‘Life is a tapestry: every thread a journey, every stitch a footstep woven by memories, gilded by fortune and torn by tragedy.’

Ivor Field - Passchendaele 1917


TORN PROLOGUE


In the darkest hour before dawn, I lay contemplating the events of the previous day. I couldn’t fathom it. Nothing made sense in a mind disturbed and tormented by a revelation that couldn't be true. Sliding from the bed, I hesitated to gaze into the night’s sky. Finding neither comfort nor inspiration, I pulled on clothes in preparation to leave. Slipping into trainers, creeping out the back door, I borrowed a bike and headed for home.

With tired tentative steps, I climbed the stairs to Will’s room. His door was ajar and I stood wanting, but not wanting to enter. Desperate to fulfill a need, I crossed the threshold. It was chilling to witness nothing had changed, when everything was different. I perched upon his bed, smoothed his covers and reached for his favourite teddy. Holding it close, whilst longing to feel my son in my arms, wrought palpable anguish. Only last night, I’d tucked him up safely, kissed, tickled and told him I loved him. A lump formed in my throat to remember how, with his arms linking my neck, my son's little voice said,
“Night, night Daddy. Love you.”
Along the landing from William’s room, I approached the rooms of two people, never more loved.

I was five when I came to live on my grandpa's farm. Tragedy brought us together, we became an intrinsic thread in each other's life and much of who I am is owed to his words and wisdom. William never knew my grandpa, but he’d loved his uncle ‘Doddy,’ in whose room I now stood. He too was missing from my life and every day without him was an agony beyond words.

Entering my own room to witness images form in ever expanding light, struck a melancholy chord. They were everywhere, all those treasured, stored up memories: a cornucopia of daydreams, now broken and empty. Weak, I folded onto the chair beside the window; room collapsing around me like an iron lung. ‘Breathe.’ It came again, that all too familiar whisper. But why? There was no point in anything, anymore?

Exhausted, I went down stairs to grab a beer from the fridge. In the bathroom cabinet, amongst drugs of no further use to the people for whom they were prescribed, I found what I was looking for.

Returning to the kitchen rife with frustration, I emptied drawers and sifted through papers, to find the bottle opener. A large brown envelope rewarded my search and the enclosed document: ‘Barnstone Manor School Report 1974’, piqued my curiosity. Slugging down a handful of pills, thumbing through the booklet, each and every page a potent reminder, that this was it. This was when and where it all began. Weary, I rubbed my eyes and yawned: the cocktail was working. Picking up the class photograph for closer scrutiny, churned my stomach. Faces. Here they were again: the girl of my dreams; the true love of my life; beside the bastards who tried to destroy me. It instantly came to mind, all those lessons I’d been taught but never learned; all that bad blood spilled in
defence of honour. Collapsing to sprawl face down upon the table, the mind conjured stark images, memories rewound and the years fell away, as the past began to unravel. ....

* Shall I leave it here, or include:

There was much I needed to forget, much more I wanted to relive and it was coming back...... All coming back to me now...........