Lily On The Beach 1976.

She hires a deck chair and the man puts it up for her. The sand dry and the beach crowded. She gazes through her sunglasses at the others surrounding. The parents brought me here before the war. Mother sitting on a wall and me playing with the sand. Father in a pub back in the seaside town. She watches children play in the sea or digging sand castles. Kids not skinny anymore. I looked like a thin match back then. She feels the fish and chips from the greasy spoon repeat on her. Mouth feels full of gunge. A child runs up from the sea laughing. I seldom laughed as a child. Father joined the army when war came and mother had me evacuated to the country. Safer than London she said. The couple I was given to were unfit for the task. She moaned at me and he interfered with me. I never said when my mother took me back home on 1941. Never said a word to her or anyone except the shrink in the first asylum I was in. Bad memories stick in your mind, locked away in rooms along dark corridors in your brain, where you avoid going, but do again and again.

Reviews

[Neha agrawal]

It feels like a mind wandering between now and then, showing how the past intrudes no matter how ordinary the moment seems.

[Terry Collett]

Thank you for reading, Nela