Escaping Life Read online

  Escaping Life

  Michelle Muckley

  Text Copyright © 2012 Michelle Muckley

  Cover Art 2012 Michelle Muckley

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual people, places, or events is in every respect coincidental.

  This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be copied, resold, or lent without the author’s prior permission.

  For extra copies, and further information about the author, please visit:

  www.michellemuckley.com

  This book is dedicated to those who chose to escape. I try to understand.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty two

  Twenty three

  Twenty four

  Twenty five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty seven

  Twenty eight

  Twenty nine

  Thirty

  Thirty one

  Thirty two

  Thirty three

  Thirty four

  Thirty five

  Thirty Six

  Thirty seven

  “Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient”

  Henry Ward Beecher 1813-1887

  Other work by Michelle Muckley

  The Loss of Deference

  “The novel races to its finish in a white-knuckle ride, and more than once I wanted to close my eyes so that I might not see what I was sure was coming.”

  “A devastating thriller!”

  “Even as the events reach their climax, though we know what the characters are capable of, the ultimate decision is still riveting and heart-wringing.”

  “Michelle Muckley created a believable dystopian world inhabited by intriguing characters. The main subject matter is very emotive but doesn't overpower the story or the development of the character's lives and how they interact. I can't wait to read more from this talented new writer.”

  “From the moment I started reading, I was hooked; I could not put it down!”

  “I was disappointed I had reached the last page.”

  “Imaginative, clever and thought provoking book; it had me hooked from the first chapter.”

  One

  If I was still alive, I would be able to feel the smooth pebbles in the early morning tide brushing against my feet. I would know that there were a few stuck between my toes as the waves washed them up onto the shore. My skin would soak up the early morning sun like the ripe fruits of the raspberry bushes growing in the nearby gardens, rather than remain blue and lifeless to the touch. It is a comfortable resting place that I made for myself. I wriggled my body around a little once I was lying down, shuffling the rocks beneath me into place, a perfect imprint of my body. The pebbles and stones have formed a soft cushion, and it is here that I will lie until the time I am found by the beach comber, his dog excited and eager to share such a finding as he sniffs around me and barks his excitement. What a find I am. The beach comber will not know what I am at first. I will look like just a small mound in the distance. I could be rubbish, or discarded clothes, the scent of which has sent his companion into a sensory frenzy. Even upon seeing me, he will not believe his own eyes. He will walk cautiously towards me, certain that I am asleep and scared to wake me. He will convince himself that I cannot be that which his mind is telling him. He will see the items at my side, and my feet in the water. He will tell himself over and over that I am asleep, but he will know that I am dead. Waking up this morning he had no idea of this fate before him as he pulled on his summer walking shoes. He dressed whilst his Golden Retriever excitedly paced back and forth standing up onto his hind legs, front feet scratching high up on the door and nuzzling at the cracks as if he can already smell me, my scent drifting along on the early morning breeze. I do not know this man, but I know he will do the right thing. I have learnt to trust my instincts. He will put the lead on the dog. He will quickly struggle his way across the beach to call the police using the coins that he had stowed in his pocket for the morning newspaper, and which instead would now be pushed with shaky fingers into the metallic slot of the payphone at the end of the road where it sits like a lighthouse before the stormy ocean of sand dunes beyond it. He will return to my body and guard me until the police arrive. Of this I am certain, for I have watched him every day this last month. He is always here. He is a good man.

  I am dressed in my mother’s clothes. My skirt is loose and blowing around as the wind has whipped up underneath it like an expectant parachute. The edges have become wet and look dark against the light mocha brown material. I have tucked the shirt into the high elasticated waist, a cap sleeved flower print vest. I am also wearing her necklace. Just cheap beads, white, large and chunky, like bone fragments strung together and draped across my neck as a voodoo talisman for my sacrifice. They look old and out of place against my face. I would have been thirty three in a month’s time. I would not have celebrated my birthday. The last time I celebrated was for my twenty-eighth birthday: I ate dinner with my family and friends; I drank wine; I had a cake and blew out the candles. I stopped celebrating after this. There is no celebration alone. Perhaps I would have cooked my dinner, sat on the settee, and watched the television. Later, when I missed her, I would have taken out the photographs. I have only a few now, but I look at them each day, enjoying them as if they are new and just picked up from the developing shop in that moment of excitement when they are still warm and stuck together, and still smell faintly of chemicals. I lived for such memories. I keep them safely in a drawer and look at them each day. I do not display them. I do not want this house to be mine. I shouldn’t pretend for it to feel like home.

  I have placed my mother’s sandals neatly to my side. They match my bone necklace with the white leather crisscrossing across their open toes. My mother always wore these sandals. They were her favourite pair and she would wear them in the house, shopping, school sports day, and to the beach. She didn’t let things go to waste in a cupboard. There was no day to save for. No Sunday best. Every day was for living. What did she know?

  In my left hand I am clutching a photograph. It is old and tatty, battered from its daily use. In it my mother sits, staring at the camera with blank eyes. She always tried so hard not to blink. I am sat opposite her. My face is open, wide-eyed with a big toothy smile, too young to be self conscious about my crooked teeth and before I was old enough for braces. There are candles on the table too. We are celebrating. You are sitting next to me, propped up with a frilly cushion. We are wearing the same dresses. Red corduroy A-line dresses with a small white frill at the neckline. It is too childish for me. You are only four years old. You are not looking at the camera. You are too interested in the toys that Santa Claus has brought for you. I am trying to get your attention; I am grabbing at your arm trying to get you to look in the right direction. He got fed up with waiting for you and took the photograph anyway. He will scold me for this. I love you so much already.

  Next to my mother’s shoes there is a packet of cigarettes. It’s a small white carton with a blue band across it. It has an emblem of a sailor, a fine looking man standing proudly with his blue sailor’s hat on. The cigarettes inside are different. They are my cigarettes. In my right hand I am holding a bus ticket and a key. It
is dated April fourth, two thousand and six. It’s the day you think I died.

  I came here once, with you. We ran wild like caged animals released, uncertain what to do with our new found freedom. We built a fortress and fortified the walls. We claimed this beach as our own. We sat here in this spot, and ate ice creams quickly before they melted and ran over our skin. You weren’t quick enough though, and your ice cream dropped like a freshly laid egg into your lap. You cried so much that I gave you mine. I would have given it to you anyway. I was in awe of you. I first saw you when you were only minutes old, our mother still recovering, with beads of perspiration sitting on her face. She called me in. She said that you had asked for me. I was so young, I didn’t realise that you couldn’t have. To me you were perfect. You are still perfect. When I came back here to our beach for the first time, I sat on the bench by the phone box. I didn’t expect to see anybody so early on in the day walking along the beach. I heard the dog first. He was here every time I came. I knew he would be the one to find me. I understand why he comes here every day. It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful place to die.

  Two

  It was seven o’clock when Elizabeth Green woke up. It was a Sunday, but she never slept in. These were her hours. She could hear the seagulls screeching above the Bay of Haven, cawing as they flew in for the first pick of the day’s catch, the fishermen trying desperately to protect their prize. Graham was still sleeping next to her, as he surely would for at least another two hours. He wasn’t bothered by the noise of the gulls or the sunlight that poured in through the bare windows. Peeling her sticky skin away from the bed sheets, she wrapped her robe around her. The sun was already high. It was going to be a beautiful day.

  It was a wonderful summer this year that had brought with it long hot days spent outdoors, and a rich influx of tourists into their usually sleepy Haven. There was a gentle breeze as she cracked the first of the windows open. She stood on the landing in front of a small square window, separated by wooden cross panelling, and breathed in the first view of the bay. It was this view that had first enticed her here three years ago. The house was small and old, but it had a charm that she couldn’t resist. She knew as soon as she had first found this place that living here would be very different from her city apartment. She had felt stifled and trapped and unable to breathe properly in the thick clogging air. Summers were always unbearable in the city as the pollution clung low to the ground becoming locked in by the cloud of humidity which itself would cling to you, drenching you in fumes. She needed space and air, and room to breathe. She had found it here on her first daytrip to Haven, turning into any road that she didn’t recognise until she eventually found herself sitting in the car park opposite the water’s edge. She had taken the turn into the long country lane, following the twisting turning road as uncertain as Dorothy as to what she may find in her final destination. She found her own pot of gold as she arrived in the quiet little village. She breathed in the clean air and found that sense of hope and possibility that the ocean brought with it as it rolled into the sweeping bay, and which had been missing from her city life.

  She had been sitting on the bench looking out to sea when she first saw the house. At the end of the dirt road it sat, old and derelict, shamefully waiting for the right person to nurture it back to life, its previous glory lost to hard winters and paint-eating frost. She knew she was that person. She had ignored the signs that told her to keep out as she snooped around the house, drinking in the sweet smell of the unruly rambling roses and the sound of the waves rolling in, crashing against the sharp rocks below as she peered over the cliff edge at the end of the garden. It was enough for her and she could see its old charm when it once stood proudly as a fisherman’s cottage. In her mind she was already living here, building, or rebuilding her life. Graham hadn’t needed any encouragement. He knew that she needed a fresh start after the year behind them. When the sale was completed, and the builders had finished the major work, they moved in straight away. They painted around the furniture; they laid tiles that Graham had found in the reclamation yard; they painted the outside walls brilliant white, which the locals said contrasted so beautifully with the old stone gable and roof tiles as they passed by to welcome the new couple from the city. They found a life here that they had missed. They found a peace. Staring out of this small landing window every morning, was a daily reminder of why it was that life had drawn her here.

  She opened up the back doors, and placed a tray of tea on the small wrought iron table. She would sit here silently with her morning drink, the only sound the distant mumble of fisherman fighting away the seagulls, and the gentle roar of breaking waves. This was where she waited until she heard the thud of the Sunday morning newspaper as it dropped onto the doormat. She could have read the news easily on-line, watched the television, or turned on the radio. But it wasn’t the same. She liked the feel of the newspaper in front of her: the rustle of crisp paper as she turned and folded the pages, slowly becoming less uniform as she devoured them with the print on her fingers and the smell of the ink lifting under the heat of the early morning sun. The breeze rose up and off the ocean beneath them and gently skirted the cliffs and it waved at her robe, which dropped open exposing her pale legs. It was cool enough to make her skin pimple, and she thought of Graham, still upstairs bundled into the quilt that was too thick for the time of year, and how he missed the best part of the day. Part of her was glad though, she liked that she had it all to herself.

  She heard the noise of her front gate, followed by the thud of the newspaper as it landed on the doormat, and she made her way along the smoothly sanded floorboards, covered only with a locally woven rug. Almost everything was white or wooden, and she loved the sense of space it gave the small cottage, especially when the light of the summer made everything just a little bit crisper. It was a blank canvas for nature to paint its myriad coloured sunsets and sunrises onto the bare walls. She had even left the walls bare of paintings and photographs. It was so unlike the place in the city that she had left behind. The sharp dark edges and shiny surfaces of the old apartment were a contrast to the rugged finish of bare wood and natural textures. It was exactly what she needed. Grabbing the newspapers from the mat, she picked up her glasses from the hallway table and made her way back out into the garden. She could hear Graham snoring upstairs, the gentle groan of deep sleep. She had at least another hour to enjoy her peace. She closed the French doors behind her, poured herself another cup of tea and sat in the company of the view and the news before her.

  She had her routine. The first step was to read loosely through the national paper. She would glance at the headlines of political unrest and celebrity scandal and wonder how far removed it seemed from her quiet life by the beach. Her life as a web designer working for a huge company had been busy and full of stress. Opening her own freelance business and working from home after they moved here was going well, and the hustle of her old city life, and all that went with it that she now read about in the paper, seemed like another world at times. She still heard about it from Graham, who travelled in every day, but she didn’t need to live it anymore. She would pause on any story that interested her, but generally she quickly moved on. Her real interest was to get to the local paper. She didn’t move quickly through these stories. She wanted to know what was happening at the church fete; she wanted to know how much had been collected in the latest charity auction; she wanted to know what the local groups had organised for the children’s summer activities, and who would be running them. The local news made her feel like she was home. It made her feel like she had as a child.

  As a child she would wake up early on a Sunday morning. Her sister, Rebecca, would still be sleeping in the next room, but would soon get up once Elizabeth was awake and tugging at her sheets. In the winters, which always seemed longer then, they would put on their wellington boots and wrap up warm as they had been shown, with their blue duffle coats with big cream buttons. They would wrap their scarves tightly aro
und their necks and put on their mittens, which still dangled from their sleeves on elastic. Rebecca always complained that the other kids at school didn’t have their mittens hanging out of their sleeves like puppy’s ears anymore. It made her feel childish. She had cut the elastic once, but when she got home without one of her mittens her father’s chiding made sure she never cut the elastic again. In the summer, they would grab their sundresses and sandals, dressing quickly as if it were an Olympic sport and charge out into the nearby fields, down to the stream where probably there were already a couple of local kids playing. There were four years between Elizabeth and Rebecca, but it didn’t matter. They grew up never having to look for friends to play with. They always had each other.

  “They had to be home for midday”, their mother would say as she called after them as they burst out through the kitchen door with their golden blonde hair trailing behind them like string from a party popper. Once, Rebecca, who was always the time keeper had forgotten to put her watch on and they were late. They spent the subsequent month of Sundays on curfew, only allowed to watch from the window as summer dwindled by without them. Elizabeth had been so mad with Rebecca that she stopped talking to her for the first week, until she realised it was even worse being in their house without her big sister to play with.

  As she browsed through the pages, the newspaper was abundant with local stories: images of prize vegetables from the flower show; a car accident that had resulted in the loss of a garden fence; the ongoing scandal of the local politician who had been a member of more than one political party. Then, after turning past twenty pages, she reached her aim. The Announcements. There was nothing more that she liked doing on a Sunday morning than to read through the announcements of weddings, engagements, anniversaries, even the deaths. There was nothing more that transported her back to a time when she sat, sweaty from the heat, surrounded by the bustle of her mother in the kitchen as she made them jam sandwiches whilst her sister would read aloud the story of the day before Elizabeth had learned to do so. There would be a large plate of white bread and strawberry jam sandwiches, sometimes cut with pastry shapes into little people or animals. They would eat without plates over the white and red checked plastic table cloth, so that even though they were indoors it somehow felt like a picnic. In the summer there would be a plate of fresh berries from the garden, the only day of the week when picking of the garden fruit was allowed. “We have to let the fruits grow each week. We can’t be greedy every day”, their mother would say when they craved the succulent juicy treats on a weekday. Then their mother would spread out the paper on the table, turning straight to the Announcements page. They listened to all of the announcements as their mother read them out. “Scott-Walker”, she would begin: “Peter and Sue Scott are delighted to announce the forthcoming marriage of their beloved son”. She would read out the weddings, which was always Elizabeth’s favourite, with the pictures of the white dresses, soon smudged with jam fingerprints as she would thumb at the images, dreaming one day of her own wedding. “Be careful sticky fingers”, her mother would berate, as she pretended to bat away her enthusiastic little hands, both of them knowing there was no real danger in her reprimand.