Ivy-Saphira

It’s ten minutes to four on a sweltering afternoon and I can see myself, late twenties, natural honey brown hair cropped in a pixie, dangly silver earrings glinting in the sun, a sapphire ring on a chain around my neck. Slouching on a park bench, I’m in my pencil skirt and pressed blouse, which is damp under the arms from the perspiration, scrolling through Instagram with one hand, gripping my British cherry popsicle - ice lolly - in the other. The melted juice runs down my hand, cooling it somewhat. Making it sticky.

Fridays are half-days at the office if you do overtime and I’ve done my fair share this week. I see myself working at an advertising company – I’m an account manager and earn more than I ever thought I could, more than anyone else thought I could. Although, my body has this lingering sedative sensation. A headache’s also probably coming on.

I do like this park, it’s not too big but it’s enough. It’s green and there are some pretty flower beds beneath the trees. I see a pond, too, with ducks and there are some kids in school uniform chucking bits of stale bread. The kids make smile – they’re so mindlessly innocent – but I wouldn’t want one of own. Parenting is not for me.

I don’t mind the heatwave too much. Heat stirs up old visions of the past for me and it’s fun reflecting like this, it makes me glad for how things are and how they’ve changed. It’s interesting to think how different your life could have been had you made one different decision, taken a different turning, or wandered off the path entirely and betrayed everything you could be. Trust me, I’ve had a close call once or twice.

I see myself sigh and crack my neck from side to side, take a lick of my lolly. A young guy – no more than twenty – is jogging across the grass, his white shirt stuck to his chest. Smiling, I watch him go, then cross my legs, sending a cheeky message to a guy from the office I like to tease.

It’s a good life, Marin, I tell myself. You’re doing okay.

Click!

Our scene opens on a Greek island – Zakynthos – and it’s July.

Nine, ten years ago?

Pan across and the sun is scorching, the sand is golden wet, and the copious flocks of bronzed bodies swaying, twirling, laughing with the ocean breeze, the house music, the chatter, the bright blue, the fruity cocktails, and there’s our Marin laughing with them. With him. She’s young – younger than most – just eighteen and she looks it. Let’s have a close-up: freshly bleached hair drips and shimmers like a waterfall, descending past her neck, glistening shoulders, petite pointed breasts clad in a tiger print balcony bikini top. The water drips to caress a pierced navel where a small sapphire stone glitters, catching the midday sun. The stone sings to the Grecian waves and they know she’s there, relishing the first real taste of freedom, of adulthood, of liberation. Her pale skin darkened in a matter of days – she belongs there – here – with us. For perpetuity and life!

Zoom out, zoom in, cut to night-time (bridging shot?) and the sun is setting like a melting Rocket ice lolly, seeping across the horizon, oozing into the swaying ocean.

Shadows grow longer and vibrant lights begin to flicker, flash, dance in the town and we see Marin there: hair done, makeup – foundation, glitter, liner, lashes, brows done – stilettos match figure-hugging plush violet lace that pinches at the waist. Fade in, out – how’s the lighting, the framing, the focus? Spending, spending, spending. She’s giddy, drunk, ecstatic, elated, over the fucking moon, as she twirls and dances and throws back her head in delight because of the colours… oh, the colours! They’re all so bright, ceaselessly bright, effortlessly gorgeous and delicious and bright!

Let’s get a tattoo, let’s get two! I’ll get your face on my leg? Or my leg on your face? Have you taken your pill?

Winter, spring… all those dark icy months of restless sleep, raw red eyes, shaky fingers – those starved months – are all behind because this, this is reality! Fireworks exploding, shattering the darkness with their fiery reds, blues, yellows, white-hot lights!

She’s amazing, fearless, dauntless, gorgeous, and bright – a Greek goddess gifted a human form.

Yes!

Yes!

Our leading lady, she’s transformed – they know her, we know her, she’s knows the way of the sea, the salt, the sand. She’s one of us! To behold her is to behold the beloved Aphrodite herself.

Another cut – a montage of clubs, bars, strip-clubs then streaking bodies on the black streets. Toned and muscled chests, perky glutes, naked feet slapping against the cool stone and the screams – the loud cheers, hoots, roars of praise – melange with the thick stench of spilt vodka and peach schnapps, the bitter taste of pure absinthe glugged straight from the bottle. A tracking shot? Quick! Quick! Another close-up because there she is, an outside wall of a club supporting her back, her weight, as she performs a sensational woo, one arm raised, moving her hips to the beat, as he watches on from the other side.

Extreme close-up on those eyes – those cerulean eyes – is he Greek? Oh God. Dark hair, tan skin but we can’t quite tell – the sound is becoming muffled now, blurring, blending like an unlit Turner, and she sees him (match cut!) and she glances away, blushes, and smiles. He’s come for her – to be with him, yes, to be with him is to become the goddess herself. Her body is trembling, lips tingling, pupils wide and pulsing – yes, yes, she will become immortal forever and ever and ever… amen.

Wait, what?

Now smoothly – slowly – jump cut to a steamy sweaty room lit solely by the voyeuristic gaze of the streetlights, the moon, the sea, the stars. How’s our lighting? Dark, dim… secret. Her drug, her Erebus, her own fury…

What’s that noise? Those breaths, those moans, those flooding scents (perfume, aftershave, latex?), those soft saturated textures easing and pressing against hard firm pleasure. Shuddering, gasping, sucking…

Crash!

Oops. Right, focus in on the mess of those tangled sheets, the tingling bare limbs, the shaky giggles of the incoming couple pulled to the floor with gravity. He’s collapsed on his back, she’s thrown on top, and he’s blushing now, then suddenly they’re kissing long and deep and impassioned.

Well, it’s as good a place as any. Aside from the ants.

But let’s have another montage because we’re here again, and again, and again as the nights and days stretch on through cycles of light and night, sun and moon, sea and sheets, absinthe and aftershave, peace and pleasure. We’re hazy, exhausted, softly delighted as we ease, moan, drip, and shudder our way through the darkness lost in a kaleidoscope labyrinth of light with no desire, no wish of flight or emission. Everything’s numb and on fire at once and we’re with Marin all through the night whilst she laughs, giggles, and nibbles with him, and one, two, three, four (more?) feminine – or not so feminine – taut and rippling bodies. Incapable of our own distress. More tangled sheets, more perfume, aftershave, more shuddering, gasping, sucking and squeezing… more latex?

Nope. Possibly not.

It’s easy to forget, to lose yourself and get caught in the trap like a fish in a net – a little sardine wriggling, helpless, gasping for breath, hitting the hard-wooden planks of the deck. It’s easy to lose our grip on the thin threads of reality and tumble down in the suffocating sheets of something intoxicating. To tumble into something hot and sweltering, something confounding – confusing – convoluted: a heatwave of our own psychology’s making. To tumble into something manic.

Trust me, I know. It’s easy to tumble down deep, for the hard-hearted currents to drag us insensible to the bottom and suddenly we’re at the top again… our head is ripped through the surface and we’re gasping, bleeding in the cold harsh air. This time the scene’s saturation has plummeted and everything’s grey. There’s no camera in sight though: it’s left us. Sobbing, throbbing, eyes fumbling, we’re out in the brine – lost and alone and aware, but with nowhere to go and no one who wants to listen, or see.

We’re back in the park again and I’ve been watching a young girl out with her dad and little brother – not creepily, I swear. She’s about ten, finishing primary school soon, I bet. She’s got an ice-cream – a large ninety-nine with a flake and she’s loving it.

It’s crazy to think about that summer all those years ago when I came back from Zante with a tan, a crap tattoo, and a positive pregnancy test. Mother was furious, of course, but she wouldn’t let me get an abortion.

My oops-baby is having an oops-baby she had said and so that was that.

I gave it my best shot, but pregnancy combined with undiagnosed bipolar was not a great combination. One c-section later and she was here, this blue-eyed child that had grown inside me. Her dad didn’t know – I never found out his name let alone his number. The first few months crawled along, and I was living in my parents’ house with a new-born baby and no job prospects, friends, or ambitions and I hated myself. The sunburn had healed, the tattoo I covered, but you, my daughter? I hated myself for it, but I felt stuck – trapped and I was.

And I did resent you for how I felt.

Mum fussed and nagged, and I hated that, too. It was my dad who tentatively suggested it in the end. You deserved so much more, that little innocent child, and so I made the choice. In a few weeks, you had a wonderful new family, a couple who had been trying IVF for nearly a decade, and all of a sudden I was free.

They said they would change your name and I didn’t mind. You’ll always be the same in my mind and I hope to God that wherever you are, you’re perfectly happy. It’s hard because I don’t know. I don’t even know whereabouts in the country you are – if you are still in the country at all.

There’s no burning desire in me to see you. I know that’s horrible and not what mums should say but it’s true. I respect you as someone separate from me and that’s the best I can give you. We do have a connection, I think. I dream about you sometimes. I can’t remember exactly what we’re doing. Maybe we’re just sitting there, quietly, doing nothing. Possibly on the beach, back in Greece, listening to the lapping of the waves, inhaling the smells of the salt.

You are like me. I wasn’t planned either. My brother and sister are a hell of a lot older than me. It made me crazy when I was growing up. I was an inconvenience, an irritation, a mistake. I ruined my parents’ plans – my mum’s plans. But now I’m okay with it.

Everything takes time, I guess. It must be nice to know that you were supposed to exist, but I guess, at the end of the day, it’s just nice to exist at all.

Anyway, I’ve finished my ice lolly and I’d better go and catch my train now. It’s a special night tonight – my best friend’s birthday. We’re going to see The Lion King because we’re children like that. And then we’re going clubbing because we’re not old yet…

I hope you’re doing okay, too, Ivy. I really do.

I hope, wherever you are, that you’re raising hell.