The time for tenderness arrives with its quiet way and delicate sensibilities. The kettle is too shy to whistle, the pots do not shine. Boots shuffle, but will not clatter across the flags, their surfaces too numb for sound. This is the way of things; quiet voices; hankies not blown but dabbed at dewy eyes.
Outside this room, where sickness has not swallowed hope, the sun shines and birds still sing in the hawthorn hedge. But here, there is a pall hanging which cannot be dislodged like leaves in the autumn branches.
Emotion is a bitter bed-fellow, thickening the throat and threatening to choke. Spoons stir and clink apologetically and people try to offer comfort through tiny bites of sandwich.
A lone child skitters beneath the veil of sadness playing with marbles. Grown ups are so strange and quiet. Why will nobody play anymore? The child takes herself outside to chase leaves and catch ‘copters falling from the sycamore.
Some un-measureable force alerts her mother to her absence.
‘Where is Ivy?’
She says it to herself. There is no one else to listen now. Strings of panic tangle her inside and pull at the taught laces round her heart. She speaks again, this time to be heard, to be saved.
‘Where’s Ivy?’
