NO ONE COMES CLOSE
NEW YEAR’S EVE 1986
I sat on the bed in the dark at odds with the New Year celebrations echoing up the stairs. Mal, our daughter Grace, and my in-laws were all laughing and joking together; drinks being handed round while The Hogmanay Show rang out from the television. I felt as if I’d been invited a party where I knew no one.
I heard my name mentioned but couldn’t face going downstairs and putting on another show of pretence. I was reluctant to see in the New Year; to celebrate would be farcical. I knew from experience, nothing would change.
My marriage was a barren wasteland; the last shoots of hope withered to nothing. We led separate lives. Mal spent all his leisure time at the pub while I worked day and night, hoping eventually to have enough money to leave him.
My thoughts ran back down the corridors of time, to Ron. His blue-grey eyes always slightly amused; his easy confidence and appetite for life. In a moment of recklessness I had sent him a fortieth birthday card, the ninth of December etched onto my memory along with his parents’ address. I had no idea where this would lead but I willed the card to reach him, wherever he was.
Every morning I ran to pick up the post, but every morning I was disappointed. Maybe he wasn’t even in this country?
Mal shouted up the stairs. ‘You coming down? It’s nearly midnight.’
‘In a minute,’ I shouted back.
But I stayed rooted to the bed and dabbed my eyes, delved into my memories and unwrapped the evening I first met Ron.
I was seventeen.
Synopsis in 150 words
Early in January Ron phones Julie from Australia. She is overjoyed that he’s coming back to England in April for a month. They meet secretly three times, on her day off. On the last meeting he tells her he’s coming back to England to be with her. On Easter Monday he flies back to sell his belongings. Julie cannot keep it secret any longer and explodes the news. Her husband is thrown into depression at the thought of her leaving him and their daughter. Julie struggles with her conscience; she almost gives up on a happy future with Ron. But when he comes home she goes to stay with him in a rented house. But Julie and Ron are both suffering from guilt (he has left a partner behind), the union is unsuccessful and Ron goes back to Australia. Julie, now divorced, is left to rebuild her life.
Hopes and dreams built on what was, not what is - destined for disappointment, perhaps.
Your work seems to deal with emotions and personal growth - or lack of it; your characters go back into the past to search for a future, but by failing to take heed of the present too, they doom themselves to failure.
Or do they? Surely Julie grasped a ladder to lead out of the dark well that was her life with Mal, and while it didn't lead her to where she thought she wanted to be, it still got her out of the well.
Nothing is simple; rekindling a past love is romantic, but not necessarily real. Life gets in the way of the lovely hazy dreams, but it doesn't mean that a new future is impossible - it just can't be planned so neatly, and it may not be what was originally envisaged. Doesn't mean it's not valid, though.
Lorraine