Footprints
by Matt Thorne
We are rearranging ourselves in bed when Chris asks, “What are those red
marks?”
“These?” I ask, pulling back the flesh beneath my arm. “My baby's footprints.
He sleeps between me and Johnny, horizontally. Sometimes they're there all
day.”
Chris is cross, not because I've mentioned my husband but because I've
mentioned my son. I still call him my baby even though he's almost 3.
It's Chris's reaction that makes me feel that our affair can never become
serious; that I can never leave Johnny for him. Because he doesn't realise
that it is not my husband he is competing against, it's my son. It's
something I've noticed in a lot of people who don't have children: their
incomprehension of the nature of this love.
I know he wouldn't understand if I explained that the first time my son held
me in a loving way, it felt better than any time my husband ever held me; it
felt, in fact, like the embrace of my first boyfriend. And I know he
wouldn't understand that I enjoy evenings in with my son more than being
with him or Johnny. That when I'm sitting there watching him eat food I've
prepared and he's watching one of his favourite DVDs and he turns to me and
says, “I love this,” I forget any worries that I'm turning him into a couch
potato and just feel love, proper love, in a way that neither of my adult
men can bring me.
Although this won't last, can't last, and he will learn not to like me and
then to hate me and then to forget about me, it still means more than
anything Chris can give, and for this reason I can only like him, and regret
our time together, already, because we have no future.
Romeo and Romeo
by Lionel Shriver
Romney came of age thinking Bad Thoughts, and led a secret life with other
boys. The badness made him feel guilty, but it was also exciting. So in a
way the badness was good.
At 25, Romney met Jules, whose long flowing hair compensated for the fact that
he tended to get a bit melodramatic about roses and the moon. Their steamy
frolics being forbidden made the sex fantastic; it was really good badness!
But secrecy about fancying a gender from the wrong side of the tracks - your
own side - was now frowned upon as cowardly.
So Romney braved at Sacramento parties, “I'm gay, you know!” his heart racing.
Everyone acted very bored. They seemed to be waiting for him to say
something about global warming. Romney was hurt. He'd finally come out, and
now people treated his bold challenge to social mores as perfectly dreary.
Fiercely, he resolved to tell his mother. Clutching Jules's hand on her porch
in Coralville, Iowa, Romney braced for hair-tearing and tears, if not
disinheritance and disavowal.
Instead, Mother swept them inside and kissed Jules like one of the family.
Within minutes, Mother was on the phone, boasting about how progressively
welcoming she'd been of her son being gay.
She and Jules got on great, which was annoying.
Then California had to go and legalise gay marriage. Jules proposed. Romney
wasn't sure about marrying Jules, but - fi! - nothing stopped them now.
After an expensive wedding in Napa Valley (the cabernet was sour, the
carpaccio off-colour), the couple settled in a dumpy Fresno suburb with a
mole problem where everyone knew they were gay and didn't care.
Jules went bald. Deprived of the goodness of badness, they developed erectile
dysfunction issues. After seven tedious years, they split.
Alack, alack! Methinks Romney and Jules might have made a fabulous tragedy, if
only someone had tried to keep them apart.
She's Out There, Fighting
by James Meek
Sean and Klara said goodbye to the others, left the table where their friends
were still drinking and went downstairs. Klara went first. The stair smelt
of old wood and wine and each felt their breathing was at least as loud as
their feet on the bare boards. At the same moment, when there were only a
few steps left before the door on to the street, they stopped. Klara turned
round. Although it was dark on the stair there was just enough light for
them to see each others' eyes shining. They kissed. They had known each
other for three hours.
The streets were crowded with young drinkers, rickshaws and roadworks, but
they had lovers' luck. They found a cab and went to Klara's flat. They went
on kissing throughout the taxi journey and made love on the sofa in Klara's
sitting room. Afterwards Klara got up and padded to the kitchen. Lying naked
and stretched out on the sofa, Sean heard the lid of a pedal bin open and
shut, a tap turned on and off, a cupboard opening and the clink of two
glasses. His eyes wandered across the clothes discarded on the rug to the
black and white photograph of Klara's boyfriend on the mantelpiece; a
round-faced, balding, clever-looking man.
Klara came back with wine and they drank, stroking each other's bare skin and
talking. Sean asked what Klara had meant when she said that her boyfriend
had a problem. She told him it was none of his business. He must be
impotent, Sean thought. He and Klara slept together, made love again during
the night, and walked together to the station in the morning. They took
different trains. “If you're not going to leave your boyfriend,” said Sean
before they parted, “why did you sleep with me?” “Because I love him,” said
Klara.
A True Love Story
by Jilly Cooper
In the local woods, among the blue speckled eggs of a jackdaw's nest, Timmy
Bates spotted Henry, yelling his head off. Tim was lonely; he carried the
fledgeling back to his boarding school in a paper bag and, using a fountain
pen filler, fed him milk round the clock.
Progressing to beaten egg and slugs, Henry developed into a cocky, handsome
bird with shiny eyes and a purple sheen. He fluttered round Tim's study,
riding on his shoulder, prattling: ky-wak, ky-wak. Once painfully shy, Tim
now found himself making friends with boys amused at Henry's exploits.
As June 1952 moved into July, Henry went on increasingly long flights, but he
always returned to Tim's shoulder. He was the best friend Tim had ever had.
Alas, the inseparable companion of true love is anxiety. Tim dreaded the end
of term: how would Henry cope in the wild?
On the last Tuesday, he carried a caged, outraged Henry deep into the woods.
Releasing him, Tim fled - to wait in dread and longing for the imperious tap
of a beak on his window. But none came.
The last Saturday of term was celebrated by six cricket matches - 132 boys
spread over six pitches. Fielding on the boundary of Pitch Six, Tim suddenly
froze - for high in the cloudless blue, like a speckle on a jackdaw's egg, a
black dot was floating. Moving closer, it sprouted wings and, fluttering
round Pitch One, carefully examined each identically white-clad player.
Slowly, the dot checked every pitch until it reached Pitch Six and Tim could
hear a cheerful volley of ky-waks. He tried to call out but the words stuck
in his throat. Surely Henry could hear the crashing of his heart?
Henry was busy checking batsmen and wicketkeeper, hovering over point and
cover. Then squawking joyously, swifter than a driven four, he reached the
boundary, crash landing on Tim's shoulder, chattering in delight and
complacency: aren't I clever to find you?
As jackdaw stopped play, Tim's team-mates cheered a hero's return. Plumage
even glossier, clearly thriving in the wild, Henry had returned to bid his
young master Godspeed.
“Oh Henry, you are super,” sighed Tim. “Ky-wak,” agreed Henry.
First Love
by Adele Parks
She dropped the kids off at her ex's. He was having them for the entire
weekend. How'd she manage? Without them she wasn't sure she amounted to
much. Turning the corner, she bumped into Karl - after all these years -
there he was, sharing the same pavement. He smelt of her youth. She leant
closer, to secretly inhale him; he was trembling. Like her.
“You haven't changed a bit.” His grin lit up her stomach and a bit lower;
it always had.
“Liar. Charming liar.” Small smile.
“Nineteen years,” he paused, “six months, one week.”
Delighted, shocked, Amanda blushed. “I don't believe you've been counting.”
“No. I guessed the months and weeks.” Her face muscles remember laughter.
“Fancy a drink?” In the intimidating, smart bar with loud, wordless music,
she ordered a G&T, he had beer. “So you don't drink Bacardi any more?'”
“No and you've moved on from Woodpecker cider. Cheers.” They clinked glasses,
then fell silent. There was so much to say. Why hadn't he written after he
went to university? Not once. She remembered the futile, eternal waits for
the postman. He'd met someone in freshers' week; for a term it seemed like
love. He read Amanda's mind: “Never was much of a letter writer.”
He wanted to ask her who she lost her virginity to; was it good? Furious and
bored, she eventually had a fling with his cousin. Yes, it was; very good.
She read his mind and assured him. “Pretty average really. Like everyone's
first time.”
Instinctually they'd known to protect one another. They both started to laugh
at the weird connection that seemed untroubled by the years of neglect. A
tiny piece of discontent and disappointment dissolved inside her, she
breathed a little easier. She'd loved her 17-year-old self. Still did.
Light
by Tim Lott
When they woke up side by side, they looked at one another, unmotivated and
without self-consciousness. Later, they would each remember the light
rendered solid by dust and cut into parallels by white wooden slats.
In time they were married, neither of them knowing quite why. Neither love nor
custom explained it. Years of work arrived in the slipstream, and they took
one another as given. They bought a home. One day it was fully furnished,
and then some new goal became urgent.
Children came. Her resentment grew along with her satisfaction. He felt
masculine, yet somehow redundant. Her world became local, automatically and
unequivocally separate from his. He felt the weight - he was growing denser
as the space around him expanded. He made the journey inside himself,
imagining safety there. They tried to talk, but talk had become a cudgel
that both of them had forgotten how to put down.
Her disappointment grew, twinned to his bewilderment. They didn't know what to
do. Doing was beside the point - rancour could not be assuaged by deeds.
Conflict had its own purpose. His apologies became indistinguishable from
cursing. She wept only once, in the shower, in the small hours.
As he left, he told the children that they would have a better life now. He
did not look into their eyes. The children blandly acknowledged the truth,
and returned to watching television. Her eyes were distracted by an
advertisement for air freshener. He reached for her hand. She consented, but
it was like touching light.
He wondered what light was. Nobody really knew, he had read somewhere. Only
that it was indestructible. But that was so hard to understand. And
impossible, he thought as he left the house for the last time, to believe.
Write your own love story
Send your fictional tales, in a maximum of 300 words, to lovestory@thetimes.co.uk
. Include your name, age and contact details. We will publish the winners
later this month.
what happened re the competition?
Anita, London, UK
I would also like to know who the winners were. Was there a reply to Roy's question?
Johann Wentzel, Londonerrry,
Apart from the Lionel Shriver and Gilly Cooper ..which are at least mildly amusing....the other stories are drivel...you insult your readers' intelligence headlining them as 'funny poignant and original'
David Griffiths, Isleworth, UK
Who is being published from the entries?
Anne hayward, Exeter, UK
Who were the winners of this competition?
Roy Sunderland, London,
5 beautifully-written, touching, thought-provoking pieces. And the Jilly Cooper.
Llloyd Collins, Winchester,