three good words

July 31, 2014October 20, 2014

honeymoon

Not PG rated.

He was the last of the line, and she had the money. That was it really. He was the last of an old line, and she, or rather her father, had the money. She would get the name, her children would be highborn. He would get the money. It was a fair deal as these deals went. Others read novels of dashing young gentlemen fighting rogues for love, but she boarded a train so that he got the money and her father’s grandchildren would be called Sir.

Georgie had little illusions about what was expected of her. There was the ceremony and the toast and the dance. Then they were to take the train to the coast and from there cross over. Her father had already booked and paid everything, they would be travelling for three months. She was told to write and enjoy herself, maybe even take pictures. Nothing would change, save the fact that she was married and respectable, and that half the Continent would fawn over her. After the three months they would return and then she could start cleaning up the manor, putting money into it, getting it back to its old glory. It was all part of the deal, and Georgie knew her part in it.

He didn’t approach her until they were on the boat. They hardly talked on the train, except when he asked her if she was comfortable. She felt, rather than knew, that he disliked this arrangement, that he too felt sold somehow. He was the last of his line, but unlike most of his kind he didn’t look like the runt of the litter. The family had taken care to keep fresh blood coming in, so he was in fact quite decent looking. He was tall, which was nice, she reached him to his chin. His shoulders were broad like a butcher, probably there was a butcher’s boy somewhere in his blood line, you never knew what these families did to make sure the line didn’t go stale. He had dark eyes, black almost, with dark brown hair. His nose was patrician, a clean line, slightly curved but not hooked. He had very nice lips, soft and clearly defined, as if someone had taken them from one of those statues. Otherwise she saw long legs, and a very good taste in suits. He was, for the lack of a better word, a good-looking man, not pretty but attractive. He didn’t look like someone who indulged in silliness, though she could see him dead drunk on scotch and wine. She would wait and see how his habits were once they were back, people were always a bit nicer in foreign countries. Maybe because you had to stick together otherwise you got lost.

He approached her on deck. She was smoking a cigarette, the sea was calm. He stopped next to her, lit his own and exhaled, sliding one hand into his pockets. Georgie waited, but he said nothing. They stayed like that until the bell rang for tea, and he motioned if they should go back in together. Georgie nodded, they went back in. Inside, they sat across each other and she saw him order coffee instead of tea, he wanted none of the cake or sandwiches. She had one sandwich and a cake, she had hardly eaten any luncheon. He started talking then, asking her what she had seen of the country. She answered and that was how they started talking. It was pleasant, every now and then he flashed a smile. He had a nice smile, a little unsettling maybe, Georgie couldn’t say why. They talked well, he lit her cigarette for her, and once they reached port he helped her into her coat and waited for her.

They took the train to the capital and checked in at the George V, taking the suite her father had reserved for them. They went out for dinner, he said he knew a place she might like. It was nice, very French, but the food was delicious and she enjoyed every bit of it. On their drive back however, she began getting fidgety, but did her best not to show it. They were married after all, this was part of the deal. She had to get pregnant at some point, the sooner the better. Her parents half expected her to be showing by the time she returned.

In the suite, Georgie took her time to change. In the bathroom she looked at her reflection, the chestnut hair, the wide, violet eyes. She wasn’t beautiful. She wished she was, but something was off with the symmetry. Her lips weren’t too thin, nor was her nose hooked, but she was plain. Her face was round rather than sleekly thin. She looked like a cherub rather than one of those cat-like creatures. If she had at least something dramatic, something that caught your eye, but all she had in that line were her eyes. They were very pretty. Oh, and her bust. She had large breasts for her frame, and child-bearing hips. She wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t beautiful. She had that pleasant look that most men liked since it wouldn’t get others interested. She’d heard that from someone once, a teacher in school. It had hurt then, but now Georgie didn’t fight it. She would never look like one of those beautiful creatures on the silver screen. But her face was pleasant, and she had very good teeth.

Finally, Georgie was in her nightgown and wrapper. She kept herself from smoking another cigarette, downed the glass of whisky she poured herself and went out. He was standing at the open window, holding a tumbler, watching something by the look of it. He turned when she closed the door. He closed the window, crushing the cigarette she hadn’t seen in an ashtray. He drank one last sip from his scotch and put that down as well. He was in pyjamas and a house gown. Georgie didn’t know what to do. She had been told, Annabelle had been very explicit, married as she was herself, and Katie had giggled all through it, Georgie staring at her sisters, mouth shut, eyes wide. Yet, it was going to be done. His family expected an heir as soon as possible, and there was only one way to get one.

They were on the bed, under the sheets. He had already removed his shirt, but he still had his trousers on. He had removed her nightdress. Georgie was completely naked, staring at the ceiling. He had kissed her, but Tommy Chingham had already kissed her behind the shed, so she knew how that was. He was better than Tommy Chingham, at least he didn’t fill her mouth with his tongue and kept his hands to himself. He really had nice lips. He kept on pressing them gently against her cheek and neck and the back of her ear. The second time he started talking, asking, ‘Have you done anything like this before?’ Mystified, Georgie asked, ‘Like what?’ ‘Have you ever been with a man before,’ he asked, and Georgie blushed.

Peter Saunders had touched her breasts and slipped his hand between her thighs, brushing her silkies. He’d gone a bit further at that party, pushing two in, kissing her and doing things that opened something inside her and made him remove his hand in horror. He thought those days had started and only after they were in the light did Georgie realize what poured out of her wasn’t blood, but something else. Somehow worse. Georgie had been so ashamed after that she couldn’t face him again and avoided all the places she could meet him. But that was as far as she knew, so she shook her head. He nodded then, saying ‘I’ll be careful.’ Georgie didn’t know what to make of that and so just waited.

He touched her everywhere. He was kissing her and touching her everywhere, her shoulders and arms, her breasts, both, her sides and middle, her thighs, inside and out, her knees and calves, even her feet. He touched her everywhere and Georgie lay as she was, clutching the sheets. At one point he took her arms and wrapped them around his neck, that was before he moved over her, spread her legs and moved over her, kissing her more. She could feel what was there, Katie said penis to it, but Annabelle, naughty girl, she said cock. It was there, hard and hot, pressed against her, ready to do it. He stopped kissing her and then said ‘Ready?’ and she nodded because it didn’t really matter whether now or later, it would hurt anyway. She felt it first, broader, thicker than anything she expected. She was sure it would never fit and grabbed his shoulders, unable to say it. He said ‘Hold on’ and suddenly he was in and Georgie screamed. She tried not to, but the tears came and she couldn’t stop them. She heard ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘Don’t cry’ but she couldn’t stop it, it just hurt too much. ‘Should I stop?’ he asked and Georgie nodded because she couldn’t bear to feel that again. She couldn’t stop the cry when he removed it, but at least he was gone and Georgie turned away, curled up, so completely in pain there was nothing she could do to stop the tears from falling.

He tried twice more that night, but each time was as bad as the last until he understood that he could do nothing to make it better. Every time he entered her it hurt so much Georgie was in tears. He got up after the last time, got up and poured her a glass, at least she thought so, but he drank a large gulp first, before he filled it up more and brought it to her. She couldn’t sit, but she leaned on her arm and drank, feeling the scotch burn her throat and warm her stomach. She drained almost the whole glass after which the room quickly turned hazy. She didn’t remember much of what happened next, but it soon didn’t matter since she fell asleep anyway.

They were at the sea. The house was beautiful and the staff was taking very good care of them. They had separate bedrooms, which was nice, since that way there wouldn’t be that unspoken thing between them. They were very friendly towards each other during the day, doing their best to be as civil as possible. Anyone watching them, anyone hearing them, anyone seeing them even, would never have guessed what agonies Georgie endured every night for the first two weeks. He tried every other night, or if it was very bad, then he left her to herself for three days. But he always came back, and Georgie prayed that he would finally realize that it would not get better. She tried everything, whisky and a long bath, she even tried those meditations Katie had talked of that were supposed to help, apparently it was supposed to help relax her. She could not pray though, but she did try what she could to calm herself, to relax herself, to just do something so that it wouldn’t hurt so much again, but nothing worked. At night all there was, was pain, and Georgie could see that he was getting impatient. If this continued for three months their marriage would be unpleasant. He was still willing to believe that she could not change it. Georgie didn’t want to think of what would happen if he started believing otherwise.

They were at the sea, and it was beautiful. It was evening, and Georgie was walking down the beach, it wasn’t too dark yet. As always, two things occupied her mind. The day as it was, and the night as it was about to come. The days were always pleasant. Eduard, she had finally come to call him by his name, even in her head, Eduard was a gentleman. He took care of her. He could be a bit rough in the way he treated the staff, but never mean spirited. He just expected them to do their work well. He took her for drives and they visited so many of his friends that Georgie was starting to lose track. They went swimming and sightseeing, they drank coffee in beautiful cafés and ate in wonderful restaurants. The days, the days were wonderful, but the nights… Georgie stopped and looked to the water. How did other women do it? How did they endure it? How by all the heavens did brothels work? And yet there had been that time with Peter Saunders where he pushed his fingers in and they both thought she had her period. That had never happened again and Georgie was starting to wonder if that didn’t have something to do with what she had to endure every other night. She hadn’t allowed another to touch her ever since Peter, too mortified that would happen again. She had read so much in these past two, no three weeks, on her condition, sneaking pamphlets and books into her room and hiding them between her clothes so no one could see them. She read so much that she slowly felt like a psychologist herself. The doctor had said there was nothing physically wrong with her. She was young and healthy and ready to have children. He said it sometimes took time to relax, but it wasn’t as if she was anxious with Eduard. Not during the day at least. At night however… Georgie walked on. How on earth was she to change this? How was she to make it happen?

July 29, 2014December 12, 2014

a fairytale

spring 4 There once was a land, a far away place, where a small people lived in small houses. They had learned to live in silence, for silence was their legacy from the Darkness that had retreated from their land. They had lived through the dark and darkest days and had survived, and now were toiling away in silence, accepting their fate. They were blessed however, with fertile land, and underneath this land, they found many precious artifacts buried, artifacts that were easily shattered and broken if not handled with care. The small people learnt day by day to dig up these artifacts carefully with small shovels and small wheelbarrows, making sure to only use the small tracks they knew, for they did not know where other artifacts may lay, and there were places where the Darkness still lingered.

So they learnt, carefully, and did their best to tend to and put together the artifacts with care. Some stayed together, others fell apart repeatedly, and yet others were no more than ground dust, and those the small people buried in their small graves. However, with every passing day, more and more artifacts were put together, and both young and old knew that one day these artifacts would lead to wealth and prosperity. It would be a day far away, but that day would come, and so they toiled away.

Then, one day, a runner came, and proclaimed that there was a loud cry among the other kingdoms and realms. It was found that the Lord of the Dark had lost his most precious gem, and it was said that gem was needed to defeat his armies. The small people listened and trembled for they knew that hard merciless stone, and knew the Lord of the Dark had many like it. He cast away one and put on another, and many were scattered beyond the small pathways they would not leave. Yet the cry was loud among the other kingdoms and realms, and scouts and men were sent out to find this gem, for the cry was great to find this lost thing, and the small people could do nothing to sooth the loud cry to silence.

And so the day came, and the machines rolled down the small people’s tracks, destroying the pathways and the artifacts underneath. Trees were hewn and soil dug up, dynamite was stuck into holes, blowing up the land wide. And the small people stood aside and watched in horror and dismay as the precious artifacts were flung into the air and shattered. And many cried, for it was to them as if the Darkness had returned again. And there were some among them who lost all hope and understood why the Lord of the Dark said there was no hope, only the Darkness beyond. And they ran and fled into the Darkness and were never seen again, except in nightmares that lurked in the night.

July 29, 2014October 20, 2014

Disney revisited

There are spoilers in here, but I guess if you’re already reading a post on Disney, you’ve seen the movies too…

And yes, the © of the pics belongs to Disney. In case someone was wondering…

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Just recently Disney came up in a conversation about plots and movies and that got me thinking…

It’s interesting how Disney heroes and heroines have changed over the decades. If you look at Snow White, there isn’t much of a conversation going on between the Damsel and the Prince. Damsel runs away from evil step-mom, hides out with seven little men, gets found out, eats apple, everybody thinks she’s dead, Prince comes along, kiss, The End.

There’s a bit more conversation between Cinderella and her Prince but it’s left to the audience to guess since they’re waltzing away and talking in the gardens. You can’t imagine any shenanigans there, though Cinderella does flee from said Prince in a could-be-a-kiss situation. As for Sleeping Beauty, they actually meet on their own, with the help of a few woodland familiars, and they dance Once upon a Dream and then just stand at that tree gazing at the castle. You can imagine the conversation:

Aurora: How beautiful!
Prince Phillip: Oh, yes, quite, but not very practical.
Aurora: Practical?
Prince Phillip: No battlements. And the moat, there’s hardly a fish in it. One well-set fire and the whole place’ll go up in smoke.
Aurora (stopped listening after ‘battlements’; sighs): It is beautiful though…
Prince Phillip (realises what he just said): Father was probably right, come to think of it…
Aurora: About what?
Prince Phillip: King Stephen is not… that is not the safest place to rule a kingdom. What was he thinking?

And so on and so forth. Actually the end of that conversation could very well be a fight, the Damsel taking patriotic side with the King – she doesn’t know he’s her dad too – and the Prince making it worse by being honest…possibly why Disney didn’t bother to have them start talking in the first place.

ariel

Then there’s the long haul through the ‘70s and the ‘80s , where it’s more about coming of age stories, à la Arthur and Oliver Twist, but then the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, another Princess: Ariel. This time the girl sees the boy and is smitten, Daddy ain’t too impressed, wicked witch is hap-py (‘body language’). Girl gets a try to impress boy but can’t talk, poor thing, but at least they go out and see his kingdom and get a nice frog-concert and all in all there’s definitely some quality time there, which justifies some daring on the Prince’s part.

Beauty and the Beast is far more modern: slightly awkward girl moves to new stuffy provincial town (luckily no one knew about Edward and Bella back then… dear God, imagine…), can’t really see eye to eye with anyone except her books, but has the good luck of serious prettiness, which puts crazy suitor on her trail who’s so full of himself you’re just waiting for that hairy chest to burst. So the motivation is: escape, adventure, something different for crying out loud. And thus helped by crazy daddy, girl ends up in a monster place, with a monster master and talking dishes who are cheeky but sweet, and the monster is actually quite nice after all. Lots of quality time, great lighting, great music, great dancing, everyone’s happy. Then the inevitable Big Choice is made and the monster turns out to be a gentleman only for the mad-hat suitor to turn up and spoil the show. A bit of fighting and some nasty stabbing (blood! *gasp*) and you can understand the girl’s I love you, coz compared to the mad-cap provincials the monster’s quite a catch. Inevitable happy ending with very pretty prince.

On we go to Aladdin: now here’s a guy girls like to crush on: all dash and daring, wants to get on in the world because he knows his worth and he’s not bad looking either. He’s had a few scraps with the police, but he’s got a heart of gold. Then we have the Princess: serious pressure to finally get married only it’s not Mother nagging but Father getting worried, but Papa is cute and exasperated by drop-dead-gorgeous daughter, and so is entirely made out of soft spots. Naturally has a treacherous adviser who has smoldering plans re world domination. While planning to take on power with help of dashing diamond-in-the-rough, Princess decides enough’s enough, I want the real life, only to get a bit too much of said real life. She’s promptly saved by our dashing daring hottie-hero who gets a large helping of love-at-first-sight. So boy is all eyes for girl, girl has some genteel hots for boy, but psychotic royal adviser spoils it all. The rest is an adventure for both, what with the blue brassband of entertainment where it’s all about fake identities and getting the girl, until the final showdown where the Princess has a chance to go full-out Mata Hari and would have succeeded if the hero hadn’t messed it all up by falling for the act too (that ‘pussycat’ is still hilarious). In the end, you’re pretty sure guy and girl know who the other one is, there’s been a lot of fighting and forgiving, so no great worries there.

I’ll leave out The Lion King because the whole movie is about giant cats, a few hyenas, very many wildebeests, a bird, a warthog and some small hulla-dancing animal.

Now to Hercules. Never mind how they mangled the plot (Hera as mother to Hercules? P-lease!) but we’ve got a real Hero as the hero and we’ve got one sassy girl who knows what it means to have a broken heart. And she’s got some lip on her that girl, (‘Do you have a name to go with those rippling pectorals’ – Disney definitely sexed that one up). In any case, it’s about the big stuff: honour, loyalty, love and betrayal and forgiveness, next to a nastily fun Hades whose hair I’d like to borrow. By the end of it, you know Herc and Meg know how bad it can get with either, and whatever choices have been made, you can’t say they don’t know what they’re getting.

Then Pixar derailed Disney for a while, and Shrek just shredded the whole fairytale concept, but we still have a hero and a heroine, and all the problems ex-suitors and in-laws, best friends, their wives (and fire-burping kids) not to mention one’s own. Shrek takes the whole deal and runs with it, it’d take too long for that now.

Next on the list is The Princess and the Frog, and again, we have a hero who’s a bit of a twit, but a charming and good-looking one, though he knows that a bit too well (‘Kissing would be niiiiice’). And we have a no-nonsense girl who has A PLAN, only to have tall, dark and handsome frog-leap right through it. They have the whole Bayou to help them get to know each other, never mind the tongue twisters and jazzing alligators. By the end of it, the Prince learnt a few lessons and the Princess softened a bit and made some space for a life in her PLAN. By the time they have the ring on their finger, you know they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and you can actually see making that restaurant work the way it should. A couple as a team, that’s a first.

Onwards to Tangled, I mean Rapunzel: girl locked up in a tower but that won’t keep her from using a frying pan. Our hero is dashing and debonair, again a bit too full of himself, but with a heart of gold. I’m just realizing most later Disney heroes are a bit too full of themselves, but actually nice chaps at heart. In any case, they have a whole kingdom’s worth of time to get to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, by the end of which it’s actually believable when the wedding bells ring and there are white doves everywhere. A lot of team-work is needed – just to get out of that tower in the first place, not to mention blondie’s Momma issues and the boy’s dalliance with the police – so the ‘couple as team’ concept has probably come to stay.

And finally Frozen. That Elk. What’s with those two? Talk about bromance, only it’s an elk-mance or something. Anyway, so there’s two sisters, older sis has dangerous powers, little sis just wants love. Tragedy strikes, and the usual royal complications take place, and finally little sis gets into some kind of adventure after kinda-sorta falling for you-know-who… frozen and I’ll stop there because some people maybe haven’t seen it yet, and that’s enough spoilers for now. Anyway, Frozen is another gear change in the hero-heroine meta-narrative (yes, I said it) that Disney employs, which makes me really curious about the next feature film they’re going to make. A whole new world altogether.

So yeah… Disney’s changing, in baby steps, yes, but still. Let’s see where they’ll go next.

July 28, 2014February 11, 2015

don’t listen

A blank page can be an awful thing. It seems empty, but it isn’t. It’s filled with possibilities, words written, deleted, rewritten, crossed out, thought over, emphasised, loved, hated, wanted, reviled – and it never ends either.

I think the hardest part is to not listen. You know, those ‘Are you serious’ ‘Are you sure about this?’ ‘Is that good enough?’ and ‘Is that it?’ that whisper from the blankness of the page, sounding out the words in your head. And then it happens, the whispers grow louder and louder, talk, yell, shout and scream and suddenly you’re saying: ‘No no no no no no no no!’ It’s wrong! bad! awful! horrible! blergh!

Delete. Delete. Delete.

And then you’re back to square one, that blank page, that empty space that somehow is already filled with all the things you don’t want to say, all the things you wish to convey, and really need to get on the page. And the whispers just won’t go away.

So many times, too many times, listening has made me do something stupid – that is, I deleted everything in sudden horrified shame, which also meant all the words were gone, never to be retrieved, never to be seen again.

I stopped that.

I keep everything that makes me hesitate, sometimes even squirm, even the silliest scraps of words on paper. I keep them for one reason: between those words, hidden among the letters, there is usually something real, a thought, a word, a memory that I can use later when I know what it is that I’m after. It’s not always like that. Sometimes what I wrote is just really, really bad.

It’s sieving through the whispers and finding my inner compass that’s so difficult. The whispers like to override that gut-feeling that 9 times out of 10 is accurate, and even the tenth time it was right somehow. The whispers that seem to come out of the emptiness, they can get too loud, and the trick is not easy but possible: just don’t listen. Write it down. Write it all down. Even that sentence you know is silly. Even that word you just don’t want to use. Write it down. See it written out so that you know why it’s so horrible. It’s helped me countless times. In a way, when I see it written out, I finally know what’s so wrong with it. Until then it’s just words swirling in my head.

Then I let it rest for a while. Sometimes for a few days, sometimes a few weeks, it can go into months and years actually, but eventually I go back, and read everything one more time. It surprises me time and again how different the words look and sound just becomes some time passed. If I’m happy with it, I edit what needs editing, re-write, re-draft and re-do until it’s roughly where I wanted to be. Then I start over until I finally feel ‘Yeah… that’s about right.’ This takes time of course, and it can be (very) frustrating, but what really helps me is reading the books, poems and short stories I love best. They’re the proof that someone successfully managed to silence the whispers coming out of the (apparent) emptiness.

At one point I had something of a database of crap sentences, horrible plot twists, stupid little dialogues I wanted to turn into genuine conversations and failed, failed, failed. I keep them though, and go back to them when I can overcome the inner cringe, and sometimes – I can’t tell you how or why, there is a mystery to this craft of ours – I find that seed of thought, of feeling that I was aiming for and work from there.

July 28, 2014June 16, 2020

Caden

When the other kids asked Caden Tellis about his past, the first word that came to mind was ‘volatile’ followed closely by ‘violent’, both accompanied by an image: the man they called his father standing over him, red with rage, raising his fist to strike. The pain had long since subsided, but the impact, that crash of knuckle and bone into his body, that stayed. For the first years after he ran away just seeing a fist fight on the school grounds made him feel it again. Caden was known to be quiet, both in his old as well as his new school. Claremont Comprehensive was in the better part of town, up in the hills where the big houses with the two garages were, where there was grass and trees in the backyard and you could ride your bike in the streets without being run over. Until he ran away, Caden had only seen such houses on TV. But then he packed his backpack with crisps, a few bottles of something orange, a jumper, his favourite comic books and the picture of his mother, and slipped out the back while the man they said was his father was snoring in front of the TV.

What exactly triggered the impulse to run away, Caden could no longer say. He remembered thinking that it was his ninth birthday, and that the next year would be his tenth, which meant that he had lived ten years under the same roof with that violent drunk everyone said was his father. Maybe it was that. In any case, he packed his things and left. He had taken up what money he still had left from Aunt Vicky, the money that the man who said had sired him hadn’t taken from him, and with that Caden was able to get on a train and reach the biggest city he knew. He wanted to go to the top of the highest building and see how it was to be a bird. And he did see how it was, it was breathtaking. When he came back down the constable was waiting. He had gone missing for three days and Aunt Vicky had filed a search. While waiting for Aunt Vicky to pick him up a doctor asked him to sit on a bench in a quiet room and he was asked to remove his shirt. Caden still remembered the look on the doctor’s face, it had been calm at first and suddenly turned very serious. He touched the sore spots gently, asking Caden where it hurt, and if he felt any stinging. Caden answered and the doctor asked him to remain very still, he would be right back. An officer was called who looked as serious as the doctor and then the officer brought someone else in who took pictures of Caden and all the sore spots. Once that was done and more questions were asked and answered, Caden watched while the doctor bandaged him. He counted five bandages next to the wide strip around his chest.

Since it would take a day until Aunt Vicky arrived, Caden was taken to the doctor’s sister’s family, a Mrs Corrigan. They lived up in the hills in one of those big houses with the two garages and the large garden in the back. Mrs Corrigan did charity work, which meant she collected money for poor people. Mr Corrigan was an architect. They had two children, Matthew and Stephanie. Matthew was only a few months older than Caden, and Stephanie two years younger than both. They looked at him with wide eyes. Caden felt like an animal in a zoo. He had been once, no twice, with Aunt Vicky. Caden sat uncomfortably on a chair in the parlour, while Dr Martin explained ‘the circumstances’ to his sister. She said she would be glad to help, Caden could stay the night. So Caden stayed with the Corrigans, ate at their oval dinner table, tasting food he had never eaten before, eating with real forks and knives and drinking out of glasses made out of real glass, always aware of Matthew and Stephanie watching him.

Caden didn’t remember much more of that first dinner with the Corrigans. After dinner there was the bath Mrs Corrigan made him take, wincing herself every time she removed the bandages, shaking her head and murmuring, calling to Mr Corrigan (she called him Fred) so he could see ‘what had happened to the poor boy’. To Caden’s embarrassment Matthew and Stephanie came along and saw him half naked on the closed toilet, though they said nothing and Stephanie even gasped. Mr Corrigan moved them out of the bathroom, closed the door and knelt down next to Caden asking him if he was feeling any pain. Caden answered that after Dr Martin gave him two pills the stinging left. Mr and Mrs Corrigan exchanged a look, a look Caden would come to recognize in later years, and then Mr and Mrs Corrigan got to their feet. Mr Corrigan said something to Mrs Corrigan that Caden couldn’t hear. He took a bath then and Mrs Corrigan was nice enough to look away when he was naked, Caden hated it when Aunt Vicky would never leave the bathroom while he was in the tub.

After the bath he was given one of Matthew’s pyjamas and allowed to sleep in the guest-bedroom. The bed was enormous and the mattress heavenly, not to mention the covers and the pillows. Caden had never slept in such a bed. Mrs Corrigan brought him chocolate chip cookies, the American ones, and warm milk, even though he had already brushed his teeth. Then she asked him if he would like her to read a story. Since Mrs Corrigan had been so nice to him, though he was certain she had no stories he would like, he just shrugged which Mrs Corrigan took as a yes. She asked if he knew The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Caden nodded, they’d had one of the teachers read a few chapters to them in school. Did they get to the end? No, the Pevensies were still with the Beavers. So Mrs Corrigan left the room and brought back the book and read on from where Caden’s teacher had left off. He finished his milk and cookies while he listened, Mrs Corrigan could read as good as a teacher. Caden didn’t know when he fell asleep, but he had a very nice dream of sleeping in a cave and waking up at the North Pole where he helped the Christmas Elves pack up the presents, though the presents themselves were odd, enormous toffees, tires the size of houses or a very, very small cavalry and a settlement of Red Indians. They were all alive, and you had to keep them apart otherwise they kept on fighting.

The next day, Caden was brought back to the police and Dr Martin, where Aunt Vicky was already waiting arguing very loudly with a large black woman Caden later found out was Mrs Julian. She worked for The City. She was the one who took care that children in orphanages found parents, or if parents weren’t good parents, then the children got new ones. Caden came to like Mrs Julian, she didn’t make a big fuss about things. That day however, she was shouting with Aunt Vicky, though the shouting stopped the moment Aunt Vicky saw him. She knelt down and spread her arms and Caden, seeing everyone was watching, went and let her hug him, though she still smelled of too much perfume. She asked how he was doing and if he had had a nice stay and said he’d been a very naughty boy for running away like that, which made Mrs Julian huff, ‘From what I see, that boy had all the sense to run away,’ which made Aunt Vicky angry. After some more shouting, Mrs Julian asked Caden to come to her, which he did, Mrs Julian wasn’t someone you wanted to say no to. Mrs Julian lifted his shirt and showed Aunt Vicky the bandaged sore spots. Mrs Corrigan could have been a doctor for the way she dressed the spots after his bath.

Aunt Vicky didn’t really understand until Dr Martin gave her the pictures. She looked very shocked. She started crying. Someone gave her a tissue but it became worse. Mrs Julian looked satisfied. Then Mrs Julian found out that Aunt Vicky was in fact not his aunt but Caden’s mother’s best friend. Since Caden’s mother died she always took care to see after him. She knew Greg, the man who apparently was Caden’s father. She knew he drank too much and had a foul temper but this… ‘If Mary would see this,’ she kept on saying. Mary was Caden’s mother’s name. Then Aunt Vicky asked, ‘Darling, why didn’t you tell me?’ which made Mrs Julian angry again. ‘Tell you? Dear God, are you –’ Caden was sure she wanted to say something rude, but instead Mrs Julian said, ‘In a situation like this children don’t talk. And what should he have told you, Hi Aunt Vicky, Daddy tried to kill me today?’ Caden wondered how Mrs Julian knew. Once he only escaped after kicking him where it really hurt. He ran out into the street and didn’t come back until late at night, but by then the man they said was his father was sitting with someone in front of the TV drinking cans of beer.

Aunt Vicky only cried more. There were more arguments, more shouting, and while Caden waited, sitting on a chair facing the glass window in the door, he saw how Mrs Julian and Aunt Vicky went at each other like bulls, only female bulls, and Mrs Julian was winning. Finally, Mrs Julian came out and Aunt Vicky was sitting on a chair, crying again. There was some more talk Caden didn’t understand except for ‘temporary arrangement’ and that the Corrigans were mentioned as well. The long and short of it was that Caden was brought back to the Corrigans, and what started as a temporary arrangement turned into a final one. By the end of three months’ time, Caden was the Corrigan’s Foster Child. From what Caden heard the man everyone said was his father was arrested and then set free and then arrested again, and this time he had to stay in prison for some time, though not due to Caden. Apparently he had stolen something or hurt somebody, a grown-up this time. Caden didn’t listen carefully, nor did he want to know. It was enough that he would never have to see that man again.