Tears drip between my fingers. When I can bear my own grief no longer I howl and hurl the thing at the wall.

MAC Love tokens. Doesn’t that conjure up something sweet and timeless and real?

My fingers are stiff with cold. I put down my pen and tug the blanket more tightly round my shoulders.

If I look like a bag lady, so be it. My circulation is shot to hell, all a result of this heart problem they cannot get to the bottom of.

Love tokens. I press my palms against my ribcage, as if searching for the butterfly ghosts of some lost emotion, but all I can detect is a slight, tight burning sensation, the result of too much banana on my cornflakes.

Jim once carved for me a love spoon out of apple wood.

I think I can still remember the tickle of possibility deep inside, the belief in magic.

A memory surfaces. An elderly spinster aunt, living alone here in Fettermore, in the house by the church, my mother packing me off at regular intervals. Make yourself useful. She has no one else.

The house smells of broth and mushrooms, and the dust on her fine mahogany dining table is dappled with cat-prints.

Self-image

I wipe them off, make tea, volunteer to shop. From the cupboard under the stairs, the old dame drags a tartan shopping trolley, deep and wide.

I notice cobwebs in the corners. It is a relic, the type of monstrosity that negates my whole self-image.

My mini skirt, my cute beret, my whip-smart understanding of the nuclear arms race and the ethical treatment of animals.

My whole being droops like a pair of un-elasticated pants as I drag the relic along the village street.

Folk stare at me from cottage windows. I am an incomer, a foreigner with a posh accent and a borrowed shopping trolley.

I still remember that walk of shame.

I lived for the times when my old aunt ran out of flour. It meant I could escape to the mill.

Jim would be there, a young man just out of school, helping his father.

He’d fill my measure with fresh, powdery flour and smile and voice mundane country thoughts that meant nothing to the young, urban me.

Been a good growing season. His slow, blue-eyed smile. Looks like we’re in for a dreich day. I started to tell him about my life in Edinburgh.

My visits to the mill became more frequent.

I’d wait for him in the half-dark under the apple tree, imagining the taste of flour on his lips.

The apple tree was the oldest one in the mill den. It would be even older now, if that ignorant gardener hadn’t chopped it down.

Back in those days, people knew how to prune trees properly.

One day, in the month before I left for Cambridge, Jim presented me with a love-spoon, carved especially for me from one of the branches.

It’s in the drawer somewhere. It must be. The need to find it is overwhelming.

I push my chair back from the desk and get heavily to my feet, completing a 360-degree spin around the room.

I feel disoriented, as if the stacks of books are bearing down on me.

I bend double, hugging my laboured breathing close to me. The love token. I must find it. You kept it. You did.

Every bitter bone in my body laughs off the notion. Memory chimes in with a snigger.

You snapped it over your knee. You fed the pieces into the Aga.

Whirlwind

I stumble back to my chair, wilt beneath the blanket. The breeze of my motion has disturbed the pages in my notebook.

The weight of ink anchors the written pages, but the blank ones flutter like wings. I have so few blank pages left.

Fear goads me into motion again. I am a whirlwind, popping open cupboard doors, shuffling the things on my desk.

I haul open the top drawer, scan it for clues. There is the carpenter’s pencil, the one Lucie used to pen a love note to a man who could never be hers. Anger unfurls in me like a sail, driving me on.

I drag out the entire drawer and dump its contents on the tired carpet: old receipt books, recipes scribbled on envelopes, spent batteries, pencil shavings.

There in the back corner lies the thing I hadn’t known I was looking for.

Another love token. A sapphire pendant on a gold chain. I begin to laugh. Seizing the blue stone, I cup the cold weight of it in my palm, remembering the story of it.

In the light from the desk lamp the blue stone sparkles and my eyes nip as if I’ve stared too long at the sun on the sea.

I recall finding it, maybe 20 years ago.

It’s a story that is as old as the hills: misty-eyed heroine discovers the receipt (the cost of it! And from that jeweller!), then creeps softly away, confident of a gorgeous, glittery surprise waiting for her on Christmas morning.

Only the surprise never comes, and you know full well that she’s going to be opening a set of non-stick pans while her heart breaks.

One of life’s oldest clichés.

I let myself sink back to that time. Had I smelled her perfume on him? No.

There had been no clues, no indicators, other than that Christmas gift, the one that was never intended for me.

Monstrous

There had been nothing leading up to that to soften the blow.

Back to the present and I’m kneeling on the carpet, my insides heaving and the necklace still clutched in my fist.

Tears drip between my fingers.

When I can bear my own grief no longer I howl and hurl the thing at the wall.

The sparkling stone hits the plaster with a hard click, and the too-silent aftermath echoes round the room.

My head spins like a broken wheel. Sagging there on the carpet, I don’t know if I feel better or worse. The urge to destroy is monstrous.

I leave my study, my books, my blanket and my warmth. I don’t care what time it is.

I have the mill key in one hand, the pendant in the other.

Smashing it against the wall has damaged the precious stone not one jot. I have to get rid of this. Life is so fragile.

Every night I torment myself with the thought that I might not wake in the morning.

There are loose ends I cannot leave behind.

More tomorrow.