We Wish You A Merry July
As Amy starts to move on and rebuild her life, she learns that some traditions are worth keeping – at any time of the year!
with his teenage daughter, Chloe. “Just the two of them,” he had said. She’d hoped they’d become friends but each time she’d tried to make conversation he hurried away.
He doesn’t look at Amy as he spears a Santa Stop Here sign among geraniums and marigolds in the border. “Christmas.”
“But it’s… it’s…” Preposterous, ridiculous, barbaric. “July.”
“I know,” he snarls before he stalks back inside, slamming his front door.
Later Amy is sitting in the kitchen with her sister, Fiona, sipping iced tea. She wanted to sit in the garden but the music from next door is still playing. Still loud.
“Can’t you ring the council – or the police?” Fiona shouts towards the open
“You moved it forward.” Amy feels a pang of sympathy and shame. She’d judged him and she’d been wrong.
“It might seem thoughtless and rude but… it would feel unlucky if we didn’t do it every July and… she’s all I’ve got.”
“I’m so sorry.” Amy fumbles for something to say. “Would you both like to come to dinner?”
“I don’t need your pity.” He spins around and stalks down the garden path but not before Amy has seen the tears glistening in his eyes. She can feel them forming in her own. She feels so helpless and hopeless, her own problems suddenly inconsequential. Unimportant.
Over the next twelve months Amy and Alex form a friendship of sorts. Sometimes she thinks it’s more than that – a lingering look, a brush of their hands as they lean on the fence, a wooden barrier between them and their growing attraction. Sometimes Amy sees Chloe leaving the house and she studies her, worrying whether she is too thin, too pale. Alex never talks about Chloe’s illness. They speak of the insignificant – the weather, the news – but then later their conversations are more reflective… his divorce, hers, what they’d like a second chance at…
“Love,” she told him. He had turned away and her bruised heart, which had been healing, ached once more.
Fiona persuaded Amy to download a dating app on her phone. She showed her how to swipe left or right.
“I’m not judging people on their appearance,” Amy was adamant, remembering how she’d unfairly judged Alex. But her phone pinged a match.
“Still want me to delete the app?” Fiona held her mobile tantalising out of reach and Amy muttered about annoying sisters as she snatched it from her. She gazed at the profile of the man who liked her. He looked… safe. Kind.
Days later Amy carefully smudged silver glitter over her eyelids because she was fun, painted her lips deep red because she was confident, dusted bronzer on cheekbones because she was healthy. She wondered when dating had got so complicated. She studied her reflection that didn’t quite look like her, but wasn’t that the point? To be someone else, someone different?
Her stomach thronged with nerves as she stepped out of her front door, into a future she wasn’t sure she was ready for.
“Going somewhere nice?” Alex was unloading bags from the boot of his car.
“A date.” She flashed a lookwhat-you’re-missing-out-on smile and an expression crossed his face but she couldn’t decipher it.
Later, she stumbled home clutching her bag and her humiliation tightly to her chest. Her date had been neither kind nor safe. She’d had a lucky escape but she didn’t feel lucky. She felt angry and rejected.
Alex was framed in his window. The honeyed glow of the lamp warm and inviting. He tapped on the glass and raised his eyebrows in a question. With trembling fingers she stabbed her key in her lock.
“Amy?” Alex was suddenly behind her. She felt the heat of him, his breath, his body. She felt something stirring within her but she couldn’t turn to face him. She knew her tears had made her make-up run and she didn’t want him to see. To know that she’d been cast aside once more. That she’d offered a piece of herself to a stranger, allowed him access to her heart, hoping that when his fingers had snaked under her blouse and she whispered, “No. I want to take things slowly,” that she’d be worth waiting for. Apparently she wasn’t.
She took her shame inside, closing the door before Alex could speak again.
Daffodils push their hopeful heads through the earth as spring rolls around again, before wilting under the summer sun. Amy hasn’t been on any more dates.
It is again July 7th. Tonight, she will dig out her wedding album and the alcohol, but first she has some gardening to do. Her front lawn is yellowing, her borders tangled with weeds. She waters
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www.myweekly.co.uk