Double Exposure [1]

You live and then you die.

Veronica believed that was all there was to it.

She had watched a film over the weekend dramatising events between two iconic stars of their day. They're ghosts, she had thought as she switched off her streaming device. I'm watching shadows. The narrated moments the dead left behind, which mattered so much once, would not even be remembered in a generation or two, except as some memento in a digital cabinet of curiosities.

It was humanity's self-indulgence to believe their lives mattered on a cosmic scale. Or that their experiences would make for good reading. Take herself as an example: A woman waiting in a coffee shop for an old friend. It had the beginnings of a good story, or so she thought. But what would I call it? Shall I be clever and call it coffee with two slaughters? No, three. Two old friends that meet to slaughter each other and their past. A past that mattered to no one, but themselves, and one even she was starting to forget.

The mouth of time blows all our ashes into the pit of obscurity. Who had said that? She couldn't remember offhand, but it was true. The common thread between humans and their history was this sort of cruel Alzheimer's disease, where forgetfullness made them view each other with fear and paranoia. Every old generation would stop to ask the new: You seem familiar, do I know you? And in return every new generation turned around to respond: I don't know, who were you again? And when either or both had a lucid moment they'd claim the other was repeating themselves.

And although repetition was the mother of reinvention, as a writer, Veronica knew that for dramatical longevity you needed to acquire a mythical status, which allowed for a reinterpretation to fit the times. Say like Stoker's Dracula. Or Shakespeare's Macbeth. Or the Bible's Jesus. Real people, even if they own half the world during the dash of their lives, inevitably disappear.

You are relevant, then irrelevant. You live and then you die. That was all there was to it. She supposed that was why some writers wrote at a fundamental level, to bypass the inevitability of being forgotten. Attach your name to a mythical being and you live on by proxy. Like Dracula, you are constantly resurrected by the culture of the day.

"Veronica? Coucou! Veron- Ronny!"

She looked up at the call of her name. She recognised the distinctive timbre of the voice at once, but the dialect was different than she remembered. It stalled her reaction, until she saw the face. Now that she would have known anywhere. A wave of memories came flooding back to engulf her senses.

She stood up and half walked, half ran over. "Heather! You came!"

"Did you ever doubt it?" Her friend asked, offering up an embrace that Veronica accepted despite her misgivings.

"I expected you to stand me up."

"Really?" Heather took a step back, hands on hips. Her eighties-style power suit, Valentino tote bag and latest brand of smartphone all glittered in matching emerald greens, giving her a dazzling aura.

"Well... It's been so long." She tried to covertly search her former school friend's face for any tell-tale signs of the passing decades since they had last seen each other. But it was a version of today's Instagram Face, a flattened, poreless look, inspired by celebrities like Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner, and between her memory and this reality in the flesh, apparently no discernible time had passed at all. "God look at you-- an Insta-babe. You haven't aged a day."

Heather pointed at her. "Et toi? What about all your achievements."

"My achievements?"

Continuing to dazzle, Heather sat down in a flourish of green. "Don't be modest. I've been following your successes and bought everything you've ever written."

"You have?"

"You sound disappointed."

"No, just surprised." She sat back down, unable to stop herself from feeling somewhat deflated. The reveal of her literary success had been denied to her. "How do you know about that?"

"I used to scour the bookshelves. I knew you'd make it on them one day. Now the shelves are all virtual, of course, but I found you. You changed your name, but I could always tell your style-- Hey, you really are disappointed at my spoiler, aren't you?"

I just wanted to share it with you myself. But then I should've guessed. I could never hide anything from you.

She realised the failure to mask her initial disappointment had been all too apparent, so she said, "All of a few seconds, maybe. I just wanted to be the one to tell you."

"You know when I first saw you in print, I felt so proud, I could've burst."

"I never knew you cared. You always used to fall asleep when I read you my stories."

"I was always listening. I've loved everything you've written. My favourite is The Princess of Ayashah. Did you write that for your daughter?"

No. I wrote that one for you. "I write for myself," she said.

"You remember that first book you wrote in school?"

Now why did you say that? A good guess? "My God, you remember that?"

"I do. And what those bitches did--"

"Bitches in every sense of the word--" she chimed in. "They'd choke if they saw you."

Heather shook her head, "If only they could see you now."

"You think so?"

"Without a doubt, and speaking of choking, do you remember the one that always looked like she'd accidentally swallowed her vibrator--"

"--sideways?"

"The black widow of blowjobs. She'd suck a dick--"

"--right off." Veronica finished, falling into laughter. She was suprised at how quickly and easily they had resumed their signature style of conversation. They hadn't seen each other in years, but here they were, back again biting into each other's sentences as though their syntax was made of double chocolate cake.

But Veronica stopped her laughter short when she noticed that the people at neighbouring tables were beginning to stare at them. The attention didn't seem to bother Heather, though.

She asked, quietly, "Say, isn't this just like old times?"

"Yes... and no, of course. We haven't been in each other's lives for a long time, Ron. A lot has happened to change us both, I bet."

Of course they'd changed. How could they not? Would such stagnation even be a good thing? Wouldn't that mean they were becoming irrelevant?

God, listen to me. We are all going to become irrelevant, change or no change. That's the fucking point.

While she had secretly hoped that the decades of time would not have been long enough for them to change beyond recognition, the cynic in her was quick to intervene and quash her childlike fervour for any hopes of it to be true. The familiarity felt a little artificial, now, and its arrival a little too soon.

"What's that sigh for?"

Oh, nothing. Just swallowing down such great expectations gives the mind terrible indigestion.

"Contemplating the meaning of life, like a good little novelist."

"My goodness. That does sound serious."

Heather gave the impression of a wink and a smile as she spoke, but it was so brief that Veronica thought she imagined it. It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn't actually seen Heather's face move yet. She wondered, a little cruelly, if an emotion ever did manage to make a rare appearance on her face, whether she would feel shock, as though she'd just seen a wax museum mannequin move.

"I've been doing research for a new book. On how things have changed in the past thirty years," she said finally. "It's been enlightening and depressing at the same time."

"Welcome to the 21st century. Out with the old. And in with whatever's currently in for the tiniest of moments."

"You mean out with us." Or me, at any rate.

"Speak for yourself. I'm never going out of style." Heather spied a barista wiping a nearby table, and proceeded to wave him over to their table. He politely declined the invitation by pointing to a sign above the counter that reminded patrons the establishment was self-serving.

"No one comes to your table anymore, either," Veronica added.

"Well, this was your place of appointment, remember?" Heather spoke with the disdain of one who had just arrived from the continent. "What do you expect from a local greaser?"

"Local greaser? When was the last time you saw one of those? They're all coffee franchises now. Case in point." She indicated to the generic chairs and tables and huge coffee cup avatars surrounding them. "So much has changed in this town. I don't blame you for not recognising this place."

Heather kept staring at the barista, as though she could pull him over to their table by will alone. "Really? Should I do?"

"It's not that important. I don't recognise a lot of the places, either."

"Ditto when I came back last Christmas for the first time in years."

"You did? How did that go?"

"How do you think?"

Heather's attention had returned to the table, but unable to read her face, Veronica wasn't sure what to think. "I can't know unless you tell me," she said.

"My brother was there." This time Heather clearly sounded upset, and for a split second, her adopted West London dulcet tone dissipated to reveal the regional dialect that had been hiding beneath her well rounded vowels.

She immediately regretted her insistence. "So that bad, huh? I'm sorry."

Heather's hand did a quick right-swipe in the air. "Now how about that something to drink? You had anything yet?"

She shook her head. "I've been waiting for you."

If only you knew how long.

"Well, as you've made me feel too old for milkshakes and fries anymore, how about two afternoon teas and some cake to go with all this adult stuff?"

"You mean two cafe mochas and red velvet muffins surely?"

Heather waved at the barista, trying to catch his eye again, but remained unsuccessful. "See? You are up with the times. And here I was worried you were beginning to sound like a grumpy old woman."

"Do you want me to go up and order?" Veronica asked finally, beginning to feel irritation at the barista herself.

"He'll come to us." It was said with a steely determination that she couldn't help but admire. "But Jesus, this town has changed."

She gave a nod in glum agreement. "What hasn't? And where are all the kids? They don't hang out in the parks like we used to back in the day."

Heather gave a vocal grimace towards the end of Veronica's rhetoric. "Ouch. I spoke too soon, grumpy. But as the Insta influencer, I can tell you firsthand that they're all being antisociable online. If some of the DMs I get are anything to go by..."

"Online being the catch-all phrase for the vortex that has sucked the fresh air out of their lives. They live in a different reality. You know what's wrong with kids today? They want to be kids forever. Sometimes I think I never should have had a child."

"Hey, you were the one who always loved kids." She sounded confused, "I thought being a mother would match up to your expectations."

"It did-- it does. There are times I think of it as this miraculous thing, bringing life into the world. But then other times, it's like a car crash you survive. It defies description."

"I'm glad I never went down that route. Je ne regrette rien," she responded a little too quickly. "I'm surprised you called her Heather, though."

"Are you? You know I always liked the name."

"Well, I feel guilty as I can't stand the name Veronica," Heather replied, continuing her glib manner of talk. "I nearly named my Shih Tzu bitch Ronny, though."

"I imagined you more with a Pomeranian," she chuckled. "What did you finally call her?"

"Verona, after that play we did in school, remember?"

"What? When you nearly circumcised Romeo with his own sword?"

"Well, he was getting too forward with Juliet as I recall. Got carried away with the play."

"They nearly carried him away... I always wished my daughter would find a friend like you at school to have her back."

"And does she?"

She gave a small nod, "I hope so... I think so... as far as I know. But then I'm only her mum. Her grandmother is her confidant." Another sigh escaped her lips. "Sometimes I feel so guilty for thinking it's a pity they can't just pop out fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Especially when they get to their teens. At times I can't wait for my daughter to turn eighteen, then out she goes into the real world and I can have my house back, unshackled from hormonal hostility..."

"Now, you don't really mean that," Heather stepped into her speech with a tone of subtle sobriety.

"No," she admitted, averting her gaze away from Heather's, "I sometimes miss her even when she's there-- God, I sound like my mother!"

"Then how lucky you are," Heather gave a slight nod of her head. "She's a queen. And I don't blame you, from what I've seen, you've a beautiful daughter, Ron."

"You've seen her?"

Heather paused for a moment, before she said, "Yes... when I colluded with her to video chat with your mum. I couldn't wait to see her."

"They didn't tell me."

"That was my doing," Heather admitted. "You're going to have to put up with me next Christmas."

"Jesus, you've invited yourself over for Christmas already?"

Heather nodded. "Your mum was so right when she said I would tell you. I could never keep a secret from you."

She feigned indignance. "Great, now I'm going to have to put up with three teenage girls for Christmas. Like, living with one and having another for a mother isn't bad enough already."

"Well, if your daughter is anything like her namesake, she's a joy to have at home, I'm sure."

"A pain in the proverbial, more like. I honestly don't know where she gets it from. I was never as bad as either of you."

"You wish. We were both that bad. And your mum taught us everything we know! She was our third musketeer."

"That sounds more like an indictment than a compliment."

"It's a compliment, of course. You know I'd come over to yours for the classy experience, right? Your whole home life was so different. You never used slang at home. You never ate fast food at home. It was all coq au vin, chicken piccata, and vegan risottos once a week before vegan was even a thing."

She put her head in her hands. "Urgh, you make it sound so idyllic and nerdy at the same time."

Heather excitedly slapped a hand on the table, as though she just remembered another damning piece of evidence. "Instead of watching television, your parents would get us to play Scrabble or chess!"

"Shit, it gets worse."

"As a young girl, to me it was smashing. I never even got bedtime stories at home, yours were by Socrates and Shakespeare. Your mum and dad dressed like movie stars, and had the same charisma--"

"--So, that's why we got so many strange looks on parent evenings."

"Oh, stop."

"It's true, though! Mum is still the diva. Dad is still her biggest fan."

"Good for them."

"I love them both to distraction," she couldn't help but smile, "but that's one thing that certainly didn't match up to my expectations--"

"--married life? That's another non-starter I don't regret, either. Kicked him out at year one, and never looked back. But I was in awe of your mum and dad, how much they were in each other's lives and in yours..."

"I know. You never needed to tell me that."

"All I know is you never made me feel as if I had to." Heather reached out across the table and squeezed her hand. "You shared it all with me so openly. There was so much reason to be jealous of you, but also none at all... because I just felt so grateful you wanted me in your home."

"We wanted you there because we all loved you--" she said, and stopped as she sensed correctly that Heather was about to bite into her sentence.

"I really missed your mum -- all of you like mad -- when you moved away."

Veronica did not know how to respond, then, and neither noticed the silence until it was upon them. Individual and shared, it came pregnant with the unspoken past. She inwardly groaned at the tired metaphor, but it was true nevertheless: Silence was a fertile womb. She knew that all too well. It all depended on the seeds planted in it; what you reaped between each other could fester stillborn or grow lush green.

In many ways, she felt women were experts on the multifaceted shape of silence. She had even spoken about it at a book convention once, telling the audience how without dialogue what was birthed in silence could poison, even kill, but that if shared where no words were needed, it could also heal. That silence was golden wasn't told to previous generations of children to merely quieten them. In some countries silence was seen as something delicate and easily broken, and thus valuable, and tangible enough to sell as a commodity. In Nordic countries for instance, they treasured silence for what it didn't do, she had told the convention; it didn't wake, annoy, or threaten you, and they sold it on nature trails and fjord cruises like a spa might offer a therapeutic massage.

But what if the silence within isn't a glacial fjord of porcelain ice carved by some ancient hand of creation, but manmade and urban, cheap and deafening?

What if all the silence did, when filled with the buzz of white of unanswered questions demanding answers, was to painfully amplify their refusal to shut down in the mind?

I write to drown out that noise.

She quickly thought of something to say. A memory popped into her mind. "Remember we were going to pack a bag for you? How we planned for you to run away with us? We were going to smuggle bedsheets to make into a rope for the climb down from your bedroom..."

"God, don't remind me. We were so fucking naive. And you know what? That's the one thing I don't miss. I don't miss that innocence. It's a darkness full of traps."

"So is memory."

I write to drown out its noise.

Memories could make and break you, and were the very definition of you. So, how could you escape them, without first losing your mind?

"You can box up memories, though, Ron. Tie them up with a neat little bow, and put them away. Don't tell me you haven't done that?"

She gave a reluctant nod of her head. "I have to admit that most of my current writing feels that way. I've been asking myself if it's me trying to hold on to something before it's too late? That it's not so much about shedding psychological baggage, but picking them up and putting them in order before they get lost."

"That sounds like a good thing to me. Isn't it?"

"Sometimes."

But sometimes it was overwhelming; the nostalgia could be sad, or obsessive, Veronica had discovered. Sometimes something you thought unconnected could trigger a flashback to a certain time in your life, without it really being clear as to why. The emotions you thought you'd left behind could come back and call for you when you least expected it.

I write to drown out their noise.

When the past had come knocking on the door of her sensibilities, she had been stripping the wallpaper from her daughter's bedroom, remonstrating herself for not hiring a decorator. She had reached the window, and suddenly thought of making bedsheets out of rope. Feeling suffocated, she had dropped the stripper, and started to write about Heather. The words had flowed out like blood from an open wound. It had been hours before she could breathe easy. Before she'd felt the wound close and her heart finally resettle in her chest again.

But when my past came back for me, it was as if my shadow had woken up and tapped me on the shoulder, wanting me to know it was there. It never leaves you. It just follows you from behind.

"Ron, I keep losing you. You alright?"

She shrugged, unsure of how to respond. "I was just thinking... it's a feeling I've had for a while... that it's like my psyche is in the final, painful throes of letting go of my adolescence, but also the idea of it being this time that will never come again. Good or bad, life will never be that much of a rush, too. I've not felt emotions that strong, or feelings that intense since my teenage years, and there's the worry that I never will again."

Heather shook her head in a slow, thoughtful sway. "I hear you what you're saying, but I don't agree. What did you call it? The hostility of hormones? That's all it is. You just think you feel things more when you're young... But, if I can add a caveat here, that doesn't mean I don't worry about it, too."

"Do you worry?"

Because on the outside, it seems you haven't let the worry age you at all. If only I could see what lies beneath the cosmetics and Instagram makeovers. If only you'd give me a smile fearless of wrinkles so I can tell if you're really still that young girl you were somewhere inside. The young girl I could never forget. The young girl I fell in love with.

"Sure. Way too often. Why do you sound so surprised? Oh, I may not show it, but am I feeling my age, you mean? I get it now. Nostalgia is the biggest gaslighter... It sounds like you're in a mid-life crisis, Ron."

"It sounds like I am... I wonder if my parents ever felt this way? If they did, they didn't show it. But I've been feeling it recently, you know. Hadn't really thought about any of it, until a few months ago. When the town seemed to be calling me back... I feel like there's this rope it tied around me without me noticing when we were kids. It waited for the right time to pull me back here."

And I've pulled you right back with me.

"Rope? What's that a metaphor for now?"

If only I knew. Is it a metaphor for my feelings, or an analogy for something else I can't define?

She didn't answer Heather's question or her own. Instead, she said, "Do the places of our formative years ever really leave us? Or do they live just beneath the veneer of grown-up life, and shape who we are and how we make it in the world?"

"Well, of course they do, but I think the circumstances matter. I got married at eighteen to get out of this town, and the only rush I felt then was the wind behind me as I ran away as fast as my feet would carry me. And then, I had to run even faster away from the bastard I married. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire."

"You got out, though."

"Too fucking right I did. But my point is, our earlier years might shape us, but as we get older, we can change those feelings. Feelings get blunted. They become irrelevant. If they're not already, then they will be. Use that time to your advantage."

You preach a good sermon, sister, but how about your brother? That monster we left you with. Or those bullies at school that came after you because of me? Your life must have been hell.

"But if the things that formed us become irrelevant, doesn't that make us irrelevant, too? Because I feel as if it does, and that's way too often for my liking."

"Not unless you let it. Be your own beacon, remember?"

"I do remember." It was our last day together. "When Mum told us that the only wisdom that shines like a lamp on the first and last post of humanity is to feed your head with knowledge and be your own light."

"And she was right, you know? Your inner wisdom is the only thing a woman really owns. It's the only thing no man can take from you."

"I know," she nodded, looking down at Heather's hand still resting on her own. She placed her free hand over it, and gave a gentle squeeze.

You don't have to make me feel better. But you do. We deserted you, and you've never hated us for it.

She hoped now that the initial artificiality her inner cynic had made her feel when they sat down, was awkward shyness on Heather's part and a foolish fear of retribution on her own. Strip those away and the sincerity they had always been able to channel between them when they were young, might still be there. Another rope of sorts, dusty and frayed, but one she would knot more tightly around her if she could; she realised the more they talked, the more she hoped the years would fall away to reveal the promise of a silence she could finally find some peace in.

Heather gave an emphatic nod, saying, "Best advice I ever got. Be your own beacon that helps you through the darkness. Be the light that lights your own way--"

"--or be a light to light others their way," Veronica finished.

"Like you," Heather added.

"Like me?"

"Yup." Heather broke hand contact and pointed a finger into the air. Her voice held a sonorous quality as she said: "God places an angel inside us before we are born, and that angel will only wake when our true love is near and we are completely reborn."

Veronica fidgeted in her chair. "Don't do that. Don't quote my work back at me."

Heather went on unperturbed: "And to the reader what moral does our fairy tale impart, but that like the princess of Ayashah you should always listen to the angel in your heart."

"Heath, please." She looked around to see if there was any object appropriately large enough to throw at her.

"What? I have that on my wall you know, in my office? Always listen to the angel in your heart is written in huge letters to remind me everyday that I give my life meaning when I can be who I am, unapologetically. You taught me that."

"What do I know? I'm a fake."

Heather crossed her arms. "Well, now you're just being silly."

"Listen to me... That angel in my heart has fallen silent. I can't hear it... i-it's like my fifteen year old self is like this town. I came back to it and discovered I'm a stranger. And that bothers me. When did the girl who helped shape who I am abandon me?"

Heather said nothing, as she continued, "The topography changes. The streets are strangers. You can't go back. You know the old song. Well, I am that song."

Why aren't thoughts as easily silenced as voices in a song?

"Mid-life crisis. There's the culprit behind your self-doubt -- and your rope."

"You can't deny though, that like our little town, eventually we'll be unrecognisable to our younger selves."

"But I don't think that's a bad thing, though. Change is a chance for something new-- They do say the past is another country, don't they? I never felt I wanted to come back for a visit before."

"But you have now." For me, I hope. She wanted to say more, but found herself unable to speak. In her stories, it would usually be because of an intrusive lump that would appear in the heroine's throat. In real life, often it was more about being frightened to say too much, rather than feeling too much. In her case, it was a bit of both.

Heather, somehow sensing this, clapped her palms together as if to sever the sudden tension. "So, here I am. Back in this shithole once more, when I promised myself I would never come back after last Christmas. But what I want to know is why, and why I have been been asked to do this."

Presenting her phone as though she were about to perform a magic trick, she reached for her small backpack. In two deft moves the phone disappeared into it. "As promised. My life is put away. No smartphones. No selfies. No Instagramming for the duration. Though what you have against social media is beyond me. Every author alive and dead is online. All the best-selling ones, and even the ones that aren't! There are those who can't write for shit but get their work out there one way or another thanks to social media."

"I wouldn't say that's a point in its favour. I'm allergic to social media. It's too distracting. And that was all it was meant to be, a distraction, until we globally got addicted to it. It's made our real lives the distraction." She stopped to raise an eyebrow as Heather took out her phone again.

See? I told you so.

"What? I am just making sure I switched it off. Look. Here. Gone."

"And it's drowned the world I used to know in a flood of misinformation awash with fakery and doubt--"

"Awash? Good word--"

Ignoring Heather's interjection, she went on, "My daughter would probably say I'm a complete Luddite, too, but I disagree. It's just a personal choice about how involved I get, and it's not a world which I want to join."

"But you're in it already sweetheart. You can't hide away completely. Big Brother really is everywhere now."

"Who says I'm hiding away? There is still an existence offline, you know. I go to book conventions," she replied, a little defensively.

Heather leaned forward, in a comically covert manner. "Ron, from what I hear yours aren't book conventions, they're like secret audiences--"

"--It's just that I'm not selling my life alongside my books," she quickly cut back in. "Privacy is old hat these days, I know, but I prefer to lay out my inner furnishings in traditional fiction, not social media fiction. I prefer to leave that territory to my publishing house."

Heather stared at her for a long, long second. "And if I managed to recognise your author alter ego, surely others will. Those bitches, too. It seems that fifteen year old is still in you somewhere, worried they might start another hate campaign against her and her courageous stories. Well, let me tell you one good thing about this drowned out world of yours, Ron. We're in a different current now, and it's one that would cancel them out for what they did to you. The backlash against them would be a fucking tsunami. You don't have to hide anymore."

Veronica stopped her protestrations. This time she didn't try to hide her surprise at how close to the mark Heather was, but admitted, "Well, I was crap at hiding from you. You always knew me better than anyone. No one better since."

"Oh, get away with you." Heather's voice sounded as sincere as Veronica had ever heard it, as though her friend truly believed she should have been presented with more alternatives.

"I mean it. You're the only one I've never been able to hide anything from. An open book, as they say."

The intended pun would have been far less tragic if it weren't true, at least where she was concerned. Neither her daughter nor her mother had ever understood her as well, and certainly not anyone she had met inbetween.

"Well, be still my beating heart," Heather intervened quickly, before another awkward pause could make an appearance. "So, come on, quit stalling. What is this tête-à-tête for? To get the old rush back? Girls night out à la caféine? Or did I get your daughter's DM out of the blue just to meet you so you could see how much of la femme was filter?"

"I'd be lying if I said no to all three. Partly."

"So what's the other part? Come on, I'm all ears."

"I want you to read this." She picked up her phone, swiped to open, then tapped on the relevant word application. "Here."

"Oh, so you get to keep your phone?" Heather's face kept its sculpted poise, but her voice indicated the beginnings of a sulk. "What? This is what you dragged me back here for? You do realise I braved public transport when we could be on the verge of some new global swine flu epidemic, right?"

"Stop teasing. That's a real scare, you know." There had always been some threat of a new variation of flu in years past, and although nothing had come of them, this time she couldn't say why, but the recent news from China felt different.

Maybe it's just me getting older.

"But you could have sent me this. I know you use email. You do use email, right?"

She nodded, a liitle shamefaced. "Seeing as it involves you, I thought it might be better face to face. Take it as an excuse to finally see you again."

"Hmmm." Heather sounded unconvinced, but took the offered phone. "But why back here? Why not in London?"

A mock grimace offered itself to her face as though it were subtext to the plot, before she said, "It'll make sense. Just read it, will you?" Reality always was an anti-climax. Exposition always a necessity. I thought it best to bring you back home with me, because I was too afraid to come alone. And I'm here for... well, I don't know what I'm here for. Let's say for the research. But I never figured the town could have changed so much.

What she hadn't told Heather was that the place where they were was where their old school used to be, first abandoned after a change in school systems, and then knocked down and resurrected as a row of shops. The coffee shop, she figured, was on the spot that used to be its sprawling school field, where they had first met, all those decades ago, and where she would read out her stories to the only person, aside from her parents, willing to listen.

"You're sure you don't want to read it out to me, for old time's sake?"

"We can't very well risk you falling asleep in public, can we?"

"Well, if I start snoring, you could always give me a kick... Anyway, let's see-- I start from -- here?"

"Starting from the first sentence always helps, yeah."

"So I've heard," Heather replied, her face suppressing her first real smile, as she sat back and began to read.

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