Open Short Story Competition 2020 - Winner

Peter and Sheila Waugh loved this bench, the plaque tells me, the perfect resting spot as they walked this route along the Thames every day for fifty years.
I’ve sat here for approximately... 0.3 percent of that time. So I guess I wouldn’t call it ​my​ bench. But nestled under this sycamore, it’s a respite from the calls and meetings and messages that plague my time in the office. In the summer it’s busy, kids running up and down the grassy slope, dogs playing off-lead, young families pushing prams along the pathway.
But now in November’s heavy grey skies, the wind off the river is cold. So it’s just me, here, every day.
Until it’s him as well.
The first time, he flickers across my eye line like a shadow,
The second and third times, I notice the books he reads, the black-rimmed glasses crooked on his nose.
After four, five weeks, I work out what time he arrives and plan my lunch break accordingly, rushing from the office when meetings overrun, calming my breath as I bounce down the steps.
Sometimes he turns up with a sheen of sweat on his forehead, shoulders heaving.
My best friend rubs her face when I tell her. “You’re talking like you know him, Hats. That’s fucking weird. You need to stop daydreaming about strangers and like, actually go on a date with a real boy.”
He sits on his bench. I sit on mine.
Until today.
 He walks down the path.
There’s an elderly woman on his.
He sits close enough that I can see his hair isn’t just blonde, but woven with flecks of red and brown. Like a tortoiseshell cat. He’s wearing a navy woollen coat that looks expensive, but fraying threads litter the hemline. Something dark – paint, maybe – stains his fingers.
He catches me looking.
“Pen explosion,” he grins.
“Tell me about it,” I smile back, offering up my own ink-smudged palms.
“Sorry for sitting here. I didn’t want to take my chances with that...” He nods over at the woman throwing slices of white bread at pigeons.
“Wise.”
I sneak a sideways glance.
He looks up.
Heat rushes to my face. “I’m Hattie.”
“Will.” A trace of an accent tugs at his vowels. “What brings you to these – eh – benches?”
“Just the usual, escaping from the office. And I really like this tree.”
He laughs. “Me too. The office thing, and the tree thing. I grew up with a sycamore right outside my bedroom. I could climb out the window and into the branches. Scared mum half to death.”
His eyes crinkle when he laughs.
 
 “I had a sycamore outside my room too! I think that’s why I love this one.” He checks his watch.
“Well, I’ve gotta get back to the office.”
“Oh yeah, course.” I squeeze my book.
“Uh look... I promise I don’t normally accost women underneath trees, but... you don’t fancy getting a drink tonight do you?”
***
It’s the kind of downpour you get in Thailand where you can almost see the drops shatter on landing. Where each splash feels like a kiss, cool against warm skin. We shelter under the biggest oak and listen to the pit-tip-tap of the rain above.
“Look at the state of us.” He runs his thumb under my eyes, mascara smudging on his skin.
“Who would guess you’re Mr Bigshot Film Man now,” I press my face against his chest, sniffing through the layers of washing detergent and aftershave until I can smell him. Rich like earth after rain, sweet like oranges. Even after two years, it makes me dizzy.
There’s an easy silence between us. The kind you grow together over the years, that sits with you like a houseplant.
Just an hour earlier, he was up on stage, people hugging, clapping for him. A cacophony of voices and camera flashes erupting around us. As usual, he tried to talk it down. It was only a short film, only an amateur production, only his first attempt. But it won the biggest award in the country and he’s lauded as the next Denis Villeneuve.
 
 I know the doors this will open for him. I cannot be anything but happy, ecstatic, thrilled. But in the pit of my stomach there’s a twinge, a thought that haunts my waking moments, a thought I dare not name.
The rain clears and we walk home.
The moon sparkles, but only because the sun shines brighter.
***
Norway Spruces can live for up to 1,000 years, but it’s looking unlikely whether this one will last a day. Despite propping it up with books and boxes, it refuses to stand up straight, leaning so far to the left the baubles on its patchy branches slide off.
Will heads out to pick up a takeaway and we eat on the sofa, the flat dark apart from the dim glow of the Christmas lights. I rest my head on his chest and count heartbeats. He mutters under his breath, criticising the design choices of the impossibly young, impossibly wealthy couple on ​Grand Designs​.
I doze as the hush of rain and wind build a river that meanders through my daydreams. And I think back to the years before Will, when panic attacks nipped at my consciousness in the falling dusk, when I stared at the ceiling while audiobooks repeated and repeated.
Then there was him. And I started to enjoy the sunset and the navy blue nights, our bodies wrapped up in each other until breathing slowed and eyelids flicker.
If only there was a way to bottle this feeling. To trap it and cork it, so even on the worst days, after the biggest fights, I could gulp down lungfuls and remember the peace that hangs like thick curtains around us.
***
 
 Despite once being planted at plague burials to purify the ground, yew trees are poisonous. And as Will’s words land, I consider turning my head and biting off a chunk of bark from the tree behind me, gnawing away until splinters grate my gums into a bloody mess and toxins choke my heart.
I stab a twig into the unyielding earth, digging a rut we never fell into. “America.”
“It’s only for a year. You can fly out and I’ll fly back when I can.”
“It’s too far, we’d never make it work. No. No.”
“I can’t turn it down.”
A tang of disinfectant hits my nose when I get home, and tendrils of pain snake around my temples. The wardrobes, the chest of drawers, the coat cupboard.
My clothes hang alone in the empty spaces.
***
According to Celtic mythology, the birch symbolises renewal and purifications. People would bundle up birch twigs to drive out spirits. I stare at the silver tree in the garden and wonder how effective it is.
I sit on our sofa and pull the blanket tighter around me.
Will made me love sick days. I’d wake up after a bad night’s sleep and he’d order me back to bed. “Duvet day for you,” he’d say, wrapping me up like a burrito in a pile of blankets. I’d hear the front door click shut softly and drift back to sleep, occasionally woken by a Deliveroo driver dropping off lunch from our favourite cafe. Then he’d leave work early and cook for us, making chicken soup from scratch, stroking my head in front of the TV.
 
 I open the kitchen cabinets. An onion, a potato growing green shoots. The fridge fares better: half a pint of milk, only three days out of date. I make a cup of tea, splashing milk over the kitchen counter, fishing the teabag out with my fingers.
It’s nice to feel something.
I need to shower. I can taste how bad I smell. My teeth feel furry and my tongue, when I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, has a grey coating. My hair is lankier than usual but I see the upside here. With Will gone, I can stop worrying about my appearance. I’ll let my body fall into decay and disrepair, let the grass grow long, let vandals smash in windows, let tiles fall and crack, let birds nest in the chimney.
***
It’s November and I’m under the sycamore, perching on the edge of Peter and Sheila Waugh’s bench.
I let the wind sting my cheeks, let my fingers freeze, claw-like, let the cold seep into my body.
For months we sat on this bench, the smell of hope wrapped up in the burning leaves of bonfires, in the sweetness of freshly cut grass, in the syrupy pollen of the hydrangea bushes.
I unlock my phone and the red notifications from Hinge glare at me.
I don’t care​, I think, ​who you’d invite to your dream dinner party​. ​I care even less that you want travel tips for Japan.​ I hate them for trying to talk to me, I hate them for being bland and ordinary. I hate them for not being him.
The sycamore leaves whisper in the wind. The sun sets and drains the light from the sky.
***
 
I sit in the dust at the base of a black walnut tree, and count the fanning branches as they sprawl out into the Californian sky. Imagine if we could live our lives this way. Try out new directions from birth again and again and again.
There’d be the life where I’m married to an extravagantly rich banker, overseeing the nanny with my two blonde children.
There’s his slouchy walk, his feet barely coming off the ground, as if gravity’s a little too strong.
One where I’m a novelist living in a bedsit in Edinburgh.
He lifts a hand, either blocking the sun or waving.
One where he stayed.
His jacket catches in the breeze, the wind carrying the ghost of his citrusy aftershave.
One where I moved.
He smiles and I smile and something clunks in my stomach and it's like I've been holding my breath for the last five months and it’s like I've never felt the sun’s warmth on my skin.