Weather Report

I like wet days. No one can see my tears. The darkness of a stormy sky comforts me beyond words. I welcome it with open arms and wrap it around myself like a blanket. Sunny days are the worst. On sunny days, all I can do is look out of the window and watch the kids playing in the park below, like worry dolls in the distance. Their mothers watch over them the way I used to with Wee Frankie. Life seemed easier in those days. The other mums envied me because I had Frank. Everyone loved Frank.

When I first met Frank he had a kind of glow about him, a charm that no one could resist, and I fell for his crooked smile hook, line and sinker. But looking back I suppose I should have seen the signs. I thought it was sweet that he wanted me to stop seeing my friends after we were married. It proved he cared about me. I had a husband, and that was all that mattered.

At first, everything was blissful, just me and Frank in our own little bubble. But then he started demanding that his dinner was ready the minute he came in from work. I could understand that – he’d been hard at work all day and he was hungry. But then he would wolf it down without saying a word. I would try to make conversation, but I may as well have been invisible. Then when he was finished he’d go upstairs to wash and change, then go straight back out to the pub.

Later, he’d come home stinking of smoke and beer. When he stumbled into the bedroom I pretended to be asleep, but he didn’t care if he disturbed me. He’d put the light on and make a racket pulling off his boots, letting them fall to the floor with a thud. Then I would hear him take off his leather belt, coil it around his hand, and place it carefully on the bedside table next to me. It was a reminder of his power over me.

When Wee Frankie came along, Frank’s threats stopped for a while and I kidded myself we were happy. Frank loved playing with Wee Frankie, bouncing him on his knee, telling him he’d be a prizefighter one day. Then one evening, Frank came home late from work. I’d put his dinner on the table as usual but I’d been so busy with Wee Frankie that I forgot about it and let it go cold. When he took a mouthful and realised it was cold, he threw his knife and fork down with such a clatter that it woke Wee Frankie up, and I’d only just got him off to sleep. Frank was ranting and raving, saying what a useless lump of a wife I was. He said he should never have married me, that I was a pathetic waste of space. From then on things just got worse. I was walking on eggshells the whole time, afraid to say the wrong thing. Sometimes he would put his hands on his belt just to remind me who was in charge.

So I concocted a plan. I squirreled away some money and kept it hidden in my bra. He’d never find it there. I managed to save just enough for the bus fare out of town and a month’s rent. Then one morning, after he’d left for work, I threw a few things in a bag, bundled Wee Frankie up in a blanket and made my escape. My heart was pounding as I waited at the bus stop, praying that no one would see us. At last the bus came and as we left town I breathed a huge sigh of relief. He’d never catch us now.

And here is where we made our home, on the top floor of this tower block, just me and Wee Frankie in our own little place. It felt like paradise for a while. Then the lift started breaking down and no one bothered to repair it, or clean off the graffiti. Then I got arthritis and couldn’t take the stairs anymore. And when Wee Frankie left school he got in with a bad crowd. He turned out just like his dad, always spoiling for a fight. In the end it was to be the death of him. But I’m not alone any more. I have the darkness. And Frank’s belt coiled on the bedside table.

The Visitor

This used to be a good neighbourhood. People knew each other and helped each other out. But now I look over my shoulder every time I put my key in the door, afraid there’s someone behind me. Where’s my purse? My hand reaches into my handbag and checks. Still there. It’s crazy having to live like this.

I push open the door. A young couple rush past me on their way out. They hardly notice me. They’re only concerned about themselves and their own plans. They jump into a bashed old car which screeches as it pulls off, leaving a smell of burning rubber.

Only two flights to go. These stairs get steeper every time. They haven’t been cleaned in years, not since Mrs Benton died. She used to clean them every Saturday; now nobody bothers. And it’s too much for me, with my back the way it is.

The front door slams below. Then heavy footsteps in the passage. People are always coming and going but I couldn’t tell you who they are.

At last I reach the door to my apartment. I put the small key in the Yale lock, turn it once to the right, then unlock the top and bottom mortise locks. I’m in.

It’s funny – I think to myself, as I push the door closed behind me – I always dreamed I would live in a pretty cottage in the country, just like my grandmother’s, with clematis growing round the door and a garden that stretches as far as you can see. But here I am in a dirty tenement in a dirty city with dirty streets and a beggar on every corner. Why did it have to happen like this?

I put down my shopping bags and throw my coat over a chair. Through the window I can see storm clouds gathering.

Suddenly I hear footsteps on the landing and I remember I haven’t locked the door. I quickly pull the bolt across and the footsteps stop. I look in terror as my door handle slowly turns. I grab my bunch of keys from the worktop and swiftly turn them in the two mortise locks: first the top, then the bottom. The locks clunk reassuringly. I hold my breath and pick up the phone, my heart pounding. He’s here again.

A true story

I graduated with a degree in Fine Art in 1985. In the summer of that year I rented a shop in the village of Aberdour in Fife. I used the back part of the shop as a studio and the front part as a gallery, where I displayed my pastel drawings and oil paintings. Aberdour was a quiet village. Not many people came into the shop and I was struggling to pay the rent. A few people wandered in to have a look, and I would chat to them, grateful for the company. I remember the feeling of elation when someone actually bought a piece of my work. There is no feeling like it.

There was one painting in particular that proved very popular: a girl in a vermilion dress stands on the beach, her long brown hair whipped up by the wind. Her back to the viewer, she looks out wistfully towards the horizon. Dark grey storm clouds are brewing, and the sea water forms little reflective pools in the ochre sand around her feet.

Someone bought the painting as soon as it went on show, and many visitors admired it. I proudly put a red dot in the corner to show that it had been sold. Unfortunately I can't remember who bought it. If you are reading this, and it was you, please let me know! I would love you to get in touch! Perhaps you could send me a photograph of the painting, if you still have it!

Anyway, one day a scruffy man with black curly hair and horn-rimmed glasses came into the gallery. He was probably in his mid thirties and spoke with a Fife accent. He made a bee-line for the painting and peered very closely at it.

"That one's been sold," I said proudly.

He said nothing. He just kept peering at the painting.

"A lot of people have admired it," I said. "I could have sold it a million times over."

"Well, why don't you paint more of the same?" asked the man.

I simply laughed. No artist worth their salt would paint the same thing over and over again, simply because it was popular!

"Then you'll never make it," he said.

He peered at the painting for a few minutes longer and sauntered out of the shop. I never saw him again.

Some years later I read in the national papers about a self-taught painter from Fife whose first exhibition had been a sell-out ...