Black Boxes. Caroline Smailes

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       BLACK BOX # 01

      Flight Recorder DO NOT OPEN

       [55°01'01.54 N 1°27'28.83 W]

      Bedroom. Ana's first floor flat in a Victorian house near the coast of Tynemouth. The room contains a wardrobe, a bed and a bedside table. The walls are red. The duvet cover is red. On the bedside table there is an empty glass and an open pair of scissors. Next to the empty glass there are two white rectangular boxes. One of them once contained sleeping tablets. The other once contained painkillers.

       ~Are you still there?~

      You've ruined the end.

      Now I know what's going to happen.

      The plot has you coming back to kill me.

      A twist in the narrative.

      [five second silence]

      I had cast you in the role of handsome prince.

      How strange that you should turn out to be my killer.

      But that's an end.

      And now I need to find a beginning.

       ~Are you there?~

       ~Will you listen?~

       ~Do you remember?~

      I am remembering when we were courting.

      It was always cold.

      I'm thinking back to when you wrapped your arm around me as we walked along Tynemouth beach.

      I remember you folding me into you.

      The image is practically cinematic.

       ~Do you remember?~

      [five second silence]

      We wore matching scarves.

      I had knitted them and they had holes where I had dropped stitches.

      You had laughed at my fumbling attempt.

      [sound: a throaty laugh]

      I had dropped many stitches.

      But you said that you loved them.

       ~Didn't you?~

      That they were perfectly us.

       ~Do you remember?~

      The scarves wrapped around us.

      They bound us together.

      You could climb up your scarf to mine.

       ~Do you remember?~

      And then you found that knobbly washed-up stick.

      And you wrote our names in the sand in those huge perfectly straight lines.

      And those lines stood together and made the flawlessly straight letters of our names.

      ALEX+ANA.

      You said that our names and our lives and everything that we would ever choose to do would be straight.

      And I thought that you liked that.