Thursday 11 September 2014

Memories


A bit of reader interaction today - Details below. 
Jane got into the car and looked at her daughter in the passenger seat. She'd never seen Kylie quite like this before. It was a mixture of nerves, excitement and hormonal lust. Her little girl had become a woman. They were on the way to the train station to pick up Zeb, Kylie's new love interest. He was the latest in a longish line, but something told Jane that he just might be the last.
‘He's the one isn't he?’ She said, eyeing her daughter's reaction as she drove.
Kylie put a little finger in between her teeth and nodded shyly. ‘I think he is,’ she said quietly. ‘So no baby photos okay?’ She added, whacking her mum playfully.
Jane remembered when she first took Alex home to meet her mum and dad. Her dad all defensive at first but was soon melted by Alex's charms, while her mum was seduced by the master seducer. Ah Alex what a man! He should have been the last, but they were too young, only 19. Both of them were too adventurous, too independent, too god damn horny for the childhood sweetheart fairy tale of romance novels.  Their relationship didn’t last the first term at Uni. Her head was turned by the boys wearing baggy jeans in Manchester, while he was seduced by the posh girls of Cambridge, although that was probably the other way around.
She often wondered if he thought of her like she thought about him. He was the one that got away or the one that she threw back. Gosh what was it? 25-30 years but she still thought about him, wondered what he looked like, what he was doing, who he had married.
‘Penny for them mum?’
Jane was shaken from her reverie by her daughter's voice. No one in the family knew about Alex, and Jane wasn't going to start telling stories now, especially not to the daddy's little girl sat next to her.
‘Oh nothing love, just wondering what's so special about Zeb.’
‘You'll see mum.’
‘Have you met his parents?’
‘Yeah, they’re divorced. You know what, his mum looks a bit like you and his dad is lovely.’
They’d reached the station. Jane waited in the main hall while Kylie went up to the platform. The lovebirds didn’t need mum hanging around while they got reacquainted.
Jane watched the drunks and the bums, how did the end up like this? Down and out, and homeless? Maybe one of them was Alex! You never know, or maybe he was dea... No she didn't want to think that. But then she remembered how they'd picked each other's funeral songs as macabre teenagers
‘Mum this is Zeb.’ Again it was her daughter's voice that brought her back to 2014.

And at this point there is a choice of two endings. Which one do you prefer?

Version 1

Jane looked at the boy and blinked and then looked again more closely at the boy standing in front of her.
‘What’s wrong mum?’ Kylie asked.
‘Nothing darling. Pleased to meet you Zeb.’ She smiled. She’d been so caught up in her memories that she'd half expected to see Alex standing in front of her.

Version 2
‘Pleased to meet you.’ She said, smiling. No wonder Kylie though his father was lovely, his father was obviously Alex.



4 comments:

  1. i think I prefer ending one as it seems more credible.... though the second one may entail interesting consequences.... :)

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    Replies
    1. i do agree :-)

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    2. Me too .. the second ending gives rise to a part two .. but maybe the first one does too … we’ll see.

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  2. The second one please. I love then things are complicated

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