Sitting Pretty

She lowered herself slowly and carefully onto the bench, the coldness of its wrought iron seeping into her back and making her wince. Gradually its temperature and hers became one as did the numbness permeating her bones. She closed her eyes, cutting out all sights with only sounds remaining, not just sounds, thoughts and memories intermingling, and all fighting for dominance.

As memories won she smiled. This was her special bench, her special place. Her smile broadened as she remembered the first time that she had sat here. Eighteen years old and the entire world, and her life in front of her. That summer had been so hot and the office was stifling, no such thing as air conditioning then! She had decided to escape, take her lunch and eat it outside. It wasn’t far to walk to this little green oasis, a tranquil island in the centre of urban sprawl. She found the bench, her bench, and thankfully sank onto it. Its cold, iron chill helping to dissipate some of the heat.

Strange how many small details could be remembered with the passage of so much time. She could almost taste the sandwich that her mother had prepared for her, cheese and pickle on white sliced bread, ‘A growing girl needs something nourishing at lunchtime,’ that loving voice still alive and sharp inside her head. The grass had recently been mown and its smell heady, redolent with summer. She had smiled and looked indulgently at the couples sprawled about on the grass. Completely unaware of her or of anything else. And then, well then he had been there. Sitting on the bench next to her, smiling and saying ‘You don’t mind do you?’

Her world and her life began then.

They’d come back to the same bench at all times of the year, even bringing the children. Little had changed. The bench, their bench, had been given numerous coats of paint and even sported a crown of gold now.

He’d proposed on this bench. It had been autumn, the sky darkening, not just from the onset of night but from the flocks of starlings coming in for their night time roost. Their sounds blotted out everything, their numbers something that always amazed. When she turned once again to him he was staring intently at her and on his palm lay a box. Words were not needed, she nodded held out her hand and he slipped the ring onto her finger. Much worn now but to her as lovely as ever.

The urban sprawl had continued, never encroaching completely on the little oasis. The building at its centre had changed little over the hundreds of years that it had stood there. Tower blocks, offices, department stores all had tried to intimidate this edifice but none had succeeded. Its green moat remained. A home for birds, squirrels and no doubt foxes during the night. And those people who came here to find peace.

She got up, feeling her bones creak as she did and began her slow walk to the bus stop. Stopping for a moment she looked back and saw that her place had been taken by a young couple. It could almost have been the ghosts of her and Alan all those years ago.