Karen Arnold
Map Reading For Beginners
I am not convinced we will make it to the top. The engine of our camper van whines and complains. The dog is shivering on the floor, mute reproach in every glance of his white rimmed eyes. You rest your hand on my arm and grin, flashing uneven white teeth, push your sunglasses back onto your head, to hold back sunshine orange curls. I chew my lip, with a concentration so sharp it draws blood. I catch a whisper of your perfume. Anais Anais. The scent of a thousand primary school staff rooms he had called it. I wonder if I can also smell burning. You turn on the radio, and Tom Petty sings to us, a song about a good girl who loves her mother and the vampires that live on the edge of her town.
It comes back to me as we climb, the laughter of the boys loitering outside the garage when I picked up the keys, the “Thelma and Louise” wise crack tossed out like an empty cigarette box. The glance that flew between us like a dragonfly. The road narrows and narrows. I imagine us wedged here forever between lichened dry-stone walls, hemmed in by the brambles that curl in so close we could pick blackberries without leaving the van. Long, barbed tendrils tap at our windows, scratch at the paintwork, looking for a way in.
We park on the headland. I pretend my legs are not shaking, that I am not a person whose knuckles turn white at the thought of driving on unknown roads. I pretend I do this all the time, this leaving of family and taking of lovers, I am not who he believed I was, and the knowledge makes me dizzy. The air up here is as clear as meltwater and I can see for miles, The dog leaves the van without a backward glance and vomits into a clump of heather.
We sit with our backs against warm rock, looking out to sea. The sun is melting slowly below the horizon. The dog has forgiven me for it’s journey through purgatory and lies across my feet, a tangled golden fleece. It snores softly, twitches a paw when the gulls tumble down towards the water, screaming their ownership of a flash of silver. Behind us, the croak of a raven saws through the soft evening air. We share a bar of fruit and nut chocolate as we watch the display, twine our middle-aged hands together, stunned into silence by how easy it feels, this finding of comfort so late in the evening.
Karen Arnold
Karen Arnold is a writer and child psychotherapist. She came to writing later in life, but is busy making up for lost time. She is fascinated by the way we use narratives and storytelling to make sense of our human experience. She won the Mslexia prize for flash fiction in 2022 and was placed second in the Oxford Flash Fiction competition in 2023 She has work in The Waxed Lemon, The Martello,and Roi Faineant amongst others. She can be found on twitter @aroomofonesown_4