Oct 2025 – A Year of Time

‘I’m going to check on lunch.’ Nancy smiled, though Robin who knew her like the back of his hand saw that it didn’t turn the corners of her mouth.

She headed to the dining room, wishing she had never quit smoking. A caterer was putting the final touches to the elaborately set table. How had she become the overseer of such dinners.

‘All ready?’ She asked, in what she hoped was a crisp and calm voice.

‘All set.’

Returning to drawing room she tried to catch her husband’s eye, but he was engrossed in Ileana, possibly her conversation, she thought tartly. Instead, she cleared her throat and declared dinner ready.

Drinks were poured though Ileana refused, asking for sparkling water. The starters arrived, and they were exquisite.

Robin sat next to his latest girlfriend Jade a younger variant of the last three. She was smiling at him raptly, twirling a finger through her hair though he kept trying to drag others into their conversation. Casting his eye towards Nancy every so often she thought perhaps pleadingly, but really, he had brought this on himself.

Torin sat between Ileana and Nancy; his shoulder slightly turned from his wife and his attention on Ileana. She laughed at his jokes, but kept glancing towards Nancy, almost placatingly.

‘Torin says you used paint.’ Ileana beamed.

Nancy took a large drink of white wine and looked at the woman. She could see the appeal, and at least this one was intelligent.

‘Yes, I had a studio not far from your new gallery. The southside was a little different back then.’

Torin turned to his wife. ‘Ha! More than a little, I thought you would be kidnapped. You know she really was talented but along came Alexander.’

She. Was. Nancy’s nostrils flare.

‘She still is,’ Robin corrected. ‘Stick your head round the door on the right before the bathroom, it is filled with her recent work.’

Torin sat up straighter and shot a look at Robin.

‘You’ve been allowed in the studio.’

‘Just once, back in January when you and Ileana were setting up the itinerant exhibit in Amsterdam.’

A tension vibrated round the table, four sets of eyes avoided each other, the other two cast round in amusement and confusion.

Jade changed the conversation though Nancy didn’t think it was because she had picked up on the other diner’s sudden rigidity.

‘I adore children, I would love to be a stay-at-home mother.’ She was looking directly at Robin, but he refused to notice.

Michael giggled loudly. ‘I hate children, and I need a smoke, please excuse me. I trust I have time between courses?’

He stood not waiting for a response.

‘Let me show you to the terrace.’ Nancy volunteered.

Outside he offered her a cigarette, but she declined.

‘Why am I here?’ He asked.

‘Ileana was meant to be bringing her assistant, young, Italian, with an arse you can bounce off a wall. He’s possibly your type.’

‘You’re trying to partner me off? Spare me. Relationships are for those who have given up on life.’

Nancy sighed, reached over, and snatched the cigarette from his hand. She leaned back against the rail, enjoying a long drag she held it in her lungs for a long time, savouring the chemical heat. As she exhaled, she felt herself wilt and Michael put his arm around her shoulder. She leaned into her friend and not for the first time that she and he could be something more to each other, but neither’s sex quickened the others pulse.

The second course arrived, swordfish in a lemon and garlic sauce.

‘So, Ileana, when does the new gallery open?’ Robin asked.

‘Next month in theory, but Torin keeps insisting that the space isn’t right for his new pieces.’ Her eyes lingered on the artist in question. They shared a smile.

Michael tried to kick Nancy under the table but missed and scuffed his foot up Robins leg. Robin glared at Michael, who tried to signal with his eyes that boot hadn’t been intended for him. Ileana continued unaware of the ocular bout and the glacial look Nancy had hurled at her.

‘I have never meet with an artist with such passion for the entirety of experience regarding their work. Torin is a purist, a talent, a perfectionist.’

Torin frown and waved as if to brush off Ileanas compliments and Nancy felt her eyebrows raise at this effect modesty.

‘No, its true!’ Ileana insisted.

Torin sat back languidly in his chair. ‘This collection is the peak of everything I have been working towards, my entire life. I am not apologising.’

The caterer started to clear the table; she paused at Ileana’s plate which was untouched unsure if she should take it.

‘I am sorry,’ Nancy said. ‘Don’t you like swordfish?’

Ileana fleetingly touched a gentle hand to her stomach, just for a second and Nancy may have been the only person who noticed.

‘It doesn’t seem to agree with me at the moment.’

Mind Burble

This piece was just an exercise in tension an attempt to keep its tone low.

It was a splendid summer morning, warm with no breeze and not a cloud in sight. To Harry it had seemed as if nothing could go wrong. The day lay before him, and he was free as a bird. He would take the path over the hill and stop by the Horse and Cart for a drink.

He wasn’t even at the ridge when the Harrier came along the valley skimming the fields and trees. He felt as if he were a God as he looked down on the plane.

It banked – movements so precise they seemed impossible. Then something went wrong. It pivoted. Spun sideways. Catherine wheeled and slammed into the hillside below Harry. Smoke and debris plumed skywards and moments later a ground shaking roar blasted him. Before he knew what he was doing he was running down the slope towards the burning wreck.

It was raging inferno when he reached it, molten and twisted metal, heat so fierce his skin crackled. But despite this he tried to reach the pilot.

Inga had printed the directions before she left the office, but somewhere along the winding roads a left or a right had gone awry and now she was geographically embarrassed. Though she sensed she wasn’t that lost, things seemed familiar, the way the road swung back and forth across the hillside and slunk between ancient bands of trees. She had known before she set off that this wasn’t far from where Jay had, had his accident. His memorial service the year after had been held in a small grey stone church halfway up a hill, very like this one.

Had that really been forty years ago?

The church had been nestled into the hillside only a mile from the crash site. At the end of the service, she had loitered near the kissing gate, as her sister, now a widowed thanked the minister. A man dressed in a shabby but immaculate suit, lingering at the back of the churchyard caught her eye. One side of his face was a raw puckered ruin, he reminded her of the veterans who drank in the village pub, but she was young. She had asked her asked her father who the man at the back of the church was, and apparently, he was the witness to Jays plane go down. She made to approach him, but he had cut and run the second he saw her headed his way. His haunted face had been seared into her mind though, gaunt checks, shadowed eyes, fire ravaged skin.

The road turned back on itself and there buried in the hedge was a rotting kissing gate.

It was a splendid summer morning, warm with no breeze and not a cloud in sight. Harry shut the shed door behind him and wondered what he might do with the rest of his day, he had finished clearing the ivy from the crypts far faster than he had expected. A car door slammed out on the lane, likely someone coming to view the commonwealth war graves, tourists often stopped in to see them. A woman of about his age was standing in the shade of the kissing gate when he reached it.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I don’t know maybe, I’m lost but other than that, there used to be a church here, right?’ She wasn’t looking at him, but past him into the graveyard.

Harry nodded, ‘Yeah it burnt down a few years back.’

‘Oh.’ A frown flashed across her face. ‘My brother-in-law had a plaque there; I can’t believe we didn’t hear about the fire.’

Harry’s heart stuttered and not just because of his arrythmia. ‘Jay Roberts?’

She turned to him, looking at him properly, her eyes lingered on his scars for the familiar second, ‘Yeah. Was this your church? Were you the minister?’

‘No, I just keep the place tidy.’ She was frowning again; it seemed an expression that came easily to her. ‘I saw the crash.’ Harry whispered.

Her eyes snapped back to him, ‘You were at his memorial.’

‘I wanted to speak to his widow, I wanted her to know I tried, I did, but …’ Harry’s gut twisted, he had been waiting for this reckoning.

She smiled sadly, ‘There was nothing you could have done.’

Then they were embracing, though Harry wasn’t sure who had initiated the hug. When they broke apart, he was lighter, the guilt he had carried having finally found release. He helped the woman -Inga on her way and asked that she pass on his regards to her sister, who he learnt had remarried. He asked after the two children he remembered from the funeral, now both in the forties, with kids of their own. Before she left Inga paused at the gate, ‘I’m glad he wasn’t alone, that you were there.’

‘I did little good.’

‘You tried.’

Mind Burble

This is another blending of truth and fiction. Though for the most part this is a true story, names have been changed and Harry was not injured on the day. He and Inga (my mum) did however meet like this forty plus years after the death of my uncle.

I don’t know what the chances of that were, getting lost in the Lake District, stopping at a familiar landmark to ask for directions and the person who you approach for help is the one who witnessed the death of your brother in law. isn’t the world a strange place? As you can imagine this chance meeting had a big effect on my mum. What were the chances? Have you ever experienced something like this?

Month: Oct 2025

Dinner Guests

Mind Burble

Harriers and Guilt