Chapter 1: The Book Launch

/ simonsalento / Leave a comment

Frederick sat at his table. He looked out of the window then down at his laptop. It was still dark morning when I walked past. He was wearing green and blue pyjamas and a red and black woolly hat. I waved. He raised a hand in mournful benediction.

A year or so later, Frederick invited me to the launch of his new book. He knew I was a fan though I had never said so and we had never spoken about his work. I never heard a sound up through the floor from his flat except for what I called his Wagner nights and he never complained to me.

His publisher spoke first: Ladies and gentlemen, Frederick will start the evening by reading the very first few paragraphs of his new thriller. You will be the very first people to hear, or read, this new story. There will then be time for questions.

Frederick cleared his throat. “His next victim walked past his window and waved jauntily. He clearly suspected nothing. He thought the killer was his friend. Edinburgh people were like that. They took lack of open hostility as friendship.”

I stopped listening. His next victim?

The Five-Colour Rainbow

/ simonsalento / Leave a comment

Grandad called her his five-colour rainbow. She did not think about it while he was still alive; it was his name for her.

But then when the sad days were over it took over her life – a degree, a doctorate, a professorship and, of course, that book. ‘The Five-Colour Rainbow’ was more pre-ordered than read, but those who tried really appreciated the chapter headings and the way it finished with a question.

Someone I didn’t like very much

/ simonsalento / Leave a comment

Someone I did not like very much died this morning. I was taught not to speak bad of the dead – or the ill, just in case they passed while my dark thoughts wrapped round them. I hold scissors open near the bonsai and consider. Lop a branch and tell what I believed they had done to me? Leave it to grow and stay silent until my story bursts out as a bud, as a leaf? I close the scissors and put them down on the wooden floor. I look at them and half-open them again. That is more pleasing to the eye, though not to the heart.

Pros and cons. Benefits and not. I think of the family. Perhaps I would not have liked them too. I did not have the chance and would not have wanted it. I turn the scissors through ninety degrees. An improvement. I close them to a finger’s width and smile without meaning to.

I am not going to tell my story, I have decided, because if the truth once known can corrode. It would not be fair as the dead are not here to answer. Though they were never fair themselves.

One leaf, just one leaf and perfection. I pick up the cold scissors, close them, open them again to the sharpest V and finish shaping the tree. The dead remain dead for a very long time but trees can last forever.