Melford Road 2

1988

The woman watches the removals men drive off, and then closes the front door. She turns around and walks slowly into the kitchen with their empty teacups. It’s so silent she can hear herself breathing. She closes her eyes, and concentrates, smiling. This is what freedom feels like. She’s not frightened of being alone, not when she thinks how difficult it’s been the past few years. The rows, the silences, the stress of the divorce. They say stress can give you cancer. She doesn’t know how true that is, but luckily they caught it in time, and now.. She looks around. It’s smaller than she’s used to, but it’s hers; a clean new beginning – and there’s enough money left over to make it more comfortable... do it justice.

She walks to the window and stops. The view is so, so beautiful it keeps her there, hypnotised– the long thin garden and the meadows beyond. The garden doesn’t look like much now – the previous owners didn’t seem to have bothered much. She’ll get it landscaped properly – no point messing around. There’s enough left from the settlement for a few small pleasures like that. In her mind’s eye she can see a wall of honeysuckle and jasmine and climbing roses all meshed together after a few years, in a beautiful tangle either side – it’s so narrow that’s all you can really do with the space– and then a grassy path down to the stream. Perhaps some herbs to brush against as you walk down….. maybe a little summerhouse at the bottom. She could use it as her summer studio! Her eyes sparkle, thinking of the swans nesting down there. They’re her motif - she uses them again and again in her illustrations– it was that stream that made her decide to buy the cottage. Her fingers itch for a pen. The awful bone-sapping fatigue that followed the chemo has gone and she’s finally got her mojo back. The little room upstairs, overlooking the garden – oh she has such plans for it; it’s going to be the most perfect studio space!

She runs through the rest of the changes she’ll make – a mural in the bedroom - a fairy tale to symbolise her new beginning. She will cherish the future now she has one. Appreciate every moment. She can’t wait to get started! Everything’s going to be ok. She snaps her fingers and her little spaniel comes towards her, eyes bright, panting slightly, nails clicking on the wooden floorboards. She takes the lead from the table. A walk, to celebrate their new life of freedom, their second chance.

1993
She opens her eyes, looks over to the familiar painting on the wall opposite. The winding path, leading to the many turreted castle, the beautiful girl, the knight on horseback. Only positive things – she remembers thinking that while she painted it – it seems like a lifetime but it wasn’t that long ago really. Thank god she managed to finish it before….. She’s so tired, so tired nowadays. She struggles and pulls herself up, leaning against the pillows. It takes all her strength. She takes a deep breath – it’s hard nowadays – and an acrid, sour smell fills her nostrils. Looking down she sees the spaniel – he looks up at her, thumps his tail hopefully and whines. It’s as if he’s apologising. She tells him it’s ok – it’s not his fault. She can’t let him out enough, she keeps drifting off.

One big effort and she manages it. She stands, swaying slightly on the painted wooden floorboards, steadying herself with one hand on the bedpost. She looks down at her thin legs - god there’d been a time when she’d wanted to lose weight. It takes ages to get down the stairs - everything is such an effort these days. She lets the dog out, watching as he shuffles slowly down the path to where he cocks his leg against the honeysuckle.

Exhausted, she pulls out one of the chairs and sits at the kitchen table, waiting for him to finish. The surface is covered with papers, all the important documents in her life. She’s trying to sort things out, make it easier for when…... Her hand goes to the largest envelope – the deeds to the house. They always fascinated her – a great thick pile, stretching right back to eighteen twenty something, before the houses were even built. The earliest are handwritten, in an elaborate curly script. She briefly imagines the clerk who must have penned them.

She takes them out of their cover, and a loose leaf flutters onto the floor. As she bends slowly to retrieve it. she stares at it for a minute. It’s unlike the rest – a flimsy, thin computer print-out – a coroner’s report. That young girl…. so sad….and these words are all that’s left of her now. She reads through the sparse details, the story of a suicide on a bleak railway station in the middle of winter. You hear of it all the time .. “an incident” they call it … and commuters grumble because their journey is delayed. People rarely stop and think – really think, about those last moments, how it must feel, watching the express approach, knowing, preparing, and then that final jump… She shivers. She would give anything to be twenty-three with her whole life ahead of her, but that poor girl must have been just as sick as she was herself…

Her eyes go to the stark verdict at the bottom… “She took her life while the balance of her mind was disturbed”. So young…. Briefly the woman wonders if it would give the ghost of the girl comfort to know that the next owner had brought life and colour back to the cottage. It had been so neglected when she’d arrived. She remembers what the neighbours have said to her about the noises, the bruises. The man – the boyfriend he must have been, bastard…. he’d left the house empty for a year or two, and then moved on. She sighs and slips the paper back under its paper clip. It needs to stay with the others.

There’s a scratching at the door. The dog wants to come back in. Slowly, she gets up – everything is so painful these days – and moves to open it. She stands there for a minute, watching the view that never fails to draw her in. The mists are floating across the meadows, hovering over the river. The September sun is low in the sky and there’s a definite chill in the air. She shivers – it’ll be dark soon. This is not her favourite time of year.

A sound makes her turn to her right – a shout of laugher from the house next door – and someone’s turned on some loud music. Oh please god not another party. They’re getting worse. She dreads each weekend now. That’s the trouble with tenants – irresponsible – they don’t care. When these ones had moved in at first, she’d tried asking them to turn it down, explained how she was ill, needed rest, and they’d said they would but once they were drunk there was no stopping them. As the evenings progressed, the party would spill out into the garden – crowds and crowds, and she was frightened of a confrontation – she couldn’t do that kind of thing anymore.

She looked at the high trellis she’d erected. At first it had been for the roses to grow up – a wall of roses – so that their scent would be the first thing that hit her when she opened the door – but with the new tenants she hadn’t been able to wait, so she’d added Russian vine. “I need the fastest growing climber you have” she’d said at the garden centre, and that had been the last thing she’d done in the garden; an act of desperation rather than pleasure. She looked at it – it was beginning to take off now, twisting its tendrils around the wooden squares. Each day, when she could, she would gage its growth. Next Spring it would be at the top, and then it would begin to bush out.

Another pain makes her wince. The pills are wearing off. She closes the door; in the ten minutes she’s been standing there the mist has already drifted halfway up the garden and the sun has slipped further down behind the trees and is almost invisible. She shivers, turns away from the sky and walks slowly to where the medicine is kept. Counting out the pills, she stops for a moment, then takes the card with the hospice number scribbled on the back, and puts it in her pocket.