Serious Sweet Read Online Free Page B

flourishes.
    She’d have been happy, though, however she phrased it. She’d have been happy in any case.
    I will meet you.
    It’s a happy statement.
    It’s a good promise.
    And it had joined her birthday as a pleasant thing to bear in mind.
    It’s my birthday.
    This is her first birthday.
    She is forty-five years old and having her first birthday.
    This has been her first birthday for quite a while, in fact, longer than average, to be honest.
    I’m spinning it out. Just try and stop me. You can’t. Bet you can’t. This birthday is all mine.
    She’s made it as far as her continuing first birthday and is trotting further on. This is an excellent thought.
    She has a collection of premium-quality thoughts which she likes to count through. She has scenes and moments she remembers deliberately. This is her equivalent of maybe passing warm pebbles from hand to hand, smooth and reliable, or her version of the rosary, her misbaha, her mala, her komboloi, her worry beads – everyone worries and why not have beads? She counted out invisible fragments and wished they were more obvious, better at saying to other people,
Just leave me alone for a minute, because I am busy with wanting to feel all right
.
    There’s no fault in wanting that.
    There’s no harm in milking your birthday. Even if it did happen more than a week ago – so what?
    My name is Meg. It’s my fucking birthday.
    She feels that she’s justified.
    How often, after all, do you have your first birthday? Usually not more than once.
    Fine, OK – it wasn’t a birthday, it was an anniversary.
    My name is Margaret Williams, Meg Williams. My name is Meg and it is my anniversary. One year.
    But birthday was a better word for it, because telling yourself
first birthday
could remind you of when you were a kind of celebrity at rock-star level, but too young to enjoy it. When you got born you were immediately good news. When anyone saw you they smiled. They gave you stuff. They wanted to hold you and protect you and be kind. You could dress like a mental patient and not utter a sensible word, but that was OK, that was cool, that pleased people and they purely wanted to know more about you and find out your needs. If you messed up then somebody else washed away your problem and you only had to
be
and that was enough to satisfy. You being you was a bloody treat for anyone who caught it.
    One is the age of automatic celebrity.
    Who wouldn’t want a share of that?
    One is spotless and has no baggage and can do no harm. It has only the ghosts of things to come – each one of them carrying a happy promise.
    She didn’t, in the usual way of things, enjoy thinking of the future – the future had an unmanageable shape.
    But when you were one, you had this big, noticeable, smiling future – it was right there for you, straight ahead and held to be inviting. You had promise and it wasn’t meant to disappear, not until you were older. You were a promise. To others as much as to yourself.
    A nudge of emotion started to seethe up from her feet and she hoped that the early dog walkers didn’t come too near and notice her slightly crying. The Hill was a chatty area, you might not get away with tears – you’d have to protect yourself against enquiries.
    Really, she ought to head home and get warmed and out of her pyjamas. Outings undertaken with wellingtons and a coat over pyjamas were viewed as an acceptable morning practice in many households around here. The Hill didn’t judge. Car jaunts of an evening could use the same dress code. If you had a car. She didn’tany more. And there was work soon and something else before and she had to get ready in a number of ways and the bus schedules had become mainly theoretical of late, which meant she had to be responsible and set aside more time for journeys. She should shower and make ready and chase straight off to be where she