Chapter Two (the chapters are tiny)

She creeps into the cottage in darkness as usual, savouring the anonymity of it, leaving off the light until the last possible moment. Keys are flung down, the fridge pours light onto the sheet metal worksurface and shimmers upwards onto the brickwork. The cat opens his mouth wide enough for his head to snap off and squeaks by mistake with the effort of it. "hello Audrey" she croons.

The morning had been fragmentary, piercing winter light, particles dancing like Parisian Spring. Everything had started to come apart, her mind disintegrating as she tried to concentrate. There was a tiny grave inside her mind on a hillside, lush green in another place, sea close, cottage nestling. The tiny stone had a name she couldn't read and it asked her not to forget it, to remember. There was something useful in this place she didn't know, this dead infant that wasn't hers and a tragedy she didn't own that was claiming her imagination for reasons she didn'tyet understand. The cottage near the grave was beamed and smoky with woodsmoke and there was a friendly presence, and elderly woman. She watched the scene with interest, surprised by its clarity. It was as familiar as that white Church on the hill she visited sometimes in her sleep. It had a particular feeling, nameless of course.

Audrey was yet another victim of an absent-minded vet and had been lumbered with a sexual identity crisis in his early kittenhood. He was quite 'Hepburn' in fact but he was in denial, like most cats, about his true identity. She had given him a diamante collar anyway. Perhaps he had regarded this as a final act of cruelty against his vulnerable psyche and had developed into an adolescent phase of sulking and stropping whenever his biscuits ran out. Crunchies are poured, diamante clicks against crockery, the purring begins. Legs are circled, marmalade hairs on black tights. She wonders why it all broke into her head today, the nameless stuff, but it had, and Audrey certainly couldn't care less.

Chapter One of my new novel: Nameless

"Hurry up, they have come, they are coming in, hurry!"
Her mother's voice
She packs the strange grey textured suitcase, striped along the centre, small metal buckles, torn leather trim. She piles random patterned skirts, crumpled and ironed together. Squeezes the red Morrocan slippers, and still thrills at their glitter and pointed toes, even now, even here.
She scans the room, apricots, peaches, soft colours, floral patterns, ragged oatcake carpet, gentle flounces, swags, delicate fine cotton, valances. She calls out.
"Mum, Mum, I'm ready". She turns. She goes to speak. Opens her mouth to breathe, pushes the hollow door. Silence.
She finds herself standing on the edge of an open French sliding door, the metal cuts into her tender feet, the plump soles flushed with pain without her Morrocan slippers. She raises her eyes. No corridor, no bathroom, no spare room.

She is on the edge of a vast expanse of water, edgeless, mirrored in the glass door, permutating a million times the sheer gossamer surface. The wide and inky watery darkness merges with the wide and inky absent sky. Where one ends and the other begins she cannot tell. It is a lightless box, it could be glass, it could be frameless and infinite or mirrored and complex but limited. There is no one on the edge of the precipice but her in her tender naked feet clutching a battered suitcase full of ageing photographs.

It happens sometimes. The nameless stuff. She knows she is about to reject the idea of visiting a shrink for the millionth time. They won't share her creativity. They will try to explain it for her, but it isn't theirs to explain. It happened in childhood too. The nameless stuff.

She clinks the breakfast bowl onto the table, pours, scoops, crunches, grimaces, swallows reluctantly, winces, sips, stirs, sighs, yawns, wonders if there is time for another cup and goes in search of reality.

Her life along with the lives of everyone she knew had not turned out as she planned it, or as she imagined it. There is no name for that either, the way it all changes shape, all the ideas that weren't and the surprises that were. As children they were all 'going to be' when they grew up, as if 'being' was a thing for the future. How they had all ended up 'doing' instead had alluded her. What she was 'doing'with her life was trying to name things. But she didn't see it at the time that she started 'doing' it and now it was a habit.
To Be continued...