As the winter chill receded and the air began to thaw, the rattle of garage doors opening merged with the slamming back of bolts on garden sheds. From said garages and sheds, the men of Kingfisher Avenue emerged, shielded by their lawnmowers.
Steve, with his bog-standard electric mower, the cord masked in electrical tape to repair the damage from all the times he’d mowed straight over it.
Gareth, with his fancy cordless affair that Steve is jealous of, not that he’s ever vocalised that fact.
I cried the hardest at Amber’s funeral. Not that it’s a competition, or anything. All I’m saying is my tears were real. Wet and itchy, dripping down my face.
To be honest, I wasn’t crying because I was Amber’s best friend. I admit I wasn’t. That honor went to Jenna, who I was standing next to in the cemetery, under the shadow of a stone angel with a cracked wing.
But I was grieving too. For what could have been. What should have been. For Amber, for me, and for a friendship cut short.
The invitation came from Mortimer. We’d been close at school and for a bit after university. Now we only kept in touch via Facebook. He’d gone into venture capital, I’d gone into the services.
Traditional church service (very nice) then, after photographs, on to the reception at this big country place and more photos by the lake with champagne served in plastic glasses (a bit tacky, I thought). After an hour of this we were called in to lunch (which was just as well as I had reached, and then surpassed my optimum booze intake and could hear myself becoming over-friendly and loud).
Stinky McGuirk will not be remembered as an exceptional guinea pig. Never really more than a novice climber, his problem solving skills were in the lower percentiles for the Caviidae family. Averse to water. His aroma, questionable.
He had the appearance of a perpetually shell-shocked rodent — twitchy, trembling. Bug-eyes staring vacantly into the middle distance. His ginger and white hair stuck out at every angle, like some demented throw-cushion.
The last guinea pig in the pet shop, he looked like he needed a good home. And Jessica, suffering twin indignities of living through high-school and her parents’ divorce, was in need of a loyal friend.
The photographs have not done justice to the cottage.
Sarah recalls the website thumbnails: that vibrant red door; those shells, set between the bricks framing the windows; hanging baskets that are an eruption of life and colour… Gorgeous. She’d sent jubilant screenshots to her mother from the train. Yet photographs can’t capture the true allure of this place – the remoteness, the quiet. The trains had taken her only to the nearest village. For the last two miles, Sarah’s taxi was the only vehicle winding down narrow country roads.
“When I was twelve I got lost in the woods.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What?”
“That’s like the opening line to a book. Or a film monologue. First scene, no music. It starts with a black screen and as you tell the story, it opens to a meadow like this.”
“But no music.”
“Fucking exactly. Nothing but the voice.”
