It’s the bones washing up on Balmedie Beach that sets the tongues to talking. ‘Fishing twine,’ they say. ‘Black bin bag, bound tight. Nothing accidental about that.’
Jackdaws circle unseen winds, taken by the currents.
I see her now, at our battered table at the White Horse. We eat before she does the test, picking at a portion of grainy mac cheese. Unceremoniously, she grabs the Dickies Pharmacy bag, takes herself off. In the emptiness that follows, I see all endings.
She doesn’t look for me as she exits the toilet. I catch her at the bus shelter, icicles glinting like teeth.
‘Positive.’
The ride home’s silent. She gets off at Millden, me Blackdog. My calls after that unanswered. I hear she runs in September: ‘London,’ the tongues say, ‘or Cardiff.’ ‘Didn’t even say goodbye to her ma.’
Fifteen years pass; the North Sea releases. But fishing twine weakens. Bin bags shred. Bones dissolve in salt. No reason, then, for me to cast this line across time – to think of her (of it) at all.
Except for that one time I catch her again, the Easter before she leaves town. My second-hand Golf, bought with summer earnings, creeps towards Cordiner’s woodworks. She’s on the pavement, diagonal to the wind, t-shirt flush to body. A wee pouch, apple-firm, peeps over the waist of her jeans. I don’t slow down.
There’s a roundabout at the end of the street.
‘London,’ the tongues say. ‘Twine. Bound tight.’
And still, the jackdaws circle.
Claire Griffiths comes from an oil-rigging family in the north-east of Scotland. She left her rural village for the bright lights of Norwich for uni, stumbled into London ten years later, and hasn’t been chucked out yet. She teaches creative writing at Northeastern University London, the University of Hull and Imperial College. Her short stories have been featured in publications including Litro and Flash Fiction Magazine, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and short and longlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize, the Bath Short Story Award, and the SmokeLong Quarterly Flash Fiction Award.
Photo by Christian Paul Stobbe on Unsplash.
