In PB again

(Here's someone new in Port Brokeferry - except she is not really new and the small connections she has to the place and the people there are familiar to the reader who has been following the 'story' so far.)

A PORT BROKEFERRY DAUGHTER COME HOME

The place looks something the same, Moira thinks. Sharper than it does in memory, perhaps, but nothing so very changed that she does not recognise it as home. She has booked a room in the Victoria Hotel, under a different name, her married name so no one will make the connection. She doesn’t really know why she is there. Back to the start of things. Maybe that’s what everyone does. When the world begins to unravel. Returning to where the thread of one’s life began.

Moira lies in her hotel bed with the window and the curtains open. It is bright. All the sunlight filling up her room, and the sound of the sea and gulls calling and the air having a taste. If she closes her eyes she can imagine that the clock has been turned all the way back and she is in her childhood bedroom, and her father is raking the fire into life, and her mother talking to herself in the kitchen, and her sister Annie singing in her cot.

Annie gone from Port Brokeferry, too. Married and living in England with a man who treats her well. Two kids of their own and both grown to be something. Annie writes sometimes. More than Christmas and Birthdays, but not much more. They talk on the phone twice a year, too. Moira hasn’t told Annie. She hasn’t told anyone.

Annie gone, and her best friend Elspeth, and her mother and father. Not much to keep anyone here in Port Brokeferry. That’s what she thought back at the end of school. Moira worked some days in The Bobbing Boat Café then. It is still there. She saw that. A striped awning the only difference as far as she could tell, and now Guthrie working the till instead of his father. She remembers Guthrie. Helping her close up the café at the end of the day. Wiping the tables when it was her job and drying the dishes that she'd washed. Afterwards holding her hand in his in the dark behind the counter. More than that some nights. They were kids then and she might have stayed for him if he’d asked.

Moira opens her eyes again and looks at the ceiling above her. White like a blank page. That’s what she thinks. Knows why she has that thought, too. Maybe that is why she is here. So she can rewrite the years. Start over and maybe make it different from how it has been.

She noticed that the fair was arriving yesterday. Trucks with heavy wheels turning onto the green at the far end of the village. She wonders if the fair has changed much. Bound to have. Fashions change and the world moves on. Noisier, probably, and the rides with bigger dips and more thrills. No ‘Tunnel of Love’, she thinks, remembering a night with a man whose name she has forgotten. A new teacher at the school, he was, and he kissed her in the ‘Tunnel’ where no one could see. He had a small house of his own and afterwards she spent the night there. They talked into the early hours. Laughed a lot. Drank some too. Then they went to bed together. Moira thought it was love. When the time came, he didn’t stop her going from Port Brokeferry either.