WELCOME TO PORT BROKEFERRY

The invented place has a name and another set of characters. Welcome to Callum, the baker:  CALLUM BAKES BREAD

He stands at the door of the shop. The street is empty, the street lights still orange though the day is up. He leans against the wall and smokes a cigarette. Not his first of the day for he has been up since early doors. Callum rising in the curse-dark of still night and creeping through the Brokeferry streets to light the ovens at the back of the shop. Six days a week through all the weeks of the year.

His wife turns in the bed. When he rises. Callum holds his breath in case she wakes. Then he tip-toes through to the front room and dresses without putting the light on. In the winter he rakes the ash and sets the fire going so it’ll be warm when Margaret wakes. No need for a fire now. The air is warmer. He can feel that.

He closes the front door using his key so there is no click of the snib to break the quiet. Then he slips his shoes on and lights his first cigarette. The struck match like a signal lights up the dark, then doesn’t. He does not move. Not straight away. Looks left and right. Listens. Then he leaps the fence into the garden next door. He makes no sound. Or if sound then small: the sucking of his cigarette, his feet soft on grass, his exhaled breath, the beating of blood in his veins. Behind him telltale footprints across the lawns. Callum knows they will be gone by the time anyone is awake. He presses his face against the glass of windows, trying to see through the gap in the curtains if Susan still sleeps with Kyle, in the same bed.

Then through the next window sneaking a look at the girl Corinne, her hair spilled across her pillow and one bare arm like something thrown across the top blanket. Over the fence and spying on old Tom. Talks in his sleep sometimes does Tom. Callum presses his ear to the glass and hears. Not the words but if words could be in a bag and then tipped out in a jumble, then that would be the sound of Tom in his sleep.

Callum, stopping at almost all the houses in the street, the houses between his and the shop. Onto his second cigarette by the end. Missing out Sinnie’s window. The light is already on in her room and he knows she is up. Writing in a small book. A record of her dreams. You have to write them down as soon as you wake, otherwise they thin to nothing in your head and are quickly forgotten. That’s what Sinnie told him once.

The punched and punched dough in tins by seven and the heat of the oven turning them into small loaves, or rolls. Currants and cinnamon and sugar folded in for the fruit breads and scones. Callum stands at the open door of the shop. Smoking his fourth cigarette, listening to the sound of Brokeferry dreaming, and Sinnie singing, and Mad Martin calling for Col. And the day is up.