Black Boxes. Caroline Smailes

      

      Black Boxes

      Caroline Smailes

       ‘Aha!’ she cried mockingly, ‘you would fetch your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out your eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to you; you will never see her again.’

       Rapunzel—Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

      ‘The man had not known one happy hour since he had left the children in the forest; the woman, however, was dead. Gretel emptied her pinafore until pearls and precious stones ran about the room, and Hansel threw one handful after another out of his pocket to add to them. Then all anxiety was at an end, and they lived together in perfect happiness.’

       Hansel and Gretel—Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

      From The Project Gutenberg Etext Fairy Tales, by the Grimm Brothers, April, 2001 [Etext #2591]

       A Promise. For my son. Jacob. For my son. Benjamin. For my daughter. Poppy Elisabeth.

      Table of Contents

       Cover Page

       Title Page

       Excerpt

       Dedication

       Other books written by Caroline Smailes

Black Box #01

       Black Box #02

       Black Box #01

       BLACK BOXES

       Acknowledgements

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

      Other books written by Caroline Smailes

       In Search of AdamDisraeli Avenue

       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.

      [sound: sniff sniff]

      I thought that the neatness and the organisation and the perfectly horizontalness.

      Well I thought that you liked that.

      [volume: high]

      No kinks and no bends.

      A perfectly straight route from here to there.

      From there to here.

      To nowhere else.

      And on that day when you wrote our two names into the sand.

      Well I didn't realise that one day.

      When you wanted.

      That you'd wash away the +ANA that was joined to the ALEX.

      [sound: sobbing]

      [silence]

      But your name would never go away.

      It grew fainter, but it is still there.

      I still see it there.

      I can still see ALEX+ANA.

      [sound: throat clearing]

      You started a new life.

      ALEX+SUE.