Clare Fisher is a recent Oxford graduate now living and working and working on a novel in London. Her short stories have been published at www.the-beat.co.uk and www.gloomcupboard.com, issue 96. She will have a story appearing in the August/September issue of The View From Here.

Anticipating the Past 

Nadia’s twenty one now, the age I was when we met, and she’s bound to want answers. Well the truth is I have none. I spent a long time looking though. But I came to realise there weren’t any or that if there were I was incapable of finding them. So I’ve spent more recent years scrubbing my mind of such questions, reaching instead for what really want – a place to call my own. I am a teacher. I have a boyfriend, a half-decent flat and a one or two close friends. It may not sound much to you but to me it is waking up each morning in a world I for a long time thought impossible.  

Although I suppose when I flew out to find mum this was all I was after – a place with a whole world crouching inside it. So why, when I think back to the way I bustled into her family, just assuming she wanted me a part of it, do I feel – No. I won’t discuss it. I’m not even the same person anymore so there’s no point. Besides, Nadia will have changed too and probably more than me – I mean, you change more in your teenage years than your twenties, don’t you?

I wonder what she looks like now. Still model-like? Or fat like me? The truth is I just can’t imagine it because I don’t quite believe she exists in the now. The only way I can think of her is aged twelve, sitting on a beanbag with her legs folded like a grasshopper’s and talking excitedly about school. Mum is there of course, Ben too, and everything is so easy and I am so much a part of that everything I unthinkingly think it will go on forever. Well of course it didn’t. It doesn’t. That’s why I’m scared: this place I’ve found is that old bliss stretched into a longer I couldn’t bear to lose. And that’s the risk of meeting her. Because the thought that stumbled across my mind when I agreed to it – that we’d easily act as if nothing ever happened – well I’ve really tripped it up now, haven’t I?

Unless it goes the other way and we have a long, honest discussion of all that happened, who was right, who wrong and how. And why. Unlikely I know, but I’ll meet her anyway. Because after all, if I found my old impossible, who’s to say I won’t find another?