<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Learning To Be<\/strong><\/p>\n I was not always like this; once, there was more of me; imagine this skeleton re-clothed, blackbird glossy, fleshy-plump. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Emma Timpany<\/strong>‘s most recent stories have appeared in The Frogmore Papers<\/em> and on Auditor<\/em><\/a>, a GPS-triggered app designed for walkers on Bodmin Moor.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nShe, as I always think of my younger self, was dissatisfaction incarnate, and look where she\u2019s got me.
\nWe were meant for each other, Murry and me, yet despite our best efforts, we remained separate.
\nWas he the one? \u2013I expect so, yes; the love of one\u2019s life (and there must always somehow be one.)
\nWas she not his love? People say so, but they do not look deeply enough.
\nWe were not what we seemed, as many are not \u2013 tugging and clawing, this way and that, sometimes miles apart, sometimes inches, tantalisingly close, on the cusp of\u2026what?
\nWere you not jealous of us? Did you imagine perfection, or did you see through our smokescreen, that bubbling pot of penury, misunderstanding, lust?
\nWas he not, in the end, what he had planned all along to be, the great man of letters, living fat off my money with three more wives?
\nWas he not in the end, of the two of us, the more beautiful?
\nWere you not surprised? That it is my face, not his, which swims up from the dark.
\nWe were not the only ones who failed to learn the language of another: words stay on the page: people slide, slip and change.
\nWas she surprised at her fall from grace? She left on our wedding day, when he turned and, on his handkerchief, wiped our kiss off his lips.
\nWas he aware of what he did?
\nWe were married at last, but there were no guests at our wedding breakfast, no photographs.
\nShe went then and I came back, my mother and my father, too, and Chummie and dear Granny, as they had come on the Quai aux Fleurs, the river grey below Carco\u2019s window.
\nI was, after all, the long-searched-for cure.<\/p>\n