The Little Girl With The Blonde Plaits:
I was beginning to make a habit of this; venturing out to the Red Rec in the evenings. Especially now the air was getting warmer, although, for March, there was still a chill in the air. I almost welcomed it though. It made me remember how real everything was. It woke me up, from any nightmares I still had. It cooled me down from any flushed moments of heat and panic.
It was a sudden parallel; deafening the consistent, steady beat of my music. The same songs I'd kept clustered in a playlist for years now. The same ones I'd been listening to on the plane from Milan. I knew all the words now. You know, when you don't even need to think about them anymore? You realise you're singing along in your head, relating to every line, every word. I suppose back then I didn't realise how much I would. Foreshadowing my own fate.
But then everything goes quiet. As soon as that interlude of the pause button sounds, between the melody and then, nothing. Nothing for a moment. As if the world just stops, even for a second, before the birds start chirping and the distant sound of cars start drifting by. The world carrying on.
I find this bench, you see. Nobody ever sits on it. I don't know why. It's at the very peak of the hill, overlooking everything. Tall, spindly trees. Terraced houses. Factories, fields, fantasies. The play area, where, if I come early enough, the children are still there, begging their parents to swing them higher. The faint laughter. The faint tears. That was me, once upon a time. Gran says she used to take me when mum was at school or revising. Everyone used to mistake her for my mum. Or so she says. Sometimes I'll even see a figure, three, maybe four years old. Bright blonde hair, plaited or set free to catch the breeze. A smile so natural and effortless, with no idea what was to come. Thinking everything was normal. The melted ice-lolly on the floor; normal. Not seeing past it to realise that another child had shed tears over it minutes before.
Nathan had brought me here. That's something the little girl didn't know. That's something that wouldn't cross her mind for years to come. She was so protected back then, within her own mind. No recollection of the suffering that had struck her family. No idea that she was an accident on this Earth. A very loved accident, until she pushed all that away.
We sat on this very bench. Staring out at the same view. In fact, I probably told him stories about the little girl with the blonde plaits. He listened. I thought he listened. He probably didn't absorb a word of it. The whole time, just waiting for me to shut up, rolling his eyes when I wasn't looking.
He tried to make a move on me, on this bench. The light was dimming and it was a summer evening. I was wearing just a crop top and shorts, by his request. He told me I looked beautiful. Now I realise that word had no meaning. It was so he could feel the flesh of my thigh beneath his palm, gliding it up my leg in his subtle way of pretending it was showing care, when actually, it was some fucked up art of seduction.
"Not here." I had almost laughed at him, acknowledging that playful twinkle in his eye. "Not where somebody could see us."
"Nobody will see us." He assured me. Not even glancing around to check. Not even taking a second to find somewhere more private. If anything, behind a tree, in a dark corner. Not if he could have me there and then. His little plaything. He didn't even need to play with me. I was like some limited edition video game that, to him, the description on the back cover didn't appeal to, but he knew his mates would go mad over it. If he was bored, he might carelessly chuck it into the disk drive, pass the time, that same, motionless expression on his face as he sits through the opening credits.
The game is worn out now. It's been sold at one of those second hand electronic shops. Then sold on from there. Over and over. Losing its worth.
There's a damp patch on the bench next to me. A puddle of rainwater that would have collected on the tree above the night before, gathering in the dip of the wood.
I remember telling him no. "Why can't we just look at the view?" I'd almost begged him, the lights flaring up as the sun went down, an array of life below us. In the space of ten seconds, I could picture hundreds of different lives, so different to mine.
Somebody was being born. Somebody was dying.
Somebody was celebrating.
Somebody was crying.
Somebody was saying stop; that was me.
But the world didn't stop, and neither did he.
I hear the birds now. I notice how they all answer each other. When I have the chance to listen. A moment of silence, with myself, and the world. I was still one of those lives. Just one with so much more wisdom, at such a young age. Mum tells me; "Bethany, you've got your whole life ahead of you. You'll go places. You'll meet people."
But I've got my whole life behind me too.
I went places. The darkest places.
I met people. The cruelest people.
The air is a lot more bitter than I first anticipated. I guess maybe the more I stare at the icy grey sky, the haze of sinking orange so far away, the more the cold prickles through me.
The Red Rec is empty now. The dog walkers have fled to their dinner. The children are being tucked into bed. The little girl with the blonde plaits left a long time ago. But one day, sooner or later, she might come back.