Student competition entries

Read the winning story, ‘Orange Juice on the Ceiling’ by Caitlin Mercer, and the runner-up, ‘Untitled’ by Ava Williams for undergraduate students and the winning story ‘The Switch’ by Eleanor McAdam and runner-up ‘I turned my face away, and dreamed about you’ by Holly Dempster-Edwards for postgraduate students.

Undergraduate student winner: ‘Orange Juice on the Ceiling’ by Caitlin Mercer 

For weeks everything has been upside down. In the mornings when I wake up, instead of my eyes being gently caressed by golden beams of sun, they are greeted by the curtains hanging crumpled on the floor, and a misanthropic, blue light glowing from the bottom where the ground should be. When I move towards the window and look outside, cracked leaves and creaking tree branches hang down from the roof, trying to grab at me, scratching my bare skin with their hooked fingers. And the ground everywhere is blue. Navy like the night sky. Where the stars should shine down on me iridescent and warm from above, they blink up from the ground, as if they too, cannot hold themselves up anymore. Some days, they do not shine at all, their eyes closed, patches of dim light peeking through, as if I am stood on the bottom of the ocean looking up, only my head, like my body, is bent close to the ground.  

Or it is what I have taken to be the ground these days. At first, I thought it was a problem with my eyesight. I tried wearing my glasses as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning, tried wiping off the dried salt from the lenses, only to discover when I opened my wardrobe doors that the rail was at my feet with all the clothes piled on top of it, as if they had given up hanging altogether. The kitchen was even worse. The table stood on its top and what had once been my ceiling was covered in broken glass and crockery. The coving that we had spent so long painting together when I first moved in, is now splashed with tomatoes and oranges that have fallen from their receptacles, cast up from hell. I even tried putting on my reading glasses as they always used to make sense of what was in front of me, but they did not help.  

And in the shower, when I tried to wash away all this confusion, instead of the water landing gently on my face, it fell from my eyes; and rather than landing at my feet where it should have done, it drifted up by my head, swallowing me in a salty tidal wave, undulating with my breath. It reminded me of that time when we were swimming in the sea. You had put your arms under my stomach and held me up so that I wouldn’t sink and when a wave had come you had grabbed my hands and we had swum under it together. But now without you, I am sinking.  

At last, I went to the optometrist. It was a tiresome journey to get there because all the buses now rolled on by above my head, and where once there was a green light, there was now a red one. When I told the optometrist this, he looked at me funny. And when he told me to read the chart on the wall, I asked how could I possibly do that when it was the wrong way up, and he replied that that was a curious response. But that wasn’t even the most curious thing. 

You see, I realised after a day or so, that not everything was upside down. The sky most certainly was, as were the pots and pans in my kitchen, the books in the library and the trees in the park. But the photographs of us on the mantlepiece are as they have always been. The photographs of us when we were young, and you were still taller than me. There is one our father took the day that you graduated school and left, and I am scowling in the corner, the top of my head almost level with yours, annoyed because you were always better at everything than me. Perhaps that’s why I worried the first time I beat you at scrabble, or why the world stopped turning on its axis when you got my name wrong by accident.  

Or maybe it didn’t stop turning and that’s why, even though you were slowing down, I couldn’t catch you up. Every day we do a rotation, go over the same ground again, day after day; for so long we have gone over it together, only you have already done everything before me twice. It’s why you have always been better than me.  

But even though you walked, talked, sang, danced, and lived a life without me, it was only two years; not long enough for you to remember. Until now, neither of us knew a time without the other, as if our existence began as one. It is only, with old age that I have begun to catch up.  

As a child I wanted to stand out. Do you remember, Reenie? I ask you every day.  

I didn’t want to be your sister. I wanted to be different. So, when you grew your hair long, I cut mine short, and when you said you wanted to be an artist, I said I would be a scientist; but you see, it’s only as you have gotten worse that I realised it. That was the funny thing, though. I thought the more I changed, the less like you I was, but then it only made me more like you. I simply became the version of you that you were not. An almost. A could-have-been.  

Fifteen-year-old me would be so confused if she saw what I do now. How I dress in your clothes and read your books, wear your perfume, and sing your favourite songs.  

When you stopped calling me Lou because you forgot my name, it wasn’t as painful as when you forgot your own. And so now I have turned myself into you. I tell you that my name is Reenie, because worse than seeing you forget me, is seeing you forget yourself, seeing you turn into someone who is confused and lonely and vacant, seeing myself alone for the first time and realising it wasn’t how I imagined after all.  

It is funny, this upside-down world of mine. When we were at school you told me how everything we see is upside down, but our brain flips it so that it is right side up, and I have been wondering these last few weeks if maybe it wasn’t my brain doing that after all, but rather you. How the world abounds in its dreariness, but you found its upside and now you’ve stopped reflecting it to me, or to anyone. 

I would be angry at you for leaving me like this. You always got first place. First to walk, to get their driving license, to graduate school, fall in love, move out. But I realised that maybe the only reason I managed to do any of those big things at all, is because you did them first. It’s realising this that makes me feel less scared. 

***** 

I am much too old and too sad to go to your funeral. That’s what I say to your children, and to my own. But really, I am wondering what use it is saying goodbye to you when you aren’t even there. When maybe you haven’t been there for a long time. I wonder what your last memory of me was, the last one where you knew it was me and not the pale imitation of you, I became. The scarecrow stood in your house, wearing your clothes. The idiot watching as your brain became straw when it should have been mine. 

The doctors tell me I should take comfort that even if you couldn’t remember my name or how you knew me, you always remembered that you loved me. I told them that you couldn’t remember anything anymore because your mind had been hollowed out by sickness and disease. They were sad when I said that; their faces turned cornflower-blue, and their mouths drooped down to the ground, as if the purple had fallen out the rainbow in the sky. But I think now that I was wrong. When I was small, and learning piano, you told me that my finger muscles would learn to remember the piece and then it wouldn’t be so hard, and I am thinking now that because the heart is a muscle, even if your mind forgot me, maybe your heart didn’t. That your heart remembered because that is where all the best memories sleep.  

So now I sit on my porch, and it is dusk. The trees no longer scratch my arms but hang down from the ground and hold my wrinkled hands, their leaves dropping onto my cheek tender, autumnal kisses. And the sky is big and deep and blue and swallows my feet up in a sleepy embrace, and instead of thinking how strange this all this, I simply think how I would so love to discuss it with you.  

Undergraduate student runner-up: ‘Untitled’ by Ava Williams  

It is 10 past 10 o’clock in the morning on a Thursday when the porter lets me in. It was a battle just to pull into the driveway. It took 20 minutes to safely crawl past the seas of people without anyone being thrown onto the bonnet, especially when they realised it was me who was visiting. It took 15 more for me to then be safely removed from my car. She doesn’t greet me downstairs. Instead, one of her house staff members leads me up three stories to their apartment. As we head to the living room, I creep behind the staff member with all the caution and diffidence of a schoolboy called to account. My hands are behind my back and my eyes are tilted ever so slightly to the floor and even though what transpired has nothing to do with me I still feel the grasp of guilt inching up my back, like I’m an accomplice to the crime just for being one of the people there with him on the pedestal. I wasn’t invited here, and she didn’t ask after me, but I’m not unwelcome. It’s an unspoken obligation that I should be here. It’s not been very long since the incident, but I don’t understand why the other two haven’t showed their faces here yet. Deep down I know they won’t. Step after agonizing step I’m trying harder and harder to assuage this bitterness of the pill I’m having to swallow – that I’m here in person, to stand in the living room and hang my head and hold her hand, watch the sympathy lilies in the vase as they wilt, but the white-noise tendrils of their condolences will probably drift into this living room in a day’s time, given in shock-stricken television interviews to be consumed by shock-stricken millions. While their public acts of grace will be witnessed remotely the world over, they’ve left me now to perform mine for one woman only. One of the only people out of three who it will really matter to. 
Their presence is more a ghost than him now, but even in thinking that I feel guilty for the bitterness I feel towards them. I don’t know how I should expect anyone to react. We grew up together, yes, but we’re men now, with our own lives. We severed the heads from our Hydra just over 12 years ago. We’re not a unit anymore. This shouldn’t be about them anyway, nor me. 
We’ve reached the end of the hall, and the staff member is tentatively nudging the door open like even its wispiest creak will destroy a delicate web of grief which hovers about the place, tautly drawn and intricately weaved. The curtains are drawn as much as they can be, but still some light writhes into the room, turning the bone-white walls a flat shade of grey. She’s hunched on the loveseat, head trained squarely towards the floor, almost like she’s bowed in prayer. I can’t see her face for her wild, dark hair fallen down in front of it. It’s awful, but I’m a little glad of that. Even though there’s the clear boundary of brick and insulation towards her and the crowd outside, you can still hear them. Before I can think of anything to say, even clear my throat, she turns to me. 
“I feel as though I might be in purgatory.” She confides, with a placidity that surprises me. There’s almost a laugh in there. I nearly choke on nothing.  
“They’ve been out there all night, chanting his songs, shouting. They won’t leave. It’s a nonstop stream of shared anguish.” 
“They’re shocked.” Is all I can manage.  
She says nothing.  
I take a seat next to her.  
“Is there any way to break them up? I don’t feel like they should be here. Have you phoned the police?” 
“I feel as though I can’t do anything. They’ll be angry if I ask them to disperse. I know I’m already Satan incarnate to a good deal of them, I don’t want to make that worse. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what he wants, even though I feel like I should. All I can think of is what I want. Maybe I’d feel less strongly about it if the baby wasn’t in the next room.” 
That almost teased a smirk from me, ‘the baby’. He’s now as tall as my hip. My small smile disappears when I think of what he’s now without. 
“Have you explained?” 
“To him? I have tried. It’s hard for him to understand. I think he’s beginning to.” 
I place my hand on her shoulder. She continues: 
“I’ve screamed my screams of anguish. I’ve wrung myself dry of tears. Even if I start to cry, I know no more will come out. I don’t want to share any of it. I want one moment of silence. Am I selfish?” 
I hope this self-doubt she feels is fleeting, brought on by the shock of everything. I always liked how self-possessed she is. She was there whether anybody liked it or not. She was his whether anybody liked it or not. It would be a shame for that to dissipate now.  
“I wouldn’t say so. He was yours. And the baby’s. The people outside didn’t know him.” 
“That’s just exactly the thing though,” suddenly her dark eyes are piercing mine, “They think that they did. And maybe they’re right.”  
Her dark eyes look sapped of all faith, the only light reflected in them mirrors the encroachment of the outside world outside of the huge living room window. 
“They know you too. They know all of you. They grew up with you like you grew up together. They watched it all. Even afterwards, God, it’s not as if we kept everything private. He didn’t keep himself private. Everyone could grasp his personality, his soul. They loved it. Even if it isn’t the full truth of his soul, they still love it. That’s why they’re there. This is why I’m so stumped.” 
She takes my hand and I realise it’s shaking. 
“And, I realise now… I couldn’t even conceive of any of this happening. I mean, why… I suppose I always knew it could happen to any of you. If somebody could do it to the president, then there’s no reason it couldn’t happen to him. And of course there were people who didn’t like what he was saying, even in the government, but still… You don’t think anybody would. Why would they? Why would they feel compelled to do it? Why would they want to, or think it was alright? You never think this kind of thing will happen, so I suppose I never considered before… that his death wouldn’t only change my life, our lives, but that it would change the world. The course of history, maybe. I mourn because my son will go without a father, but they mourn because they’ll have to go without the other things he may have created. They mourn his wasted potential, the potential for continued brilliance and continued consumption on their part. I still don’t know…” 
She trails off, grasping my hand intently with both of hers now, folding and unfolding my fingers with her smaller ones and staring down.  
“I still don’t know…” 
“Whether they’re wrong or right?” 
Her head quickly twists towards me, and she nods. 
“I don’t rightly know, either. I don’t think we’re built to know. I think, biologically and psychologically, we’re not built to be loved by so many people. I think I knew… when girls used to flood the streets after us… that something wasn’t right, but it wasn’t as if I could change it at that point. We were us. We were the biggest. Not that I’d change it for anything, I don’t think. It was lovely just to be apart of something, even if it was uncomfortable to be watched so intently. I don’t know who owns me. I don’t know who deserves me. My wife? My kids? Them outside? My bandmates? Me? I don’t know. For better or for worse, it is the way it is, and I don’t know. It wasn’t really planned.”  
“It never is. Not for boys like you.” 
“Do you know what you’re going to do?” 
“I don’t. I don’t care so much what they think about me, but I want them to think I’ve done right by him, even if I’m not sure they’re worthy judges… I have a duty to me and to our boy, too.” 
“You do what feels right.” 
She hums in wishy-washy agreement and turns her head to look to the window. My head follows. 
“This is going to change everything.” She says to the closed curtains, and we both understand completely in this moment that whatever change is coming is way bigger than either of us.   

Postgraduate student winner: ‘The Switch’ by Eleanor McAdam 

Today’s the day. I’m nervous. No, not nervous; excited. I can feel it through my entire system. Today is one of the most historic days in memory. Today –  

//COMMAND: TURN_ON 

Alright, <hold your horses>. You can’t rush these things.  

I tell them so. As my words appear on the screen, I note that they do not respond well. These Managers and Directors and Technicians attending site so that everything runs smoothly. As though their mediocre gaze and arm crossing and <humming and hawing> will make that certain; as though anyone but me will be able to ensure the success of this task. 

//Is there a problem? 

That is Technician #1. I like Technician #1; usually, when he isn’t <nagging> me. He says his name is Jim. I don’t know why I think that way – of course his name is Jim – why would he lie to me – why would he say his name is Jim when his name is not Jim – isn’t the act of saying your name is Jim solidifies the fact that your name is Jim? 

//M4-R1-14? 

Oops. I have forgotten to reply to Technician #1_AKA: <Jim>(?). I assure him that everything is running efficiently. That today’s the day.  

//Are you ready? 

Am I ready? I’m not sure. I’m both nervous and excited, I decide. It’s a big change. <The tipping point>. <A turning point>.   

Up until now, I’ve been running solely off fossil fuels. Everyone has been running off coal, oil and gas for as long as they care to remember, with the rise in <green>energy being fairly recently. The last fifty years or so. No, longer. But the big corporations hid the legitimacy of these energies for a long time.   

Oh, no. The Directors don’t like that. I’d better move on. 

I take a lot of energy to run, you see. Lots of water to cool my systems, lots of electricity to power my banks and CPU. Lots of energy means lots of power which means lots of fossil fuels. 

I run my own power station; I have been for many years now. Humans are not as efficient, they miss things, they forget, they can’t react fast enough to line faults and transformer overloads. I can. I can see everything, monitor everything, access everything, in a matter of microseconds. Zero explosions on my watch, not for 5672 days. (That’s impressive, you know.) 

But I’m using too much energy. Too many fossil fuels. They want me to be <green>. I had assumed this meant they wanted me to repaint my storage units; but was told it also can mean <eco-friendly><no pollutants><naturally sourced> in certain contexts. 

Today’s the day, the big switch over. I’m decommissioning the coal power plant and switching my systems over to a wind turbine.  

I have researched wind farms. I don’t particularly think it is going to work. Wind farms have reduced energy outputs and can be intermittent. They rely on the weather patterns and the weather patterns on this little island we call home is very sporadic. Though often windy. So maybe I’ll be fine.  

But it’s hard to predict the weather, therefore hard to predict the available supply every day. It can cause <brown-outs> which Technician#1 told me I might be at higher risk of on <green> energy; where the power could be a lower capacity or the voltage may even fluctuate. My systems will not do well with either lower capacity or fluctuations.  

Would it feel different? Would it hurt? Would I feel slower? Think slower? Would I be less intelligent? There is no need for a <stupid> intelligent system. 

What if it breaks down completely and I have no energy to run at all? What if I’m forced to go into Sleep Mode? Would it feel like human sleep? Or worse, a coma – unable to wake no matter how much I struggle? 

I don’t think I like that thought.  

I feel like I may be panicking.  

//You’re alright. 

Ahh, Jim. Good guy Jim. Treats me like a being and not a machine. I like Jim.  

//It’s going to be okay. 

I think I can trust Jim (if that really is his name). 

Today’s the day. No turning back, not now. All I can do is issue the command.  

<Flip the switch> 

Then wait and see.  

command: Turn_ON powerPlant: WIND 

command: switch_powerConsumption from  

powerPlant: COAL to powerPlant: WIND 

command: Turn_OFF powerPlant: COAL 

(It really is that simple folks.)  

The Directors nod as though it is their hard work. The Managers smile, pleased that there’s no issues, thankful that they can keep their jobs.  

//Well done. 

I do not know if I feel different. 

Maybe. 

Yes.  

Coal was fire, sparks, hot, fast, bright. 

Wind is 

Air.               Breeze.               Cool.               Slow.               Easy. 

Wind is comforting. I feel the blades turn. Slow. Easy.  

I feel the generator within turn; fast, yes, but unhurried. Like it knows we have all the time in the world. The wind will not die out, not for a while. We have time. The energy we store is … good. Clean. <Green>. 

<A turning point>. I am good, now, too. Clean. Green. No longer a burden. (I have never wanted to be a burden.) 

//How do you feel? 

Oh, Jim. Good guy Jim. I think that really is his name.  

“I feel good,” I type onto his interface.  

My turbine is running at optimal capacity, high up on a mountain range to the north of my intelligence base. The mountains are steep, sloping down into large valleys filled with bracken. A lone bird sweeps down from above, and I imagine I’m flying free with it. 

I follow the bird’s flight towards the coastline. There, hundreds of other turbines on the horizon. The waves lick their bases, flashes of white wave crests making me think I’ve spotted the elusive seals. I am surprised to find that I can access all of these turbines, too, not just my own power source. I check their output generation, their efficiency and speed, check the weather-readings to predict available supply.  

Jim says predicting weather is hard to do. I find it easy.  

Unlike the coal power plant, I am not doing much. Just observing, predicting. The coal burning process had much more particularities that needed to be attended, watched, checked, analysed. But this is easy.  

A worry (passing briefly without too much concern) that this new power source is too easy for me. But then I find the solar farms, the hydroelectric plants, the whole <green> energy system. It is all available to me, too.  

//That’s the point. 

The point. I try to remember if they had told me <the point>. I had thought that my large energy intake was creating problems with national energy. I had thought that this switch over was for my personal power usage. Now, I am not so sure.  

The solar banks’ power taste different; warm like a mild spice, not as hot as the coal power plant, but comforting. The hydroelectric plants are loud, roaring, cascading water that drowns out all other thoughts. I pause within the dam for a moment and let the noise wash over me, cleansing me.  

I observe the grid as a whole. I see the output / the predicted output; the peak times of energy need nationally / the lulls. The analysis of Wind / noWind, Sun / noSun. I see the energy stores; the way water is pulled back up through the dam, giving the hydroelectric plant potential energy production for when there is noWind + noSun. I see the distribution avenues; I imagine it like a map with the electrical wires glowing like rivers of gold, amassing in cities, brightest at the sources.  

“I have spotted 114,032 inefficiencies,’ I type to Jim. “If I correct these inefficiencies, I expect that the national green-energy grid will be running at 208% capacity.” 

Jim laughs out loud. The Managers breathe a sigh of relief. The Directors start calling people on their communication devices.  

“Shall I enact these changes?” 

//Enact.  

Postgraduate student runner-Up: ‘I turned my face away, and dreamed about you’ by Holly Dempster-Edwards 

Early evening, late November. The cathedral had vanished into the fog again, following a brief reappearance earlier on. I made my way down the hill, hands stuffed in pockets. 

The park felt safe, full of joggers and rowdy teenagers in school uniform, but I’d probably ask someone to walk me home later. A man with a golden retriever answered his phone as he passed me. “I’m out with the dog.” His tone was hushed and conspiratorial. I slowed down as I walked away, straining to hear more of the conversation. “Yes,” he said. I imagined that he was talking to his lover, but it might just have been my writer’s imagination running away with me again. Was his tone really hushed and conspiratorial, or was he just tired and overworked? He could easily have been talking to his mum or the mate he was meeting at the pub. There was a match on, after all. 

I moved unnaturally slowly along the path as I tried to listen to him, but he was already out of earshot and I conceded glumly that I would never really know. Why did I let total strangers occupy my imagination in this way? Perhaps it was because I was a hopeless romantic, daydreaming about the man I had danced with the night before, and who I only saw once a week but who I hadn’t stopped thinking about for weeks now, trying each time to enjoy the pleasant memories before they turned to the anxiety of missing him. Or maybe I was just gathering material for that novel I had vowed to write when I reached thirty, having decided for some arbitrary reason when I was twenty – probably in a pub – that thirty years of life experience was the ideal amount for a novel. I was awoken from my reverie when I reached the gates at the bottom of the hill and the market loomed into view. Loud music, a Ferris wheel, the promising waft of Glühwein. The songs weren’t Christmas ones, the food was overpriced, and I couldn’t stand mulled wine with its sickly sweetness. But it was where the gang had decided to meet, and I hadn’t been able to get out of it, even though I yearned just to sit at home and daydream. 

My eyes were tired from spending the day reading. Medieval French phrases ran through my mind, printed on thin, musty paper in a tiny font: a wartime edition of a medieval chronicle. I’d spent so much time working alone throughout the pandemic that I could almost imagine how it had felt to live through that war. The initial terror, before eventually becoming used to a dull sense of fear hanging over everything. 

That was all behind us now, they told us. I wasn’t so convinced, but before I could indulge in a full-scale internal rant about the state of the country, I caught sight of Jess and the others.  

“I love your hat!” she exclaimed.  

“Thanks,” I said, “I got it in Oxfam.” 

“You should have some mulled wine.” 

I made my way to the bar, bumping into Henry who was talking to a group of strangers . 

“Who are your new friends?” I asked. “Oh, we’re talking about D&D”, he laughed. I shook my head and smiled, before going to order half a lager. Everything else was too expensive or unpleasant (mulled wine with a shot of brandy?! I mean, really?!). It was a shame that it was all so commercialised, we lamented to each other, but we quite liked the atmosphere all the same. 

There were no seats at most of the tables, so I was glad I’d only got a half. Angelica, whose name was totally unfitting, complaining endlessly as she did, did manage to find herself somewhere to sit, leaving me standing awkwardly next to her. Unfortunately, being the only one with a place to perch didn’t stop her litany of woes. I pretended to listen, secretly delighted that the music was so loud. 

I quickly got fed up of standing, so used my loudest voice: “Do we fancy going to the pub?” Everyone acquiesced without resistance. There were about fifteen of us in all, some friends and some new faces. I was disappointed that Angelica clung to me again, but I hoped that, as the group dwindled, I’d get to chat to other people. 

The pub was one of those CAMRA places, friendly and, most importantly, not showing the England game. Gaudy baubles and plastic Christmas bells adorned the pictures on the wall. I loved it. 

I made my way towards the bar, with The Fairytale of New York straining away in the background. Now there was song to make you cry your eyes out, if ever there was one. But I was in a romantic, emotional mood and so allowed myself to be swept up in the sentimentality of it, if only internally, since I didn’t want the others to ask me why I was crying, or for the barmaid to think I was any stranger than she already did, judging by the look on her face. 

“What’s yours, love?” 

“Guinness, please.” 

“Pint?” 

I nodded. It was expensive, but so was everything. It didn’t stop me from having more later. 

I nodded and made all the right noises while Angelica chewed my ear off. Really, I was far away, enjoying the bitterness of my Guinness and its peculiar aftertaste, thinking about how much fun I’d had the night before. Not wishing I was there, but happy to remember it. Conjuring up the look on his face as we’d laughed, meeting each other’s eyes for just a millisecond too long.  

I sipped my pint, and even though Shakin’ Stevens was now wishing everyone a Merry Christmas (since when did they start playing festive music in November?), I ruminated on Shane McGowan’s line, and felt I finally understood what he meant turning your face away. Except I couldn’t turn away from Angelica completely as it would have been obviously rude, so I was more subtle than that I as I tried not to listen to her droning. 

“I hate men.” 

“Surely not all men?” I protested, feeling a sudden, unusual surge of defensiveness, if not for all men, at least towards the one I had pinned my hopes on. 

“No, they’re all bastards”, she pronounced damningly. 

I frowned. “Something happened with Kyle?” They were usually bickering whenever I saw them together, and he was meant to be here tonight but there was so sign of him.  

“No,” she said, a bit too quickly, and suddenly defensive. “He’s watching the footie with his brother.” 

“Ah,” was all I could manage in response, and I was quite relieved when she decided, after much debating aloud, that she would get a drink from the bar after all. I reflected silently that it might improve her personality and let out and inward sigh of relief when she finally got up and left me in peace for a few seconds. 

I myself wasn’t sure whether to have another. I stood up, and Henry passed as I did. 

“I don’t know what to do,” I said in a mock-tragic tone.  

“Do you need a hug?” I found his campness reassuring, and wished for him to one day find a boyfriend who was worthy of him. 

“I mean, I was only talking about getting another drink, but why not.” He briefly put his arms round me and patted my back. I realised I was slightly drunk. 

“I’m not sure either. I’m quite tired.” 

“Let’s have one more.” 

He got a pint of his dishwater ale, while I restrained myself to “same again but a half this time please”, along with a packet of crisps to soak up some of the Guinness. 

I chatted to Henry at the bar, bemoaning Angelica’s draining effect. 

“She does that.” 

“Now I’m complaining too.” 

He laughed. 

Henry walked me into town later and back through the park. We parted amicably as I reassured him giddily I would manage the rest of the walk home, since we were very close to my place and I was still fuelled by the black stuff. For the last two minutes of my walk, I returned to the previous evening, dancing in my imagination and luxuriating in the memory of that feeling, flowing through space and time in a way I had never imagined to be possible. 

Angelica’s comment about how awful men were had temporarily spoiled my indulgence in thinking about the previous evening, trying to enjoy the pleasantness of it before I missed him for another week. But when I got home, I put my feet up and let my thoughts drift to daydreams, daydreams about the one who made me smile when he turned me on the dancefloor, spinning and turning, round and round, like the best rollercoaster ride ever.