I Never Wear Black 2 |
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All work within this periodical is copyrighted by the authors and Big Pond Rumour, January 2008. No part is to be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the authors and Big Pond Rumour Press. |
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track round her brain. I shouldn’t have drunk the coffee, she thought. She was almost asleep when she saw the words, Claire’s Bat Mitzvah. Tiny letters in Italic script. Gold. She sighed, turned on her back. The words became more insistent. Now they appeared on a page, framed with gold curls, a bunch of rosebuds nestling beneath. The page floated in front of her eyes, the words trembling and gleaming in the dark. Claire’s Bat Mitzvah. An invitation. Her heart racing, Shelley struggled to sit up, dragging the duvet away from Charles, who grunted and turned over. Of course. Her Bat Mitzvah. Twelve on the second of February. Only three months’ time, and they had done nothing about it. Nothing. She wanted to bang Charles on the back, ask him why they hadn’t remembered, what they were going to do. Then she recalled what he’d said as they were driving home: ‘a big deal’ next day - his words for a serious criminal case - and she knew she shouldn’t disturb him. She slid back under the covers, closed her eyes and counted slowly to ten. Maybe this would stop her frantic mind; she waited a moment, then looked again into the dark. Claire’s Bat Mitzvah. The words were still there, and now she smiled. She wanted to reach out, touch them. The words filled her with delight. She started to feel warm, drowsy; it came to her then, what she should do. She didn’t know why she’d been so agitated. Without troubling Charles, tomorrow, she would start...she would make Claire’s Bat Mitzvah. When she came downstairs, he’d already gone. A note on the rosewood hall table said, ‘Big Deal. Back late.’ Scarcely able to swallow her tea, let alone anything solid, Shelley thrust on her coat, threw a scarf over her shoulders and ran for the bus into town. It was so long since she’d been into Manchester alone that she was disorientated. Where was she? This wasn’t the city she’d known as a child. It looked different, strange. Then she remembered: everything had been rebuilt in 1996, after the IRA bomb. The shape of Market Street where she’d planned to begin her search came back to her. People were rushing by, their breaths curling upward in the dank air. She smelt burgers and chips, heard someone crying, ‘Buy the Big Issue’, saw African drummers, a cellist. For some moments she forgot why she was there she was so taken by the sounds and movement of the street. Then the words returned. She set off. There was a dress shop immediately on the right. Once inside, she found it was dark, a cavern lit with yellow lights. She made out a bunch of shop girls chatting at the back, their midriffs and shoulders bare. The girls ignored her so she walked over to the racks of dresses and peered closely. Everything had jagged ‘ |