In Memory of Us by Jacqueline Roy

Author:Jacqueline Roy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2024-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FIVE

SELINA

I open my laptop. I want to send an email to Lydia. It’s easier than phoning her or being in her house – there’s more distance, and I can cope with that. I’m not sure we’re still friends but I can’t remember why. Something happened between us, a long time ago perhaps, or maybe yesterday, I just don’t know. There are prompts on the screen: Password, it says, but I can’t remember it. I wrote it down somewhere but I’m not sure where. What do you do if your password is lost? There must be a way of getting it back. I try to think how to do it but everything is foggy, distant; I can’t concentrate. I shut the laptop. I’d throw it across the room except it was expensive and I can’t afford to break it. But what use is the bloody thing if I can’t get into it? For a moment, I consider praying to God to restore the memory of my password, but then I remember I don’t actually believe in God anymore, so there isn’t any point.

I need something to do. Perhaps I’ll read a book. I find it hard to follow a plot these days, but I’ve chosen A Harlot’s Progress, a novel about the slave trade. It doesn’t start at the beginning and finish at the end. Instead, it jumps about all over the place. I’ve read it before; I know this because I’ve scribbled notes in the margins. But now I’m reading the book with different eyes. I see the poetry in it. I don’t have to read it from beginning to end, I can just dip in and see where the words take me. I like the shapes the words make on the page. I like the spaces between them, the things that fall between the lines. I feel excited as I split words from their meaning and hear nothing but the sound. It’s a kind of poetry.

I look at the bookshelf in the corner of the room. Zora wrote a book on Caribbean poetry. She was so proud the day it was published. We were all proud; Mum and Dad were as proud of Zora as they would have been of Cal. We celebrated with a meal at an Indian restaurant, all of us together.

I lift the book off the shelf. It’s in hardback, shiny, with crisp white pages. I turn to the dedication. For Selina, with love, it says.

I’ll read Zora’s book again and then I’ll find some poems. Verses – bite-sized chunks. Just words, often in a strange order, magicking all kinds of feelings in me, even if I’m not sure what they are. More than ever now, I hear the musicality of words, their cadences, even if I can’t always join them together.

A bookmark falls to the floor. It’s a postcard. It must have been sent years ago – there’s a picture of Manchester on it. I pick it up and read it slowly:

Manchester is great. I’m working hard and I’m making friends.

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