I took the advice to write a normal day for my protagonist but couldn't resist the usual odd twist at the end, making it perfectly normal for me (the idea of the knowledgeable stranger who knows more than they ought is something of a trope with my writing - especially if I don't know where I'm going). It's... working so far. I do not believe it is like my more recent (and slightly better than usual) efforts. However, it's there.
www.750words.com tells me that it's mainly affectionate and concerned with eating and drinking tonight, but I have little else to share. There is a swear word in this, so I guess it's NSFW but it's only one.
Waking alone, always a slight
disappointment, was ameliorated a little by the dancing dust motes in the shaft
of summer light spilling through the badly drawn curtains. That, and the fact
that she’d managed to make that sentence work despite still being groggy from
whatever the dream was that she’d just had. It was on the tip of her brain but
she just couldn’t grasp it. Never mind,
the generally positive feeling from it was more than enough for the occasion.
Barefoot, she padded out of her room, saw
to the needs of the day and then went foraging for food in the kitchen down the
hallway. It wasn’t a terribly large flat but it did the job beautifully and
that was what counted. Old carpet, rubbed by years of use and by people that
weren’t her, meant that it was comfortable without being opulent and relatively
easy to clean. She did own a hoover and, now and again, it saw the light of
day, but mostly she was careful. Plates and food stayed in the kitchen or
sallied forth to be placed on the tea-tray in the living room in front of any
particularly good piece of television before being routed and retreating in
disorder the following morning. One washer-dryer, insistently flashing that it
was done, greeted her as she opened the door and she would hang any blouses,
shirts, skirts, dresses and trousers to dry on their hangers, obviating the
need for ironing before the morning was out. Underwear faced the horror of a
full drying cycle to be done at 2am when power was at its cheapest.
Cereal was kept in the same cupboard as
the bowls, with the drawer beneath for cutlery, and both were next to the sink.
Last night’s pan, water within to remove the line of soup, and an empty bowl
and spoon waited, lurking with intent. Milk from the fridge, where else, and
then she tucked in. Glass of fruit juice, one of her little luxuries and tomato
this week, and then she was back to brush teeth and get clean. Power shower,
hissing water steaming up the windows of the small bathroom, though there was
no bath, and a decision made again not to shave her legs, a few more days
wouldn’t hurt. A few minutes to apply mascara, decision to avoid eye-liner, and
make sure her hair was presentable. It wasn’t.
Full brushing followed by a derisory
attempt to style before abandoning the whole endeavour and flinging it all into
a rough pony tail. It wasn’t straight and she didn’t care, it was a day off and
she could look howsoever she wished. It was warm, she decided looking out of
the window, and so she settled on a t-shirt, checked short sleeve shirt
(unbuttoned) and a pair of comfy jeans. Trainers donned, watch on and she was
out of the door with a rucksack just over forty minutes from waking. She wasn’t
setting any records but it was a passable imitation of being in a hurry.
Spying a bus rumbling up the hill she
decided to take a risk and leave the car in the space under the block of flats.
A hurried walk down the stairs later, still timing it right to miss any other
denizens, and she was out and across the road without looking. She never looked
and, she reflected, if her life was a movie she would have been mown down by a
car or something. It wasn’t, she wasn’t, and she reached the bus stop in good
order. Time to check her phone, no messages overnight and the clock was off by
a few minutes, and then she was boarding the bus and paying for the day-long
ticket option. Pockets, she thought, a thousand blessings on the soul that
thought of them and paper money that could fit comfortably inside them.
It was indeed a warm day, and it got
warmer as the morning progressed, heat pouring through the Perspex of the local
bus company window. No one joined her this morning, too late to catch the
morning rush-hour and too early to meet the people that avoided the rush-hour.
Besides, this was a line heading away from town and the shops and back out into
the sticks beyond the confines of the city. Pleasant views, usually ignored by
most passengers who had either lived in the area all their lives or whose
attention was almost entirely on the smart-phone screen before them.
And
what did you do today? Someone would ask them. And they would be forced to
reply: took a selfie on a bus and updated
my Twitter account. It was almost loveable in the same way that one wanted
to rescue a small bird and hand rear it in the ubiquitous shed at the bottom of
the garden. So, not at all an endearing quality but a pleasant fiction that
could only be maintained by not talking directly at the offending articles.
Her stop reached, far too quickly for a
day off, she thanked the driver and left. A swift walk from the roadside took
her into the treeline and, once ensconced by the leaves and the bark, she was
free from the trappings of the modern world. A moment. A deep breath. Eyes
closed, repeat the experience, yes, life was still lived and good. Yes, there
was still nature and, yes, there was still the omnipresence of cow dung, bird
shit and decaying animal flesh on the breeze. All in all, it was shaping up to
be an excellent walk.
By midday she had hiked a good distance
along the moors beyond the woodland, at the top of the ridgeline, and reached
Lancashire. She was glad that she had gone for trainers rather than her boots
for, though the terrain was easy, the weather continued to heat up. Part of her
regretted the jeans but it wouldn’t have been worth shaving her legs to feel a
little cooler and the pockets had been useful for picking interesting leaves
and stones. Pre-packed lunch from the previous morning was thus consumed with
relish and with an honest appetite: ham salad sandwiches, real butter; Cox
apple; kiwi fruit, the kind they brought on ships rather than aeroplanes to
save food miles and the planet; small cheeses; yoghurt and a cherry bakewell
with icing. Sluicing it all down with a bottle of water, apart from the larger
canister she carried for travelling itself, and she was back on the trail.
Heading south this time she took in the
delights of the reservoir park, a narrow valley walk beside a babbling brook
and a nature reserve administered by the Department of Education before
deliberately joining a little-used country lane. By the time the heat of the
day had begun to fade and the clouds scudded their way over the horizon to
herald the beginning of the evening she had made it south of Leeds and then
back north once more. Perhaps, she thought, she had wasted the fare on the
buses.
With that thought in mind, and another
more pressing urge, she wandered into a small public house and obeyed the call
of nature. Checking her watch for the first time since putting it on that
morning she decided that there was time to tarry before making the final walk
through the city and to her flat. It had been, to all intents and purposes, a
day off well spent.
“What’ll you have?” One of the
insufferably young bar types, with messy hair that was probably considered fashionable,
and the type of stubble that just screamed ‘designer’ but actually, when
questioned quietly later, would admit to being ‘lazy’.
“Riggwelter, please.” It was rare indeed
to see that on tap and the opportunity was not to be missed. Because the day
had been a good one she risked a smile.
“Half?”
And instantly regretted it. “No, pint
please, thanks.”
“So, what brings you out this evening
then?”
Dear
God, he was a talker. There were two types of talker: the affable one that
genuinely plied the trade of the publican and was able to ask questions, chat
and listen without a hint of condescension or irony and the other one, the one
that was looking to imitate the publican and weighed up pursuing a date or just
being plain insulting. His stance, and the eyes that flicked only occasionally
to her own, marked him out as being the latter. “Prostitution.”
Aura established, politeness rebuked, he
pulled the pint in silence and handed it over. She got change from a fiver, but
didn’t bother checking it, and then took both her pint and the coins to a
table.
“Prostitution? Really?”
“No. It’s a cover. Actually I’m a killer
for hire.”
“Course you are. Course you are.” It was
an older man and she was sure that she’d chosen a table that had not had anyone
near it. Which meant that he had followed her. “Here alone then?”
The current advice was to lie at this
point and claim that she was being met shortly by someone else but her day had
been too good and the altercation at the bar had left her bristling and ready
for a meatier discussion. “Yes. Yes I am. You?”
He laughed a little, a rumbling chuckle
that started like an avalanche far away and ended abruptly, like someone had
pulled down earmuffs. “Yep, always alone me. And your type too I reckon.”
This didn’t seem like an attempt to ‘play
nice’ but nor was the normal feeling of threat there in his words. Something
was going on but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. “My type?”
She arched her eyebrows a little.
“Service.”
There was no public house, no chatter, no
noise of an average summer evening. For a moment there was just the two of
them, alone, facing one another. Then everything crashed back in again and she
rallied. “Pardon me? I’m not a waitress.”
“Never said you were, Miss.” His smile
grew wider and he proffered his hand, “Tremayne, Miss, you don’t know me and I
don’t know you. I like to make new friends though.”
His hand was left hanging. “Well, mister
Tremayne, I’m not sure I’m the friendly type and I really don’t like your tone.”
“Shame,” he dropped the hand, “Being in
the Service is awful lonely at times, don’t you think? Still, I suppose a day
off now and then helps recharge those batteries.” Either the man didn’t take
hints or something was seriously awry, his own references were too direct now
to blithely ignore and it was beginning to sound like he’d been following her
for much longer than from the bar. “Course, no one ever really takes a day off,
do they now? Mostly it’s just the same job and waiting for things to happen.
Checked your phone?”
She was completely unsurprised when it
went off a fraction of a second after Tremayne had paused.
“Might be important.”
“Go on, you’ve got my attention.”
“Collection job I reckon. There’s someone
needs a deal putting to them and you’re the best they’ve got on call at the
moment. ‘Cept that’s not entirely true, but humour them. Anyway, subject is a
lady I reckon you know well and she’s out on manoeuvres, whatever that means,
and needs pulling in by your lot. You’ll accept when you see who it is, course
you will, but you’ll be late.”
“Why-?”
“Am I telling you this? Like I said, bit
lonely in the Service and I like to make new friends.” His face remained mostly
passive, a slight squint on his left eye, and there was nothing in his tone to
suggest anything more. Body language appeared comfortable and he was making
easy eye contact. He took a sip of his own pint. “Good choice, Riggwelter, but
there’s a micro-brewery about here and they do that on tap too. Red Stag. Go
on, check your phone, I shan’t be offended.”
Doing so revealed part of the story he
had told, a message asking her to get back for an offer with a subject out on manoeuvres.
“You’re wondering how I know?” He took a
further sip of his pint, clearly enjoying it. Then he shrugged nonchalantly, “Call
it an old-timer’s intuition if you like.”
“I don’t believe in intuition.” She hated
the fact that her reactions were being played and read so easily by this
stranger. “But I suppose you knew that.”
“No, I don’t know you, Miss.”
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