Hey, everyone! Thanks if you've been reading The Wonderful Wizard of Fenchurch East. I'm sorry it's been taking me sooo long to update. The second chapters being done very slowly because I have alot on what with it being summer; exams, holidays and general worries blah blah blah. This is just a general fiction inspired today when I was on my way to town. It's actually very similar to what I saw. But I'll let you decide what a good summary should be, because if I tell you it might spoil it! Hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it, but I thought it was too short, so this is kind of just a draft. There's alot of my own local dialect (Cumbrian) but it's pretty easy to figure out. I think I used the word "ahld"? That just means "old" basically =D. See if you get the Titanic reference...nudge nudge *wink wink*. Tell me what you think!
A small, modest car was sailing down a busy Saturday road. It was about 8 am and most sensible people were still deep in their own beds. Inside the car, the woman driving rolled her eyes. She wished that was where she could be. Tucked away from the cold, damp weather and the early morning. Only two types of people missed lie-ins; students and the clinically insane. Except the parents driving those students into town, though. They were the sane ones. The woman was in her mid-forties, with slightly greying hair. She blew a strand of hair from her face and shivered as the windscreen wipers pivoted and scraped off the offending rain and condensation.
"Mum?" Came a voice from behind her "Can you hurry up? I am supposed to be meeting my friends, like, now!" Her mother sighed.
"Oh, calm down, we're nearly there," she said consulting her watch. The teenager responded by sighing, rolling her eyes at the ceiling of the car and folding her arms.
"I thought your shopping spree would have been cancelled, considerin' the weather and all, eh Christina?" The girl in the back just shrugged and try to have a look out of the Titanic-esque window.
The girl named Christina sighed.
"Nothin' like bloody ol' Hyde for pissin' down weather in the middle of June."
"A-bloody-men to that," sighed her mother, drumming her fingers impatiently against the steering wheel while they sat in a massive traffic jam and stifling a yawn "I don't see how anyone can get up this early just to go into town". She added the last part to herself and wiped the inside of the windscreen with her sleeve.
"Speaking of fuddy duddies," the woman said whilst Christina cringed and watched her mother point to the pavement. "Tragic ahld 'un there." Christina could see an old, worn woman carefully stepping her way down the pavement to their left. Whatever youthful bounce she had once possessed had now gone and was replaced by a sad, lonely promenade. She made an unpleasant twinge of sadness appear in Christina's stomach.
"Who's she?" She asked her mother.
"She's very clever that woman," She didn't really look like Carol Voderman's mother. She looked just like any other old woman, but without the air of happiness they had, that joy of grandchildren, of a big family. "She used to be a professor, you know."
"A professor? Of what?" Christina asked, shocked.
"Psychology," the woman replied. Christina let a little shocked 'oh' escape her.
"What happened to her?"
Her mother shrugged.
"Who knows? Life? She was in a coma for about a day, I think. Woke up though. Woke up asking for people who don't exist. Scoured the globe for 'em. God knows why she ended up in Hyde after living in London the whole of her life. An' Michelle told me when it all happened that her little lass had some sort of overdose when she was about two years older than you. That poor woman's never been the same. Got signed off from work for being bipolar or somethin'. I think she started all manner of bad stuff. Drinking and stuff. But now she doesn't even do that. She doesn't do anything. She just...exists. Poor woman. And she doesn't even have any family to visit. You'd think she'd be able to sort 'er head out, being all clued up with psychiatry and stuff."
"Psychology." Christina corrected.
Christina was, at this point, already as far turned around in her seat as she could be to gaze out the back window at the woman slowly making her way down the pavement.
"Have you ever spoken to her, then?" Christina asked.
"Me? Noooo. I think I've tried to but she won't talk to anyone here. Mebbe can't understand us. Or stand us. Shifty type. Hanging around police stations all the time, wandering around, on the steps, starin' in. I bet she nicks stuff. That big black coat looks like it could be a good nicking coat"
"Or maybe it's because of the weather. Or maybe it belonged to someone special. Looks like a man's coat, anyway." Christina defended the poor stranger.
"Poor woman," the teenager sighed "You don't realise what you've got until you lose it all, eh? And she had nowt to lose in first spot, anyways. Did she not have a husband or anything?"
"Probably at one point. But she woke up from that coma and she woke up as barmy as they come. Convinced she was some sort of messenger from the past. Asking for all sorts of weird stuff. People no one knew. I remember, they checked. She wrote down their names and they checked. She was right mental. But I think she pulled herself through with her daughter. But when she died I think she just cracked. There's only so much one person can take, yeah."
"So she sorted herself out, got a job, blah blah blah. She used to work in the police but she didn't seem interested in that anymore. It's like when you see them people on Jeremy Kyle that've been 'ypnotised so they don't like fags. Like something had made her completely off the idea of going anywhere near a police uniform. Just stayed at home and waited for whatever was comin' for 'er."
"That's really sad," Christina muttered. It really did make her sad. The woman was level with her window now and she looked up at her again; only to see she was staring straight at her.
Christina smiled a smile of warmth and pity. A smile that said "please hold out". The old woman stopped for a tiny second and smiled. She closed her eyes and lifted her face up to the sky. The woman opened her mouth slightly and smiled up slightly at the rain as if it was an old friend greeting her after many years apart. Under all her unkempt hair and sad mask, was a face that could have been pretty. She opened her eyes. Her eyes acknowledged this and seemed to say to Christina "I know". Christina's mother sighed a big, dramatic sigh.
"Anyway! At least one lesson can be learned from her. She never gave up looking for whatever she's lost. Maybe lost 'er 'usband up here and she's searching for him. Or pinin'. Either way, never gave up."
"Never?"
"Not yet." The red light before them contemplated the change to amber and then green and flickered through its system.
"Oh thank God!" The woman in the front cried. She fiddled around and they started to slide away from the strange woman slowly. Christina turned for a last glance of her. The woman was still looking her way and gave her a quick, almost undetectable wink and smile.
"I hope she'll be OK"
"Nah, if she was gonna top 'erself she'd 'ave done it long ago, lass. It's not like men didn't try to chat her up back in the day. I've saw a photo of her in the paper once. Right beauty. But that didn't seem to be an option for her. I'd bet good money that she's a widow"
"Oh," Christina turned away from the woman and arranged her seat belt so that it lay on her smoothly. "What's her name, then?" Christina's mother turned around in her seat slightly.
"Alex," she replied. "It's Alex Drake"