Prose

He calls me Sally and I’ve never bothered to correct him. No point. My real name has nine notes in it and he wouldn’t even get past the second. I just took a chip clean off his fork and laid the morning wide open with my best laugh, the one that carries right along the promenade and scares the toddlers. Forty-seven years and the man still sits with his back to the sky. The sheer nerve of him. Some enemies you keep alive out of respect. It started with a chimney. Spring of ‘79. He came up the ladder with a bucket and a grin and tipped my nest into it like it was just gutter muck. I’ve built an entire life on that grin. Birds talk about letting go but letting go is for gulls who die at thirty. I wasn’t going to die at thirty. The books say forty-nine’s the record, some ringed nobody in a Welsh archive, I expect, whereas I consider forty-nine to be nowt but warming up. I’ve been thorough, mind. The ice cream at South Shields, 1986. The toupee incident of 2008, which I don’t need to detail, he remembers. Oh aye, he remembers. His daughter's wedding, where I conducted myself with absolute restraint and only took his buttonhole. The christenings, the school fêtes, the walks to work, the lot. Riding the thermals while he went fat and grey and slow and wonderful to hunt.

Afternoon Reverence It begins at 3.28. A chair sighs. A drawer groans. A colleague coughs. You know the sound of his lanyard now, the way it taps his shirt button as he rises, and the soft stroll toward the room you both pretend is shared. He nods. You nod. Then the slow, deliberate march to the door, and the long communion beyond it.