We Were Fruit Flies Once

I knew her family was big, but I didn’t know how big. Sitting in the car park of Khan’s, last night’s frost sat half-eaten at the sides of her windshield, it’s bigger than I could have ever imagined.

Six brothers: a Hugh, a Russell, some Shaun’s, some people out west, some people in cars, on bikes, somewhere a widow, and somewhere - I’m told - a war hero in a shitty wheelchair; her family are everywhere: starting down halls, making up queues, feigning yawns, signing forms.

Everywhere.

Laura tells me not to be nervous, that they’ll see me as she does, but it’s not nervousness. It’s something else. I smoke a cigarette without brakes on a bonnet. It cools and warms, and numbs what it knows. Laura sits in the car, watching from the passenger seat. She’s looking right at me, half-smiling.

I’ve seen her before. I knew her before she knew me.

We were fruit flies once.