GoneForABurton
In verum, decor.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had hunches- a feeling deep in my stomach that something’s about to happen. It’s usually a tight knot of emotion deep in my gut, a ball of feeling that grips me, fills me with dread, makes me worry and panic and pace like an expectant father until it goes away, or my bad vibes have been proved right. Time and time again, they were proved right, too; the day my mother died, the day my sister had a car accident and broke her leg, the day my dog ran away; and the day Poppy disappeared.
“Don’t go, flower. Stay here with me. Come on, look. See? This bed, this bed’s going to feel empty until you’re back”.
“Stop being so dramatic, Francis- you know I’m coming back. This is my chance to make it big, though”.
She was faced away from me, bent over, rolling one leg of her tights up her leg. I watched her carefully, slipping my eyes over her body- her skin was milky white, and smooth, except for a scar, right down her spine, as though someone had just traced the line of her vertebrae. Her body curved out, and I rested my finger in the dimple just above the curve of her buttocks. She had a great arse, did my Poppy.
Her eyes raised as she shivered at my finger, and her reflection’s eye met my eyes as she frowned at me. Her breasts, hanging down as she bent over, were just as large, round, and gorgeous as her rear; just as white, too, just as smooth. Her eyes were gorgeous deep amber, her hair the dark red of a low, smouldering fire. She was beautiful, and I didn’t have a clue what she saw in me, but whatever it was, it was something good.
In contrast to her short, curvy body, I was tall, and rangy; whereas she was all sumptuous curves, I was all muscle and sinew. Where she was pale, I was dark, with sun-weathered skin. Her eyes were dark, but mine were light, a bright robin’s egg blue, matched by my white-blonde hair. Where we matched, though, was that we were both, in our own ways, broken; her looks were marred by a criss-cross of a scar at the corner of her mouth, something I used to joke was X marking the spot; my face was ruined by a long-broken nose that had never quite healed properly, leaving a slight rise-and-dip on the bridge.
“I’m going, Frank, but I’ll call you when I’m there, okay? Just relax, and think of me when the camera’s rolling and you’re telling all the farmers about the local pig strike or whatever. I’ll be back before you know it, too”. Her voice was teasing, her lips curved in a playful smile. She stood up, fully dressed now, and leant over, kissing me hard, the taste of coffee and cigarettes on her lips; then she pulled away, and was gone. And that was the last time I saw her.
I’d met Poppy Fitzpatrick at a dinner party hosted by my sister Rosie, a couple of years ago. She always gathered together people from all kinds of jobs, all walks of life, and it just so happened that Poppy and I had been the only journalists there; at the time, I was a newly-minted reporter for the local tv news, and she was a journalist for the county paper. Both of us were still pretty junior, both of us had dreams of making it national. Where we differed, though, was on our opinions of things; she was always opinionated, always had something to say about something, and I tended to let most of life drift me by; it was that indifference that led me to meet her, in fact.
We’d been standing round before the meal, chatting about various things. I’d wandered by Poppy, who was having an argument with a tall, willowy blonde, when she suddenly turned and jabbed a finger at me, aggressively asking, “Hey, what do you think about this thing, about what they’re doing with the library? And what’s your name, anyway?”
I’d just turned, smiled, and said, “Frank Leigh, my dear; I don’t give a damn”. For a moment, the look on her face would have seen me instantly dead if looks could kill, and then she’d flashed that grin at me, and for the rest of the evening, we’d been joined at the hip, chatting like lifelong friends. By the end of the night, we were a couple. By the end of the month, we were official. By the end of the year, we were living together.
Poppy was a feisty little fireball, the kind of woman who had something to say about everything, and didn’t mind who knew it. She was secretive about her past, for the most part, telling me what mattered was what we did, not what we’d done, and she was almost ridiculously aggressive about her Irish heritage, purposefully broadening her brogue when she talked to someone she either hated, or who had said they loved that she was from the Emerald Isle.
She loved almost everything I did, though; she loved old films, old books, old music, old things in general. We spent a lot of evenings just sitting, snuggled together, watching, listening, reading to each other. We did a lot of sickeningly couply things, and things were perfect, right up to the end, when she just…disappeared.
I wasn’t worried, for a couple of days; her interview’d been something she was nervous about, and so her not replying to my texts or calls wasn’t something that concerned me, even if it did make me a little nervous. My gut feeling stuck with me, and though I didn’t pace, I did wait until it had been a week with no news, and called the police.
At first, they weren’t taking me as seriously as they could have done, I thought; though they dutifully asked me questions, and took down details, and took a picture of her for their enquiries. Though they promised to keep me updated, they weren’t doing enough for my liking, and so I took matters into my own hands, calling in every favour I had, calling every contact I had, doing everything I could to find her. It wasn’t like her to just stop contact; after all, usually I’d be talking to her just moments before I went on camera, and the very second I was off, so she could tell me exactly what she thought of my performance; not that she was always complimentary. Often wasn’t, in fact.
The first call from the police was also the one I least wanted to hear from them; they’d found something they thought was her car, and they wanted me to identify it. Dutifully, I piled into their car, and was driven out to a spot a couple of hours away- a spot on the back roads, miles from where she was meant to be, but in the right direction at least. Her cherry red Japanese thing was parked by the side of the road- the bonnet was up, and her window wound down, as though she’d opened it up to have someone check the engine for her. It would definitely have been someone else, because as wonderful as she was, she was useless with cars- she could drive it, and fill it up with petrol, but other than that, she knew nothing.
A glance inside showed that her suitcase was still in the backseat, and her bag was still on the passenger seat, so whatever had happened, it had happened quickly, without her knowing.
After we discovered the car, things progressed quickly, almost too quickly. There were articles in the paper, and reports on the tv; local at first, then national as the days went by with no sign of her. Searches were made in the area where her car was found, and in the city she’d meant to be going to, but nothing came of it. I made an appeal on the tv, holding my composure until the very last minute, when tears poured down my cheeks as questions were asked. We had reports from the public after the appeal, but they all ended up being dead ends. As the leads trailed off, slowly, but surely, my hopes started to, too.
Things happened, and yet, every night, I went home alone.
Every night, I went home to our home; went home to a dark, cold, lonely place. I moved nothing of hers, at first; left her mess exactly where it had been, as though I could somehow tempt her back by leaving her crap everywhere. Every room was filled with the scent of her perfume, with things left by her, with the expectation she’d be back. There was food she’d never eaten, books she’d put down and hadn’t yet picked back up, and clothes she’d bought and hadn’t found the chance to wear; and as the days went on, I began to think she’d never get the opportunity to.
After a month, the searches stopped. After three, the appeals stopped. After six, I stopped.
I packed away her clothes, but kept them in the wardrobe. I threw away her food, keeping only the things I liked too. I swept her various shampoos and others things off the bathroom shelves, putting them away in a cupboard in the garage. I took her out of my life as much as I could, but kept her around, in case she came back, against ever-increasing odds.
Almost a year to the day since she’d disappeared, I found myself in a city a couple of hundred miles away, for an interview with another news station. I was dressed in my favourite dark suit, wearing a tie she’d bought for me for our second anniversary, wrapped up in a long blue overcoat that she’d always loved. Even now, after she’d gone, I couldn’t give her up, couldn’t get rid of her. I still thought I felt her around me, or heard her voice, or saw her disappearing round the corner.
So when I heard a voice that could have been hers as I was walking along the street, I stopped, looking round myself to try and spot where it was coming from. A few feet away, a woman was slipping her phone back into her bag, and as I watched, she turned to face me, and I heard myself gasp. The hair was darker, and longer; now almost black, and ending somewhere near her waist. The face was a little tighter, womanly instead of almost girlish. The figure was slimmer, but still curvy, now cosy instead of ample; girl-next-door instead of pin-up. The height, accounting for heels, was the same. Her eyes were the same dark, warm colour. And though her face had a little more colour in it than the girl I remembered, the same criss-cross’d X of a scar was at the corner of her mouth. If it wasn’t Poppy, then it was someone who was almost identical to her.
Swallowing nervously, feeling my body tense and shiver, I took a few steps until I was in front of her, in her eyeline, filling her field of view. I saw her tilt her head back, looking up, up, up, and when her eyes met mine, I whispered just one, soft word. Just one word, filled with hope, and fear, and excitement and terror. One word that could break my heart, or make me happier than anyone ever had.
“Poppy?”
“Don’t go, flower. Stay here with me. Come on, look. See? This bed, this bed’s going to feel empty until you’re back”.
“Stop being so dramatic, Francis- you know I’m coming back. This is my chance to make it big, though”.
She was faced away from me, bent over, rolling one leg of her tights up her leg. I watched her carefully, slipping my eyes over her body- her skin was milky white, and smooth, except for a scar, right down her spine, as though someone had just traced the line of her vertebrae. Her body curved out, and I rested my finger in the dimple just above the curve of her buttocks. She had a great arse, did my Poppy.
Her eyes raised as she shivered at my finger, and her reflection’s eye met my eyes as she frowned at me. Her breasts, hanging down as she bent over, were just as large, round, and gorgeous as her rear; just as white, too, just as smooth. Her eyes were gorgeous deep amber, her hair the dark red of a low, smouldering fire. She was beautiful, and I didn’t have a clue what she saw in me, but whatever it was, it was something good.
In contrast to her short, curvy body, I was tall, and rangy; whereas she was all sumptuous curves, I was all muscle and sinew. Where she was pale, I was dark, with sun-weathered skin. Her eyes were dark, but mine were light, a bright robin’s egg blue, matched by my white-blonde hair. Where we matched, though, was that we were both, in our own ways, broken; her looks were marred by a criss-cross of a scar at the corner of her mouth, something I used to joke was X marking the spot; my face was ruined by a long-broken nose that had never quite healed properly, leaving a slight rise-and-dip on the bridge.
“I’m going, Frank, but I’ll call you when I’m there, okay? Just relax, and think of me when the camera’s rolling and you’re telling all the farmers about the local pig strike or whatever. I’ll be back before you know it, too”. Her voice was teasing, her lips curved in a playful smile. She stood up, fully dressed now, and leant over, kissing me hard, the taste of coffee and cigarettes on her lips; then she pulled away, and was gone. And that was the last time I saw her.
I’d met Poppy Fitzpatrick at a dinner party hosted by my sister Rosie, a couple of years ago. She always gathered together people from all kinds of jobs, all walks of life, and it just so happened that Poppy and I had been the only journalists there; at the time, I was a newly-minted reporter for the local tv news, and she was a journalist for the county paper. Both of us were still pretty junior, both of us had dreams of making it national. Where we differed, though, was on our opinions of things; she was always opinionated, always had something to say about something, and I tended to let most of life drift me by; it was that indifference that led me to meet her, in fact.
We’d been standing round before the meal, chatting about various things. I’d wandered by Poppy, who was having an argument with a tall, willowy blonde, when she suddenly turned and jabbed a finger at me, aggressively asking, “Hey, what do you think about this thing, about what they’re doing with the library? And what’s your name, anyway?”
I’d just turned, smiled, and said, “Frank Leigh, my dear; I don’t give a damn”. For a moment, the look on her face would have seen me instantly dead if looks could kill, and then she’d flashed that grin at me, and for the rest of the evening, we’d been joined at the hip, chatting like lifelong friends. By the end of the night, we were a couple. By the end of the month, we were official. By the end of the year, we were living together.
Poppy was a feisty little fireball, the kind of woman who had something to say about everything, and didn’t mind who knew it. She was secretive about her past, for the most part, telling me what mattered was what we did, not what we’d done, and she was almost ridiculously aggressive about her Irish heritage, purposefully broadening her brogue when she talked to someone she either hated, or who had said they loved that she was from the Emerald Isle.
She loved almost everything I did, though; she loved old films, old books, old music, old things in general. We spent a lot of evenings just sitting, snuggled together, watching, listening, reading to each other. We did a lot of sickeningly couply things, and things were perfect, right up to the end, when she just…disappeared.
I wasn’t worried, for a couple of days; her interview’d been something she was nervous about, and so her not replying to my texts or calls wasn’t something that concerned me, even if it did make me a little nervous. My gut feeling stuck with me, and though I didn’t pace, I did wait until it had been a week with no news, and called the police.
At first, they weren’t taking me as seriously as they could have done, I thought; though they dutifully asked me questions, and took down details, and took a picture of her for their enquiries. Though they promised to keep me updated, they weren’t doing enough for my liking, and so I took matters into my own hands, calling in every favour I had, calling every contact I had, doing everything I could to find her. It wasn’t like her to just stop contact; after all, usually I’d be talking to her just moments before I went on camera, and the very second I was off, so she could tell me exactly what she thought of my performance; not that she was always complimentary. Often wasn’t, in fact.
The first call from the police was also the one I least wanted to hear from them; they’d found something they thought was her car, and they wanted me to identify it. Dutifully, I piled into their car, and was driven out to a spot a couple of hours away- a spot on the back roads, miles from where she was meant to be, but in the right direction at least. Her cherry red Japanese thing was parked by the side of the road- the bonnet was up, and her window wound down, as though she’d opened it up to have someone check the engine for her. It would definitely have been someone else, because as wonderful as she was, she was useless with cars- she could drive it, and fill it up with petrol, but other than that, she knew nothing.
A glance inside showed that her suitcase was still in the backseat, and her bag was still on the passenger seat, so whatever had happened, it had happened quickly, without her knowing.
After we discovered the car, things progressed quickly, almost too quickly. There were articles in the paper, and reports on the tv; local at first, then national as the days went by with no sign of her. Searches were made in the area where her car was found, and in the city she’d meant to be going to, but nothing came of it. I made an appeal on the tv, holding my composure until the very last minute, when tears poured down my cheeks as questions were asked. We had reports from the public after the appeal, but they all ended up being dead ends. As the leads trailed off, slowly, but surely, my hopes started to, too.
Things happened, and yet, every night, I went home alone.
Every night, I went home to our home; went home to a dark, cold, lonely place. I moved nothing of hers, at first; left her mess exactly where it had been, as though I could somehow tempt her back by leaving her crap everywhere. Every room was filled with the scent of her perfume, with things left by her, with the expectation she’d be back. There was food she’d never eaten, books she’d put down and hadn’t yet picked back up, and clothes she’d bought and hadn’t found the chance to wear; and as the days went on, I began to think she’d never get the opportunity to.
After a month, the searches stopped. After three, the appeals stopped. After six, I stopped.
I packed away her clothes, but kept them in the wardrobe. I threw away her food, keeping only the things I liked too. I swept her various shampoos and others things off the bathroom shelves, putting them away in a cupboard in the garage. I took her out of my life as much as I could, but kept her around, in case she came back, against ever-increasing odds.
Almost a year to the day since she’d disappeared, I found myself in a city a couple of hundred miles away, for an interview with another news station. I was dressed in my favourite dark suit, wearing a tie she’d bought for me for our second anniversary, wrapped up in a long blue overcoat that she’d always loved. Even now, after she’d gone, I couldn’t give her up, couldn’t get rid of her. I still thought I felt her around me, or heard her voice, or saw her disappearing round the corner.
So when I heard a voice that could have been hers as I was walking along the street, I stopped, looking round myself to try and spot where it was coming from. A few feet away, a woman was slipping her phone back into her bag, and as I watched, she turned to face me, and I heard myself gasp. The hair was darker, and longer; now almost black, and ending somewhere near her waist. The face was a little tighter, womanly instead of almost girlish. The figure was slimmer, but still curvy, now cosy instead of ample; girl-next-door instead of pin-up. The height, accounting for heels, was the same. Her eyes were the same dark, warm colour. And though her face had a little more colour in it than the girl I remembered, the same criss-cross’d X of a scar was at the corner of her mouth. If it wasn’t Poppy, then it was someone who was almost identical to her.
Swallowing nervously, feeling my body tense and shiver, I took a few steps until I was in front of her, in her eyeline, filling her field of view. I saw her tilt her head back, looking up, up, up, and when her eyes met mine, I whispered just one, soft word. Just one word, filled with hope, and fear, and excitement and terror. One word that could break my heart, or make me happier than anyone ever had.
“Poppy?”
