{"id":1244,"date":"2008-05-09T06:57:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-09T06:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1244"},"modified":"2008-05-09T06:57:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-09T06:57:00","slug":"new-flash-fiction-by-patricia-mullin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/new-flash-fiction-by-patricia-mullin\/","title":{"rendered":"New flash fiction by Patricia Mullin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Soft Angular<\/p>\n

<\/span>        It is a familiar journey, three hours there, if I\u2019m lucky, the same back.  The traffic is heavy, lorries throw up dirty spray. I pass the house.<\/span>

    *<\/span>

        Clink, clink. The fork taps the glass bowl.  Egg whites gradually frothing to soft triangular peaks.  Mummy has her pretty apron on; it has sprigs of flowers on it. Her arm is tired and I offer to take a turn, but I am too small and I have to be lifted onto the chair. Four years old and strong, my arm won\u2019t get tired, or so I believe. Within minutes I am returned to the floor. Meringues. Someone special is coming for tea, I don\u2019t ask who.<\/span>

    *<\/span>

        She is folding and refolding. The handkerchief is labeled with her name. They have spelt it wrong, added an S. <\/span>
        \u2018They lose everything here, you know\u2019. She is lost. <\/span>
        \u2018Did you expect daddy to die?\u2019<\/span>
        It was a year ago, I explain gently. <\/span>
        \u2018No?\u2019 She says shocked. The hands work the small cotton square into an oblong. \u2018Someone is living in our house, a woman.\u2019 <\/span>
        \u2018Yes, they have a little boy. It\u2019s a family home again, which is best.\u2019<\/span>
        \u2018But where will daddy go when he comes out of hospital\u2019.<\/span>
        \u2018He isn\u2019t with us anymore. We lost daddy a year ago. He was very ill\u2019. The handkerchief is now the smallest square.<\/span>
        \u2018No? Oh yes, I remember, was it a year\u2026no. Weeks, a month at most.\u2019 The handkerchief is spread wide and the creases smoothed out. She pauses, sighs.<\/span>
        \u2018Did you expect daddy to die?\u2019 It is the fourteenth such question. <\/span>
        She folds the handkerchief in half and in half again. The rope-blue veins stand proud of her skin. The small cotton square becomes a soft angular peak.<\/span>

        The traffic is lighter. I pass the house and turn up the music in the car, muffling the clink, clink.<\/span>



\u2022 Patricia Mullin lives in Norfolk is an artist and author of <\/span>Gene Genie<\/span> and a graduate of Norwich Art School's Writing the Visual MA.<\/span>

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soft Angular         It is a familiar journey, three hours there, if I\u2019m lucky, the same back.  The traffic is heavy, lorries throw up dirty spray. I pass the house.    *        Clink, clink. The fork taps the glass bowl.  Egg whites gradually frothing to soft triangular peaks.  Mummy has her pretty apron on; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}