of colour and style. She tried to convince herself he appealed to her aesthetic nature, but she couldn’t keep thoughts of Frank from overwhelming. She took the children to the park. Made some lunch. Tidied the house. The days, weeks and months went by and all the while she was ruminating. How had she been such a fool?

            At length, Rob’s parents announced they were pulling back from the pub. They bought a house, Rob and Sally sold theirs, and moved in above the business. Sally thought she’d prefer it: the town centre, people, activity. But she was in an upstairs flat with two little children, there were no neighbours, not even racists, no garden.

            One spring morning, she was holding Ella by the hand and wheeling Simon in the buggy when she saw Frank coming towards her across the market square. It was a lovely, open area in the middle of the town, exempt from traffic and surrounded by plane trees. She felt appallingly exposed. Should she pretend she hadn’t seen him? But she couldn’t keep her eyes from him.

                                                “Hello, how are you?”

                                                “Hello, yes, I’m okay, thanks.”

                                                “What are your children called?”

She had a sudden desire to say, “I wish they were your children.”

                                                “Ella and Simon.”

                                                “Ah,  nice names.”

            When he was sixteen and she fifteen and they stood under the drizzle in front of his house, she’d felt a cut above. He was the supplicant, an affectionate, enthusiastic, over-enthusiastic, immature boy whose desire for her gave her power; and somehow, that had turned her against him. If someone had told her he would go to university, she would have laughed in that open, full-throated way she had: “Frank, he hasn’t got it in him.” He was working at some low-level, go-nowhere, office job and she imagined he’d be a boring, shiny-trousered, pen-pusher all his days. Yet now, she was aware there was something else that went through her mind. There was something hidden about him, some unrevealed part of himself which troubled her. It had brought an irrational, irresistible sense of disgust and made her turn to more interesting and certain territory. But now she knew she loved him. She couldn’t believe it, but her feelings were undeniable. Oh, if only she’d known. If only he’d taken The Glass Bead Game from her and explained it, captured her by his intelligence and sensitivity and capacity for passion. Where did that idea come from? Frank, the boy who didn’t even venture a hand onto her corseted breast. Yet now, she looked into his eyes and knew it. He was confident. His crooked little smile charmed her. He was making love to someone. Oh, who was she?

            The conversation had moved along without her registering what they were saying, all she could think of was how to establish regular contact.

                                                “Well, your children are lovely.”

                                                “Thanks.”

                                                “Nice to see you and glad things are going well in the pub.”

                                                “Oh, yeah. You know.”

                                                “I’d better be going. See you again.”

                                                “Yes, it’s a pity it’s just by chance, isn’t it?”

            He held her eyes for a second.

                                                “Take it easy, Sal. Bye.”

            If it could happen once, it could happen again. At home, she looked up his number. No doubt he would be at his mother’s. There it was. 42830. Why not ring? But at the risk of a refusal. That evening she worked behind the bar and every time the door opened she looked, but it wasn’t.

            Nor was it ever.

            Culpepper read through his effort, saved the document and logged off. Other little projects intervened and he forgot about the story. When he died and his daughter read through his hard disk archive, she dismissed it with the rest. The laptop went to recycling.

‘