Dawn
It was 8 am.
As Dawn slung her coat over her shoulders, she wondered
why she had never bought another cat. Her departures for work had become
increasingly lonely, especially since Jarrod moved in, and it was with some
disappointment that she could not wish another living creature a good day
without being reminded that there’s no such thing anymore (at least, not since
that lonely Friday evening) or that ‘good’ is far too relative a term to apply
to something so generic as a ‘day’. The day would come – and was coming, she
insisted to herself with ever-increasing urgency – when Jarrod’s contributions
could be confined to nothing but memories. Memories that, whilst unlikely to
occupy pride of place in her thoughts, would surely provide a helpful reminder
of just how far she had come. She would
progress, she was sure of it, and her time with Jarrod would be the marker from
which all future development was measured.
She missed the blissful ignorance of a purr, the naive
squint of sleepy eyes, the comforting tingle of fur gliding past her
newly-shaven legs. Somehow her hallway looked emptier than it had before,
despite the clutter, as if there had been an untimely death that the room had
never quite got over. The carpet longed to be kneaded by excitable paws, the
telephone stool’s smooth surfaces sought the scratches that would hide their
naked innocence. Even the piled paperwork wondered why it hadn’t been scattered
across the floor; the impression of order it gave was decidedly unsettling.
The morning had already lasted far longer than usual and
it was with some relief, albeit tinged with tension, that the hour hand struck
8, signalling her transition from the cat-less hallway to the equally cat-less
car. It was only a short drive to work – Nigel had curtly pointed out last Wednesday
that anything under an hour should be considered short, as he provided a timely
reminder of his two-hour commute from Belgium, or somewhere like that, – and
yet Dawn struggled to steady her feet from wobbling as she slowly pulled out of
the drive. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a confident driver. In fact, her mother
had often reminded her that taking her test six times meant that she had far
more experience driving under pressure than most and so she should consider
herself fortunate.
‘Failure is never fortunate,’ she had replied the first
time, pleased with the slightly-alliterative nature of her slogan-like
response.
‘Don’t be so silly,’ her mother had retorted, in a
marginally patronising tone, ‘there’s no such thing as failure, only
opportunities for self-improvement. And that’s what you’ve had.’
‘Six times.’
‘Exactly. Six times. That’s six more than some of us get.
You should be grateful.’ She may have continued to speak after that but Dawn
had stopped listening, recalling vividly how proudly her mother had once
explained that the examiner on her big day had said that she was the best
driver he’d seen in years and how unusual it was to pass the test the first
time with so few errors.
‘You’ll be like me. I’m sure of it,’ she had said at the
time. Six tests later and failure was an ‘opportunity’. Dawn began to wonder
whether her mother would like the opportunity herself. All she knew was that
she was sick of all the opportunities the examiners were giving her and would
gladly be spared a further lesson in self-improvement if only it meant being
able to drive around without a nagging voice telling her which way to turn,
which cars to avoid hitting, which tree to steer around now that she’d mounted
the kerb.
As she fitted the sat-nav into place that morning, she
realised that it had been exactly three months since that glorious day when the
opportunities stopped. She had spent a month in silence, reassuring herself
that she knew where she was going and silence would help her concentrate and
get everything right. During the second month, the radio had found its volume,
and, as the third month began in full force, the desire to stop thinking all
together overwhelmed her to the point of a mouse click on Amazon and, before she knew it, she was once again being told where
to go by a rather over-enthusiastic electronic woman.
The instruction to ‘do a u-turn’ continued to surprise
her, as she certainly couldn’t remember it coming up in any of her tests, and
the rather irate response she received from a fist-shaking mobile-phone-using
middle-aged male-driver suggested that perhaps it wasn’t always wise to respond
to the command with such urgency. To be fair to the electronic woman, she had
begun to say ‘where possible, do a u-turn’, seemingly aware of the need for clarification
to prevent any other potential disasters.
Nigel had insisted that the train was the only acceptable
mode of transport for travelling to and from work, as it was the only place
that allowed you time to think and time to work. On a recent early-morning trip
to London, it became clear to Dawn that the train was no longer a place of
wonder and amazement, as the world rushed past, all eyes straining to catch a
glimpse of the name of the station they had just stormed through at probably
well over 100mph. Now it was a mobile internet cafe, a fan-club convention for
laptop users, and an exhibit of twenty-first century multi-tasking as competing
voices chattered into mobiles while their eyes remained glued to the
spreadsheets before them. She had felt completely out of place as she placed
her rucksack on the table before her, realising that stretching her legs was a
luxury too far as she kicked the shins of the man opposite, before pulling out
a magazine to read on the journey. She was sure that the typing became louder
after that, as if those surrounding her were determined to drown out her
reading, as if to reinforce just how inappropriate her actions were, whilst she
received an unfavourable glance from the man to her right when she brushed
against the table, spilling a little of his previously-untasted coffee as she
tried to catch the last four letters of the station-sign.
As the radio volume in her car steadily increased, she
became adamant that Nigel was wrong. There was plenty of thinking to be done in
the car. In fact, that morning, as she pulled out of the driveway, she pondered
the morality of increasing her speed just enough to flatten the track-suited
teenager whose crisp packet had mysteriously flown out of his hands and landed
on the freshly-weeded patch of her garden.
Littering is
lethal. Love your land.
As the words formed in her mind, it was clear that not
only thought but work could be completed in the car, and all before she’d even
left the driveway.
Munch was three
hours away from its moment in the limelight and there was still work to be
done. In between glances at the road and glances at her unpredictable
gear-changes, she would glance, think and work for inspiration. For a moment,
she recalled the crisp criminal and reflected on his disregard for his
discarded food.
Don’t lose your
lunch. Munch.
She altered ‘lose’ to ‘skip’ on the virtual notebook she
was keeping in between glances to her left and to her right as she prepared to
pull out onto the busier-than-usual road before her.
‘Turn left,’ the electronic woman reminded her.
Left your lunch?
Munch.
The train sped past on the hill overhead.
---------
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