Sixteen years.

Something a bit different for you all today!


The sun had blessed the rain drenched earth all day but as I stepped onto the doorstep it began to fall once more. Grabbing an umbrella from the coat stand I yelled my farewells, but as usual they went unnoticed. I could hear them even after the door slammed, the raised voices and strained patience. “Only two days”, I murmur under my breath.

The car sat unused on the drive, I could easily have taken it, but I fancied the walk to clear my mind. A walk I’d done for years, sixteen to be precise. Sixteen years and it had come to this. My drive gave way to the lane, and despite the rain I couldn’t help but run my fingers along the tall crumbling wall. Surprised once more that two grooves did not follow this path, as my footprints followed a younger, more innocent, less troubled Clare to her best friend’s home.

The apprehension was unbearable, and incomprehensible. Sixteen years we’d spent side by side, sharing firsts and most likely lasts. Always been the one I’d turn to in moments of worry, and strife, but happiness too. We’d shared our dreams on that park bench, those toilet blocks, the pub garden. But now a stranger I saw in my best friend’s eyes, heard in her words. Sixteen years for this?

I’d reached the end of the road by now and turned to pass the church and graveyard. My thoughts flickered inevitably to Richard, the one I’d never had the chance to know, but whose loss I felt all the same. It was him who made me strive every day, it was for him I lived two lives. Subconsciously I whispered the words that kept his memory alive, and paused despite the rain to bend and wipe the dirt from his small grave. Three weeks to sixteen years, to lose another would be to double the pain.

As I cross the old factory courtyard I glance across at the windows, images from Children of Men filter slowly past. The connection seemingly illogical, but the reality far from it. I pause again and my fingers close tightly around the wired fence, desolation makes me whole, gives me hope and m heart surges with a new found gratefulness. I tear myself away and quicken my pace, soon reaching the stream.

Absentmindedly I realise it is him that my mind has rested on, as it so often does nowadays. He encapsulates something for me that I am yet to put a finger on, his kind heart and warm words disarm my naturally sarcastic defences, I melt, who’d have thought? And still this goes unnoticed, I’m a better person, yet he believes it is him who is. A conviction too strong to argue with despite its falsity. As one life dies, another blossoms. Sixteen years.

Finally I near the end, her house rises in front of me, and I can’t help but smile. True my gut feels as if its wrenched in two, but too many fond memories can be found within these walls to erase the glow. I pace stealthily up the drive and pause at the door, stealing myself to knock, and brush the cobwebs from my mind. Gulping down the rising knot I sigh. Sixteen years, per omnia saecola saeculorum.