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I wrote this in writing group this morning, in response to the prompt "Here's where the story ends" - one of a list of song titles around stories. It only took ten minutes, written to read out rather than be read on the page, so iffy punctuation but I want to keep it so here it is:
Here’s where the story ends – no, it isn’t, it can’t be. But it is, it’s where Julia’s story ends, nearly twenty years ago. All those ideas, all that planning, learning to make olive oil, how to get a good harvest from the walnut trees. All those phone calls – me in the car in the school car park having a lunch time fag, Julia in a bar in Spain, a bar we went to for the second of her three funerals, always full of it, so much going on, so alive. Who do I fight with now? Who can I tell to fuck off out of my house for talking bollocks and not shutting up when I’d just got in from bloody work? Who will phone me the next morning to see if I want a swim? I always want a swim.
The silence. The deadly silence, unbroken till Alan, one of the alcoholic ex-pat Brits knew Julia wouldn’t miss New Year’s Eve in the bar so walked the valleys till he found her. Which he did, way below the road, below that bend, her shattered body next to her shattered car. But what happened? Jeez, Julia – were you pissed? Did you swerve to avoid an animal? Were you forced off the road by an idiot coming the other way? Or did you get to the end and just head on over, your very own Thelma and Louise? You still hadn’t mastered harvesting the olives, you were still waiting for the electricity to reach your finca – was it all too much?
I can’t believe we’re done, you and me, Julia. I celebrate you on your birthday each year – you share it with Russell Brand – you’d have liked him. How can you not have known Russell Brand?
11:44 p.m. - 26.09.22
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