You moved like a glacier through the best years of my life. Shaped me hugely, imperceptibly, until I’d forgotten what I was before and had become something that made no sense after you were gone, something carved and scalloped by a million unnoticed excisions. After the divorce I looked for myself in what you’d left of me, but saw nothing I recognised in the bleak, hollowed place where I thought I used to be.
Drip…… Drip.
‘How do you say your name, sir?’ asked Brian.
‘Afamu.’
‘AHH-farrrrrrHH-MOO? OK, sir, I’ll do my best with that.’
‘And what about you, my dear?’ He looked at her encouragingly.
‘Jill,’ she said.
‘Thank you, Jill!’ he said, with a satisfied smile to the rest of the group. He seemed to be saying: Why can’t everyone else have a nice straightforward name like that?
SCENE ONE
FOREST CLEARING – AFTERNOON
FOX (AS CUNNING AS YOU EXPECT A CORNERED FOX TO BE):
I could tell, when the smell of burnt gunpowder infected these woods this morning, that you’d be coming for me. I tried to ignore it, hopeful that you outgrew fox huntin’, but when your mutt there caught up with me…I knew you’d be starvin’ her just for this weekend thrill.
