Northern Pride

“It’s funny how the streets look almost the same, isn’t it?” said Matthew.  Shelagh looked at him, the first boy she kissed now lined and plumped.  She knew this affair had been a mistake.   “You’d hardly know how much we were shafted.”

“I went to university to get away from this,” she said.  “But when I got pregnant I came back.”  Looking out across the dark estuary at silhouetted power stations and empty industrial units she faltered.  “We can’t make ends meet.  They sent Tony to stack shelves. I saw him through the window and he just looked lost.  The kids laughed.”

“This isn’t working,” she said.  “It’s like you don’t see it all around you.”

“I’m just as angry as you,” he said.  

“No, you’re the same angry you’ve always been.  But this isn’t the same thing.  I’m not like you. I don’t know what I thought would happen, but it isn’t this.”

Inside the fat body, Matthew was unchanged.  “There’s worse places to live.”

She thought of Tony, of the kids, of the dark factories, of the people they could have been.

“It’s over,” she said.

No one could survive this fire as the person they once were.