Right side up again

Ruth had been cleaning her flat most of that Sunday. It was that time in late April when the light changes and the winters' muck shows through.

After five hours she took a break. Her footsteps led her round to Marks' place. It had been a month now since that outburst of furious rejection. Was this the end?

A cleaner like Ruth, and also like Ruth a charity shop volunteer, Marks' downstairs room and kitchen, in the large converted house that had once been owned by the Clintons, was meticulously tidy and organised. In the lobby was stacked all the equipment he used for his self-employed line fishing business. Outside in the small yard where the outer wall caught the sun and tomatoes were started ina gro-bag, were two newly found chairs. A comfy worn leather settee faced a glass-topped circular table. Ruth felt a surge of optimism - maybe these were signs of a bright new decision by Mark to be social and have friends round for food and drink.

Yet, after that last time, caution was best.

The back door was open. Although she couldn't see him Mark was in the kitchen. Ruth stayed out in the yard and banged the window.

'Hallo, Mark! Mark! I'm not coming in because I don't want to trespass.'

Marks' voice now "Do I remember your name?"

The amnesia was acted and Ruth reckoned the slurriness of Marks' voice was acted by a good 50%.

'Well sod you! - I'm going round my real friends!' she shouted, and because her realist friend in Exmouth or anywhere for that matter was the beach she carried on in that direction and arrived in two minutes.

'And thank you Mark and thank you so much for that!' she shouted in her mind as she quickmarched along th epromenade in the direction of Orcombe Point.'I'm so glad I know where I am now. I've given you four weeks too long of my precious time and now I am free again!'

Free of loving dreams that centred between her legs, free of swirling stories that revolved on her imaginings of Marks appalling childhood as a whipped dog that had all the puppy thrashed out of him before the family had migrated from Mill Hill in North London to France and back again.Free of his brown eyes that could be faithful, shining big and bright one minute and shrink to distant pin points the next. Free of those joyous adventure fiction tales of the future where they worked together aroung America in holiday parks which ressembled the caravan park in East Devon where Ruth cleaned the inside of the caravans after the holidaymakers booked out on Saturday. Free of all that! Back to being Ruth again.

The boy and girl racers along the prom in their baggy bum hanging out jeans drank and smoked and listened to blaring music from the car radio. A couple of them were almost pogo-ing to the beat and this warmed Ruths heart as she recalled her tribal youth of hippies skinheads and punks. Three cheers for Exmouth her gritty resilient adopted coastal town where small girls wore pink and women over 14 almost never wore bright colours.

Ruth remembered her youthful North London times with Tina and the girls from the shoe-shop, smoking six fags in the stockroom and feeling high, as she inhaled the lot, standing tall in her scarlet platform boots from Kensington market. "You have to take it back!'

And in three weeks it would be the Festival where she was bound to extend her her local following while Mark blew his pay at poker in the First and Last oblivious to the towns' creativity.

She Ruth was back home. Lost and found she was right side up again.
(to be continued... in a new episode)