Category Archives: I’m writing

The Baby in the Café

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Catherine liked going to Macey’s café when she was having a bad day. It was small and quiet, off the beaten track and rarely attracted mothers with babies. So she felt peeved when a young blonde woman with a pram sat at the table beside her. Catherine buried her head in a magazine. The woman seemed happy to be left alone too.

Abba belted out ‘Waterloo’ through the crackling radio. The waitress fiddled with the control knob as Thin Lizzy tried to butt in from another station. Catherine gritted her teeth. She stole a glimpse into the pram. The sleeping baby looked about seven months old. Just like her Angie when she… A lump formed in her throat, the dull ache inside her intensified. She looked away. Who said time heals?

The young mother ordered tea and lit a cigarette. She kept glancing at the telephone that hung on the back wall. The baby wriggled under the knitted yellow blankets, and whimpered softly. Catherine resisted the urge to advise the woman it was weather for wearing bonnets, and kicking bare legs in the air, not cocooned in crochet.  Don’t interfere…it’s not your business.

Girl drinking tea
Image courtesy of Pixabay

She wished someone had made it their business to tell her how to take better care of Angie; warned her not to turn her back on her baby, as she stood looking at shoes in a shop window. She wouldn’t have experienced the horror of losing the most precious thing in the world. Years of torment and suffering; never knowing who took her baby. She had been feeling better, even stopped taking her tablets, but current events stirred up her painful memories.

The woman pulled hard on her cigarette, the long ash dropped onto her lap. She stared at the telephone as she pushed the pram forward and back to quieten the baby; each forward push gave Catherine a clearer view of the child.

It looked like a girl…like her wee Angie. Catherine’s stomach churned when the baby turned her head, exposing a strawberry birthmark just below her ear. She understood only too well the significance of that mark. Angie had one just like it on her shoulder. So many times Catherine wished it had been on her face—just like this little girl—then perhaps someone somewhere might have recognised her. Images of the raised red mark flashed through her mind; on Angie’s soft peachy skin, on the news, in the papers, on this little baby.

The woman poured more tea and lit another cigarette. She focused her attention more on the telephone than on the baby; stupid woman. Catherine prayed silently.

The telephone rang and the woman stood, watching as the waitress answered it. She looked at the woman and asked, ‘Is your name Paula?’

She nodded, grabbing the receiver. The waitress returned to washing the cups. Catherine steadied herself and took a deep breath. She had to do what her heart told her.

The woman hunched her shoulders and faced the wall as she muttered into the phone. Catherine swiftly lifted the baby from her pram and left the café. It was that simple. No one noticed.

She never wanted anyone to go through what she went through when her baby was stolen. She walked fast, out of breath, until she reached her destination. The Garda station.

‘This is the missing baby that’s on the news,’ she panted.

 When the news reader reported the headlines later that evening, Catherine cried tears of happiness.

“Baby Rosie Reunited with her Parents. Young Woman Arrested in Connection with her Abduction.”

Featured image courtesy of Pixabay

#SoCS Monkey Puzzle

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Stream of Consciousness Saturday #SoCS prompt for this week is ‘puzzle’. Use it any way you’d like.

I used to look at monkey puzzle trees in stranger’s gardens and thought how beautiful they looked. I wanted one. I used to say that when I’d have my own garden, I’d plant a monkey puzzle tree.

I never did. Do you know why? Because foolishly I allowed myself to be influenced by someone else’s opinion—that the monkey puzzle tree is ugly!

I was an awful eejit!

Yes, I could plant one now if I wanted to, but our garden where we live now is quite small. I wonder if there’s such thing as a miniature monkey puzzle tree.

Holy guacamole…..I’ve just discovered that I’ve been spelling miniature wrong all these years. I thought it was minature! Well, now I’m puzzled as to how I didn’t know this before now! Obviously, it’s not a word I’ve used too often (if ever) in my writing because my spell checker would have flagged it. The dunce’s corner for me today!

The Red Dresser

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I’m very late contributing to this month’s picture prompt. I did start the prompt a few weeks ago but…..you know yourself. Life!

Write a story, a poem, a limerick inspired by the last picture on your camera roll, and join us here at Strange Bloggers Picture Prompt 2.
Come and share your own story with us once you checked your camera roll.

The last picture in my camera roll was of this old style dresser taken in the Kerry Bog Village Museum, which we toured while visiting my uncle in Glenbeigh. Since I started writing my fictional novel I’ve become more interested than ever in Irish history. The Bog Village Museum gives an insight into the lives of people in the 18th Century, and this beautiful red dresser stood out for me because a similar one features in my story (insignificantly)…even though my story begins in 1956.

So I decided to share an excerpt of my story. Please let me know what you think! Thank you. 😉

Flossie looked the place up and down. A wave of childhood memories consumed her; the smell of baking and oranges filling her senses. Mrs Connolly always had a bowl of oranges on the table, believing that they encouraged conversation and happiness. It was a different house now. The net curtains were the same except they were grey and frayed, not snow white and pristine as they once were. The red paint peeled in patches on the dresser that was once filled with odd pieces of vibrant coloured pottery. 

Flossie sipped at her tea, but she couldn’t face a sandwich. She took a Marietta instead. It would keep her hands busy. Everyone was talking about the deceased. The sombre atmosphere was fraught with speculation and disbelief. The wide-eyed busybodies were hungry for the latest gossip, whispering and watching, listening to everything that was being said. Some only there for the drink, others there out of genuine neighbourly concern. 

John nudged Flossie with his elbow. ‘We should go on in.’ 

All the chairs in the mourning room were occupied, mostly with strangers—relations probably—and a few men whom she knew worked in Corries. Those men he worked with; Flossie wondered did they know what went on in this house. Did he ever tell any of them? Even one of them? No, of course he didn’t. That would’ve been a great laugh for them. She knew how they carried on, how they teased and ribbed each other. They were the last people Frank would tell about the mental torture he had to endure in his own home. The same house that was his home since the day he was born. His happy childhood home!

A gentle breeze from an open window flickered the tiny flames on the candles that surrounded the closed coffin. The smell of incense brought Flossie back to her father’s funeral, and she remembered gazing at him, laid out in his best suit, coins sitting on his closed eyelids, and Auntie Bridgey pulling her away. She thought it was the strangest thing; the coins. 

She will touch the coffin and she will say a prayer. She was glad it was closed because she can pretend it’s merely an empty box. A big brown wooden box with nothing in it. 

Here’s Blogger’s Picture Prompt #1

Here’s Blogger’s Picture Prompt #3

Here’s Blogger’s Picture Prompt #4

Boogeyman #99wordFlashFiction

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This flash fiction story is in response to this week’s prompt for Charli Mills’ 99 word flash fiction series. Tell a story about tapping in 99 words. No more, no less.

Boogeyman 

It was a wet stormy night when Anna’s husband went to work his night shift.

Later, her lover will come to her.

A fallen tree blocked the road, forcing her husband to return home. He slid into the bed beside her, cold and tired.

Soon after, she heard her lover tapping on the window. Anna reached into the cot beside her, and woke the baby with a nip. She lifted the crying tot, walked to the window, and sang these words out loud.

‘For the wind and the rain brought your daddy back again. Get away from the window, Boogeyman.’