We both stare at the clock, at the second-hand’s staccato twitch, with British Legion poppies outstretched, waiting for 11am precisely.
Then, at five seconds to, a thud on the window.
Simon shouts, 'did you see that?'
'What?'
'A sparrowhawk taking out a blue-tit.'
'Wow.'
We look from the window to each other, then to the clock, but it’s too late. The right time had passed.
We’d been pulled out of class, were writing lines for 'forgetting' our games kit — as if 'I must not forget’ written several hundred times was learning for real life. Then, wham, a presence here then at once gone; a jolt, and not even a smudge on the glass.
I didn’t know Simon became a birdwatcher. We drifted apart after leaving school, and there was a lot I never knew about him. His marriage (unhappy); his movements (a fine-art degree, his playing in a band); work (a string of retail and then unrelated jobs across the UK), residencies (a squat, a London flat, the move back north); a divorce (acrimonious), and then, seemingly out of nowhere — wham — his camper-van found at RSPB’s Bempton Cliffs, unoccupied, impressively tidy like a spotless shrine. No note, no trace, no nothing.
And it’s still that way, a decade since. Simon gone but not gone. Absent, missing. The seconds ticking by, on and on, year on year, relentless, but never quite hitting the ascendant.
Did we go out after the sparrowhawk had swooped? We didn't, but should have. There was no carcass to cradle, nothing tangible to mourn, no ebbing warmth; not even a mark on the glass. Gone and not-gone.
We should have looked at each other then, properly, really properly, saying something subliminal, no words needed. Something like, we should’ve kept us both a proper look out, eh?
Phil is a drama-writer and theatre-maker in the Highlands of Scotland. This is his first foray into flash fiction.
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