Moving On

It’s nearly time to move. Almost everything has been boxed up, recycled in another home, or given to the charity shop. A box of cleaning materials has been set to one side, and a note is on the fridge to remind me to keep hold of the vacuum cleaner. I’ll need to give the house a final clean for the new owners. We are just about ready to move on.

During the clearing out process I found a file containing my homework for the writer’s workshop I attended over three years ago. Each week, the lovely Carolyn Lewis would set us a homework that was supposed to be restricted to four hundred words or thereabouts. I always struggled with that. We would either be given the opening sentence, the final line, or simply a heading.

One week the heading was ‘Moving On’. At the time the story was taken from my imagination with no personal feelings attached, although I hold my hands up to blocking the basin with cigarette ends as a teenager! Now though, I know how Nicola, the lady moving on in my story, felt. As I’ve cleared each room, a memory or two has surfaced, causing me to smile or feel a little sad. So, now I have a connection with my homework, I thought it appropriate to share it with you. I hope you enjoy this short story.

  Moving On – Writers Workshop Homework

Nicola was glad that the removal men had finally gone, she felt most peculiar, something odd had happened to her, and she needed to be alone. She rested her forehead against the glass panel of the front door wondering if she was having some sort of breakdown. Her thoughts darted from one event to the other. When had it started? She had been fine as the removal men had grunted and exchanged banter with each other as they removed the furniture. It had happened in the bathroom first.

Nicola coughed to interrupt her thoughts, perhaps she really was having a breakdown, after all she had just been about to consider the possibility of time travel. She turned and ran up the stairs, pausing for just a moment, before pushing open the bathroom door.

The bathroom looked as it should. The white suite, and the mirror above the basin, shone with the efforts of her cleaning frenzy. Stepping forward she looked in the mirror. There! It happened again.

It was nineteen-seventy-four, and the face that looked back at her was fourteen years of age. Reflected behind her, she saw the horrible orange plastic flower transfers that her mother had attached to the white tiles to cheer them up. She’d never liked them. The room smelt of pine disinfectant and bleach. Hearing a grunt, she looked down to find her father lying awkwardly at her feet. He smiled triumphantly having managed to unscrew the waste trap to find out was blocking the sink. The tips of her discarded and illicit cigarettes were revealed. The telling off she knew would come followed, and ended with the hug she could barely wait for. He only wanted the best for her, Nicola could still feel the guilt, and appreciated the relief given by the hug.

Flustered, Nicola rushed out and into the back bedroom.

Time had moved on to nineteen-eighty-one, and she was in labour with her first child. Her mother took her by the elbow, and sat her on a hastily placed towel on the edge of the bed. She was urging Nicola to stay calm, and breathe in through her nose and out of her mouth. Nicola smiled as her mother asked her to remain on the old towels if she could. Having a baby was a messy business, and that mattress was only a year old. A few minutes later Nicola grinned as her mother cuddled her new granddaughter and told her how proud she was. She had wrapped the infant in one of the best towels. Needing more, Nicola galloped down to the kitchen.

Her brother’s sixth birthday party was underway. The wildlife calendar on the wall reminded her it was nineteen-sixty-eight. The chipped Formica table was laden with jelly, iced cakes, and John’s favourite meat paste sandwiches. The candles burned brightly on the cake, and the other kids were calling for him to blow them out. He reached out his hand to Nicola, asking for her help, concerned he might not get them all. Taking his hand, she took a deep breath and leaned forward to join him. She didn’t blow though, it was his day, and his candles. His breath whistled through the gap where his front teeth should have been, and he grinned as the flames disappeared.

Walking around the table, Nicola pushed open the door into the garden, stepped out, and looked at the neat boarders. As her eyes moved around the garden both time and season changed. At first she found herself in early spring nineteen-seventy-two, burying the rabbit under the tree. She listened to her father complaining that the frosty ground was too hard to dig as the rest of the family looked on tearfully. As she turned, the heat of the summer of ’seventy-six caused perspiration to gather on her bow. She lay down on a picnic blanket with her best friend, and they argued playfully over who was going to get the best tan.

Nicola walked back through the house, locking doors, and closing windows, she saw her father being carried out through the hall on a stretcher, it was the autumn of nineteen-eighty-four. He never came home, and as she entered the living room, she found the curtains drawn closed against the howling wind, the fairly lights twinkling on the tree. It was almost Christmas nineteen-ninety-eight. Her daughter stood in front of the television, nervously introducing her new boyfriend. Her father had smiled and nodded a greeting, before telling him to move out of the way, as he was blocking the television, and it was a cup match. They were married now.

Picking up the carrier bag full of cleaning materials, Nicola looked around one last time, pausing to wave to her husband, who was sitting on the stairs trying to untangle the laces of his rugby boots. Stepping across the threshold, she closed the front door for the last time. Brushing away her tears, she realised she was not having a breakdown, simply making sure she had also packed her memories.

* If you live in Bristol UK, and would like to attend a writers workshop I know Carolyn is still running various courses, please let me know if you’re interested and I’ll let you have her contact details. I can thoroughly recommend it!