the fire and I watched the sparks fly as flames leapt into the cool night air. I bit my lip. How could I follow the path? It wasn’t safe. I would burn. Anxiously, I looked across at you again. You were still there, holding out your arms to me with that look in your eyes, and as I made to circle the campfire you spoke again.
‘Trust in the journey. Do not fear the process.’
Your words made me hesitate and, filled with trepidation, I stepped into the fire. But I needn’t have feared – there was no heat – and as the flames parted I left my world and crossed into yours.
‘I know you,’ I whispered, as I looked deep into your eyes.
‘You do,’ you replied, taking me in your arms.
And as you covered my mouth with a kiss of such sweet urgent tenderness, our passion took me far, far away…
*
Opening my eyes, the first thing I’m aware of is an unaccustomed easing to the ache that consumes my heart these days. The second is the realisation that I’ve had the dream again. As always, it feels vivid and real… but what does it mean? As the grey light of dawn seeps through a crack in the curtains, the harsh reality of my life swiftly replaces the earlier glow that so cruelly and fleetingly encompassed me.
Sussex
1
It’s odd how a relationship can end on such a seemingly small, inconsequential incident. But that’s what happened, and however many times I went over the minutiae of our life together there was never any satisfactory explanation as to how we had unravelled so spectacularly without my noticing.
At seventeen and a half I was plucked from a life of indescribable greyness when a tragic accident claimed my parents. They’d never bothered much about me but it wasn’t that they didn’t care; they were just too wrapped up in each other. They thought that providing me with a roof over my head and putting food on my plate was enough and, subsequently, I spent much of the time left to my own devices. Basically, I brought myself up. I was the unplanned, much younger ‘mistake’. My brother was fifteen when I was born and used to having the monopoly on our parents. He showed no interest in this latest addition to the family, and by the time his baby sister was truly aware of him he was on the verge of leaving the family home and off to university; eager to embrace the wider world.
I was a solitary child and had few, if any, I could call true friends. Although, during early childhood there was Shannon, and we were inseparable. She lived three doors up with her family in a small, matching, red-brick, Victorian terraced house, originally built for the local farmworkers. We shared the same view and from our respective bedroom windows looked out across fields of ponies towards the South Downs. Neither of us came from horsey backgrounds but we’d spend every spare minute hanging over the field gate, dreaming of riding wild and free across the downland with the wind in our hair and the sun beating down upon our backs. At first the ponies were wary of us, but we sat quietly where they grazed, only moving when they wandered away. Over time they grew accustomed to our presence and we hopped on their backs while they meandered around the meadows, quietly grazing.
However, at the age of thirteen this idyll came to an abrupt end when Shannon’s father accepted a job in Edinburgh and relocated the family to Scotland. What should have been the experimental teenage years – when I discovered what made me tick – were spent largely in my bedroom or wandering the South Downs; the ever-present backdrop to the family home. I often felt adrift and confused, but I found comfort in nature, observing the natural rhythm of the seasons and the way the animals, birds and insects responded to the changes in their habitat.
I could lose myself for hours out there on the Downs, and when the curtain of night fell I would lie in the grass and gaze up in wonder at the constellations. The skies in Sussex seemed vast. I could recognise the Plough and knew how to locate the North Star, but that was about all. When I was feeling lost and acutely aware of my aloneness, it calmed me a little to know that I was but an infinitesimal piece of a much larger puzzle