Sublime

She was Melissa’s oldest, boldest friend. They had gone to the same primary school. Hazel worked in advertising. She had a wide and glamorous smile behind which was an oft-foul tongue, and long, bouncing, half-French, half-Ghanaian curls falling down her back, the most beautiful, the most envied of their schoolgirl pack, the one the boys always wen

She stands there until she realizes she is waiting. Waiting for someone to help. To come and fix the mess she’s in. But no one is coming. No one remembers, and if she resigns herself to waiting, she will wait forever. So she walks.

he told her, about the after-work drinks he didn’t go to, the meet-ups he couldn’t make, the rush to get home every evening so that he could be ordered in an unfriendly tone to listen to rice. He did not like this Melissa with the hard mouth and loveless eyes. He wanted the other Melissa, that old, original Melissa, with the soft and skyward face,

mbeles

Melissa did not want Ria and Blake to grow up with this sound, to develop the hardness that enabled you to become insensitive to it. She wanted them to live somewhere calmer, somewhere greener, somewhere the emergency services were less busy, so that they in turn could be calm, and keep the purity of themselves.