Status Updates From The Visitors Book: And Othe...

Oooh, that last one was 4.5 - 5/5!

Julie Laycock is, I believe, a practitioner of Covert-Reign-of-Terror parenting, the sort that kids don't realise they've had until they're in their mid-thirties at least. Julie's chosen burial over cremation because it pisses her off to think that after her death she won't be able to emotionally blackmail her daughters any more.

Julie sighs heavily. 'Don't be thick, Mel. With cremation, the ashes are scattered and that's it, job done. With burial, there's a grave to be visited and tended week after week, year after year. There's a ... a site that needs to be maintained.'
Did I hear a note of pride in Julie's voice? Is she actively looking forward to being a high-maintenance cadaver?

Okay, that one gave me chills.

4 - 4.5/5.

It happens often on Healing Hands: a patient presents with two unrelated symptoms. One is caused by something lethal but curable if caught in time; the dramatic function of the other is to impede correct diagnosis until precisely fifty minutes into the programme, leaving ten minutes at the end for life-saving.

'How did you know she was a ghost?' people will ask me.
Because I did. Because of how I felt when I saw her. it wasn't fear. I didn't think she would harm me. Dread, horror ... those words were more accurate. I would do anything to delete the memory of having seen her. Realising that this is impossible, I start to cry.

Uhm, zebra crossings don't usually have traffic lights, do they?

They cross the street. The hem of the ghost's coat touches my car as she passes. Neither woman looks at me through the windscreen; I only realise I was afraid they would - afraid she would - once it hasn't happened.

Another interesting but not entirely original idea. Some great lines throughout, but it ended very suddenly and with a few things left wide open.

3/5?

One had forgotten a grey hooded top, the other a black scarf. 'Tell them to take whatever they want and go,' Greg muttered. 'The telly, the DVD player, our wallets - anything, as long as they leave.'

[2/2]

Parents began to ring the doorbell again. When they asked if I knew where their particular child was, I forced myself not to say, 'Oh, just take any. There are no individuals here. They've merged to form a rabble.' Two mothers contrived to devise a particularly exquisite form of torture; they left, with their children, then came back five minutes later.

[1/2]

My husband sighed. 'What do you want me to say, Jen? It's an insoluble problem. Why don't you hand out the phone numbers of some of our friends in Manchester? That way anyone who wants to can ring up and request proof that we hosted parties even when we were poor.'

Not entirely original, but definitely an interesting telling! 3.5 - 4/5

He told me no outright lies. He never explicitly said that his house was called Netterden. 'So it's pretentious to give a house a name?' were his exact words, and then he asked me if I couldn't think of another hypothesis to explain his having a visitors book.

I don't feel free, neither of Aaron nor of the row we've just had. As I walk in no particular direction, I start up the debate again in my mind. Silently, I list all the excellent points I made and after each one think, Too bloody right! It shouldn't even need saying! Arguing is so much more satisfying when your opponent isn't there to spoil your fun.

'I bet your aunt's Hampshire mansion has a name, doesn't it? And you don't think there's anything wrong with that.'
'My aunt's house needs a name, for the simple reason that it isn't on a street. They could hardly call it 27, The Middle of a Load of Greenery, could they?'

I hate the way he speaks to me - as if I'm sore sort of experiment he's in the middle of, not a fully fledged person in my own right. Now - this moment - is when I should tell him to fuck off and that I never want to see him again.
I can't leave yet. I'm too stubborn. I have to win this argument first.

I read once in a women's magazine that being with the wrong partner, someone who doesn't understand you or who criticises you all the time, can be a lonelier experience than being single. I think it must be true, though I wouldn't have thought so before I got involved with Aaron.

He doesn't sound angry. He sounds bored, as if it doesn't matter to him; he'd quite like to win the argument but he isn't emotionally invested in it. It makes me feel uneasy. So does the way he avoids my eye.