Forget-me-knots
Her apron strings lie limp now. These days, no one comes clattering into the room, jumping up and scrabbling for attention. There are no hands ready to be rubber-gloved in the motherly love kept at the kitchen sink until the dishes are done. So she carefully smooths the strings on the gaudily patterned garment - the splattered scene of many a disastrous culinary experiment dreamt up in those desperate moments when she would attempt to feed her brood’s disinterested bellies with something fresh - but leaves the tired material hanging from the hook.
Turning back into the room - a seventies time capsule of beige tiling and faux farmhouse surfaces - she wonders how, despite the empty nest, there can still be so much crockery to clean and gleam and return to the cupboards. The last meal she cooked was months ago - the dinner that remained uneaten for days, whilst every broken branch of the family tree then present carefully avoided mentioning the grumbling of their empty stomachs for fear of breaking the anxious silence.
She ties a tea-towel tightly round her thin waist, knotting it behind her whilst wondering why she still bothers to protect her shabby clothes, and plunges her hands into the water. It’s too hot for comfort, but she barely registers her reddening skin as she wipes plate after plate after plate.
Out in the fields of grey earth and warmed-through stones, nothing grows. He keeps claiming that the ground is now haunted, polluted by their child’s roaming spirit which each night spits its bitter poisons into the soil, determined to kill off any tell-tale shoots of recovery. But the crops were never more than a foolish money-making enterprise, long ago given up in favour of hardy livestock whose tough skins and fleece could cope with the ravages of the droughts, the storms and whatever came hurtling after.
He spies a tired shape slinking in and out of a nearby ditch, and recognises the neglected creature as his daughter’s pet dog: a rescued puppy now all grown up and looking for a new saviour to gaze into its soulful eyes and impulsively decide to take it away from all this, just as she had done when she brought it here, to the end of nowhere. He feels in his jacket pocket for the mongrel’s collar, and his fingers run gently over the circular name tag that his daughter had carefully tied to the leather with a piece of string. It feels deathly cold to the touch, despite the heat hanging heavy in the air. He remembers his promise to be a father to her closest companion, even if he had never been much of a father to her, but gruffly dismisses the thought. Look after yourself. Do nothing more than exist, and maybe we’ll all just get by in this hollowed-out home.
Time to trap the beasts into their pen. Stop them wandering here and there, drifting aimlessly to deserted corners where all they can do is lie down and wait to be recovered from prolonged exposure to the hostile conditions. He drags the steel wire through his hands, and knots it round pole after pole after pole.
Far away, he’s abandoned himself to the urban dream. Lights and music, neon and beats, glitter and noise. Rushing this way and that. He’s down amongst the people who are living life on the very edge, though since he’s already been to the precipice one too many times, he knows that their ideas of diving headfirst into every experience on offer are merely pretence. He saw it all, years before, when he felt his head pushed into the darkest pit of hell as powerful fingers clamped the back of his neck, and he has no desire to see it again.
He’s keeping the promise he made when they lived under the same roof, sharing the same bed on those thunderstruck nights when the house erupted around them. Times when a raging curse and even worse were only ever a partition wall away. As they stared intently at the thin slither of yellow light that crept under the closed door, he vowed that they would leave before long, before too long. Later, he whispered the exact same words into a cacophony of pulsing machines and dripping tubes, watched over by subdued green screens, while he clutched his sister’s hand. She felt different. She had already left. He followed soon after, via a different route, though neither of them had any idea where they were headed.
He unzips the bag on the seat beside him, placed there in the hope of deterring any fellow passenger from joining him in his train journey speeding north, and rifles through the clothes and few essential belongings that accompany him wherever he goes. He’s always ready to travel to a new city, whenever a ticket becomes affordable. Hidden between leather and denim, cotton and plastic, he finds the simple red ribbon that used to adorn her hair, and drapes it over his left wrist, tying it firmly into place. The smallest and most insignificant of gestures, but one that he observes each time he heads out on a new adventure, to a new destination, maybe even a new home. Knot after knot after knot.