Added£0.99Add to basket(A short story of 2751 words)
Henley to Brighton
Literary
by Gilly Goldsworthy
The expensive German kitchen drawer opened smoothly to yield a vegetable knife. She tested it on her fingertip: she wanted to, her best friend did it, but she but was sickened by the rapid gush of red . . .
Cecile screwed the card and the fat cheque from her dad into a ball and tossed it into the fire. She watched it smoke, flash orange then shrivel to flakes of black. It was her fifteenth birthday, but there was nothing to spend money on, trapped in the tin pot village where Auntie Sally lived. No-one had bothered to visit during her pregnancy, and a month later she handed the squalling four day old bundle to the social worker.
‘His name is Henley,’ she told the shrew-faced woman and watched numbly as she walked away with her son. She allowed her aunt to lead her out of the private hospital to her car. The sixty miles of the A34 from Winchester to Oxford were chock full with bank holiday traffic, and her anxiety increased as the green road signs showed the miles tumbling down with each junction they passed. When they arrived her stepmother tried to give her a hug which she shrugged off and the only acknowledgement from her father was when he said, ‘Looks like we’ve got away with this Cecile, just make sure you stick to your story, okay?’
The baby was never mentioned again.
The expensive German kitchen drawer opened smoothly to yield a vegetable knife. She tested it on her fingertip: she wanted to, her best friend did it, but she but was sickened by the rapid gush of red. Instead she chose a parmesan grater and rubbed it out of sight against her inner thighs; she had found a new comfort.
Cecile screwed the card and the fat cheque from her dad into a ball and tossed it into the fire. She watched it smoke, flash orange then shrivel to flakes of black. It was her fifteenth birthday, but there was nothing to spend money on, trapped in the tin pot village where Auntie Sally lived. No-one had bothered to visit during her pregnancy, and a month later she handed the squalling four day old bundle to the social worker.
‘His name is Henley,’ she told the shrew-faced woman and watched numbly as she walked away with her son. She allowed her aunt to lead her out of the private hospital to her car. The sixty miles of the A34 from Winchester to Oxford were chock full with bank holiday traffic, and her anxiety increased as the green road signs showed the miles tumbling down with each junction they passed. When they arrived her stepmother tried to give her a hug which she shrugged off and the only acknowledgement from her father was when he said, ‘Looks like we’ve got away with this Cecile, just make sure you stick to your story, okay?’
The baby was never mentioned again.
The expensive German kitchen drawer opened smoothly to yield a vegetable knife. She tested it on her fingertip: she wanted to, her best friend did it, but she but was sickened by the rapid gush of red. Instead she chose a parmesan grater and rubbed it out of sight against her inner thighs; she had found a new comfort.