erastes

OK. MOT got with no hassle at all.

Phew.

Car tax ordered on line, so I’m covered. THANK GOD!

Bloody exhausted due to a week driving bazillions of miles to achieve something that should have been done in one day, so off for a swift siesta.

One good thing, I was bored waiting for the car this morning and wrote this. It’s going to be part of the new book—which hasn’t even got a name yet—wrote it on the back of one of my garage bills in longhand. :D And have entirely no idea where this particular snippet will go. It’s first person here, but I really want it to be third when I write it, –I’ve done too much first person recently. Enjoy!

I watched his neck, the small, light hairs on the back of his pale neck, inches away but as far as the moon—and more guarded, as Edward watching us from the gloaming of the veranda—than any treasure before or since.

“Edward wants me to go to Rome with him.” He paused then, flicking the ash over the edge, and taking another blue-grey breath. Perhaps he was waiting for me to fill the silence with questions, recriminations; perhaps do something that justified both a moon and a landscape. When I said nothing, stayed and trapped by the watchful stillness, he freed me. “I think I will.”

I fought him, word for word, dispassion with the same. I could deflect him now. “If you think you should. It is a good opportunity for you.” Was he sophisticated enough to be hurt? Was I that petty? It seemed so. The wind caught the leaves of the tree beside us and the ground rippled with light and shade. He turned his face towards me, his cheekbones catching the light, and even if I had owned a camera, I could not have caught the sheer self-conscious pride he had of his hold over me. The moment passed with the breeze.

“I’ve been there before,” he said, a little defiantly, perhaps daring me to question his motives. if we had been schoolboys, he would have planted his feet astride, rolled up his sleeves in preparation for a challenge, a fight, a bloody nose. Instead our weapons were nothing but cigarette smoke and a feigned boredom.

“I didn’t know.”

“'In ‘24. Pater was an attaché there. He’d known Edward’s family for years. I went out straight from school.”

I tried to imagine him then. Wide-eyed he’d have been, not this brittle know-it-all holding himself against the world. He’d have been little more than a child, eating with his parents, meeting their friends. Ignored by all. An overlooked irritant in a world he’d have to grow into, like a blazer bought two sizes too large.

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