The Blue Envelope

She grasps for something, anything to cling to, as the maelstrom increases its ferocity, shattering Sophie’s world into fractured pieces. But there is nothing and no one to catch her, and she stumbles downwards, numbed and tortured, further and deeper she spirals, twisting into the dark unknown towards the locked door that she’s never dared approach and whose handle she would never turn. Now the door shudders open on screeching hinges, releasing a tempest that swirls around Sophie’s blinded eyes, her ears deafened by the howling, the wailing of the storm, of herself, the cries from the parts of her she never knew existed, and all the while, her mouth is wide open, as if it is about to swallow the whole world, her whole world and everything in it.

The hard kitchen floor offers no comfort as Sophie falls, her fragile reality caving in around her, blocking out the sound of the chirping blackbird who proudly displays a brown earthworm on the lawn outside, nor does she hear the red number nine bus that waits at the end of the driveway as three people climb aboard; a man with a small boy who holds a lollipop in his sticky hand, and a young woman with magenta hair and a bag full of mysteries that she carries on her back. The bus moves along its route, vanishing down the road, the blackbird devours the worm then flies skywards, and the wind blows the sounds away so that only silence remains.

The quiet is broken as the sound of Sophie's breathing fills the room, deep, ragged and wet. Her eyes begin to focus and she can see the blue envelope and its papery contents on the floor where it lies quietly, while her inner parts have been ripped to pieces in jolts of anguish, as moments earlier, her eyes and mind jarred and crashed together, the words in the envelope flitting back and forth in front of her. Sophie pulls her feet underneath herself and pushes her body into the corner of the kitchen, leaning back against the inhospitable cupboards, away from the envelope and the letter it holds within.

When the doormat had presented her with a pile of leaflets and dull brown envelopes that morning, Sophie had dropped them onto the kitchen table assuming it all to be wasted paper and meaningless ink. It was only when she sat down for breakfast, that she noticed a distinctly different envelope nestled between a bank statement and a flyer for a discount supermarket. Sophie’s fingers ran over the unusual postage stamp, heavily disguised under a various black inked marks, collected as the envelope had made its journey from its original place, to her kitchen table. The envelope was blue, sky blue, the ink black, dark black, and her name and address adorned it in a flowing elegant hand, written neatly and with care.

And now the envelope is open, unlike Sophie, who has learned to keep everything closed, even in the most open of places. Never leaving the house for long, favouring the grim familiarity and distorted comfort of the place, but always at the edges of her consciousness, something else - mother bent at the oven, Sophie’s small trembling hands as she laid the kitchen table, pouring water into glasses, her father returning from work, the thud of his heavy briefcase in the hall, the crash as she dropped the plates, the dull ache at the back of her head as she crawled across the floor, collecting the scattered pieces of crockery, her parents watching in silence. Now her father is gone and so is her mother. The dark hole that they left, almost as dark as the mass of space that they had occupied when they were here.

The white Jack Russell terrier next door is barking at the universe, his stub of a tail upright and strong, his voice telling the world that there is nothing to hear that is worth hearing unless you actually listen. The blackbird flies past as the little white dog romps and lollops around the garden, rose bushes marking a spiky border, and the dog is talking to no one, with his persistent yaps and barks and whines, while the small blue ball that was thrown for him earlier that morning, lies in the grass like a lost invader from space that’s landed there and forgotten it’s way home.

Sophie is in her own lost space. The kitchen lino stretches out like a vast plastic ocean of black and white squares, and in the distance, the blue envelope winks at her like a lazy oblong eye that has no sight or knowing of the content that it’s spilled. Sophie’s chest heaves like a broken whale on the shore-line; like the baby orca she once saw, stranded on a Scottish beach, where her father berated her for crying as her mother observed in silence. He’d dragged her away down the cold windswept beach, leaving the gulls to peck mercilessly at the still living blubber as Sophie’s small yellow wellingtons left tears and footsteps in the sand, that later, the sea would take for itself, perhaps pondering over their meaning, a reminder of the young whale and a small girl’s hopes it had left there to die.

This morning, the kitchen becomes a lost island at sea and all of Sophie's thoughts are broken ships with shattered masts and holes in their hulls where the water comes in and drags them to the bottom of the ocean. Maybe one day she will discover those wrecks and find the treasures hidden within, covered in barnacles and pieces of life and death from beneath the water. One day, for Sophie to hold aloft and say, look, feel, see what happened here.

The blue envelope lies still. Sophie wipes the salty drops of bewilderment from her eyes and blows her nose on the inside of her t-shirt, digging her nails into the palms of her hands to try and make something hurt more than this. Next door, the Jack Russell lies on his back and squirms in the grass as a bee buzzes around his nose before returning to the heady fragranced roses at the garden border. The blue ball remains motionless. On the number nine bus, the small boy with sticky hands, drops his lollipop stick to the floor then turns on his knees and watches an old lady in the seat behind as she counts loose change in her hand. His father gazes out of the finger-smeared window, wondering what ships will be in the docks today, and inside the backpack of the girl with the magenta hair, small parts of the universe form in concentric circles as the moon, sitting on the far side of the earth gently nods.

***

Once upon a time there was a girl called Sophie who was as pale as the moon with eyes as deep as ocean pools, and a boy called Adam with beautiful amber skin. Adam had hair so dark that shone in its own glorious way as it absorbed all the light of the sun, and his eyes were as brown as chocolate tarts, shining and glossy and full of sweetness. Sophie would walk to and from school with Adam every day, from innocent childhood to their flourishing teens. As children, they would build Lego houses, tell each other stories of magical worlds, and ride their bikes up and down the pavement as far as they could go without leaving the sight of Sophie’s sentinel father. As they grew, they would pour over books and listen to music, finding new and wonderful things in the world, where Adam would see beauty in everything, opening Sophie’s eyes to the smallest things around her. The depth of green in a blade of grass, the fine barbs of a fallen feather, a spark of light bouncing off a window pane. Sophie would tend to Adam’s wounds with ointment when the other boys were brutal with their feet and fists and would cradle him in her arms when the ointment could not remove the bitter sting of their words. Together they had faced the world and their foes in their own sweet and beautiful way. Together, always together.

***

Sophie squeezes her eyes tightly shut so all that she can see is the blood behind her eyelids and glistening stars that are not really there. Breathing through the salty brine of her tears, she blows long and slow between trembling lips.

“Adam is dead,'' that is what her father had said, ten years ago, when she was fifteen and when Adam did not come to the house to walk with Sophie to high school that morning. “It is too much for you to understand, but Adam is dead and his parents are going back to Pakistan. They are not coming back.” Father was in the hall packing his heavy black briefcase that he took to work everyday in his big black car. Mother was in the kitchen silently washing burnt on marks from last night's casserole pot. “You need to get yourself off to school young lady.” Sophie’s father closed the front door and was gone. All the walls in the hallway fell in on themselves as the blocks that held Sophie’s world together, soundlessly fell apart, crashing down around her in violent silence, while down the road in the next avenue, a large van pulled onto the drive of Adam’s house and took away the Lego bricks, the books, Adam’s bike and everything that was Adam. Sophie’s mother dried her hands on the tea towel with a picture of London bridge on it and motioned Sophie towards the front door and away to school.

No one ever mentioned Adam again. No one at school so much as uttered a word and Sophie became part of a lonely couple with only one half. She wandered the corridors alone and the wooded paths behind the chemistry block where she and Adam had walked at lunch times, away from the world and perfect in their unity. As young children they had played in clouds and on boats, across continents and always together, and as they grew older and saw the world through adolescent eyes, they took paths that ventured further into the depths of their friendship. Nothing changed in Sophie’s home, her father left each morning with his heavy briefcase and her mother remained silently indoors, a parent who fed and clothed Sophie but nothing more.

Sophie’s mind flashes with so many questions that she cannot fathom what they are, and the answers seem hidden, far out of reach. So many questions. A blue envelope, blue like the sea, blue, blue like the sky, blue as her school sweater, blue, the blue in her mother’s hand the day Sophie had been ill and stayed home from school. Daring to creep in her nightdress along the upstairs landing, the memory, below, her mother at the door collecting the mail, the blue, the blue “Get back to your room. You’re supposed to be ill.” The blue in between the buff brown envelopes and the junk-mail rainbow. The death, so quickly taken away, no time to say goodbye, no time.

Sophie hears the bark of the white dog outside. In his garden next door, the small Jack Russell nudges the blue ball with his nose, and now stands yapping as it rolls down the slight incline of the lawn. Slowly, Sophie moves from her awkward corner of the kitchen. On aching hands and knees she crosses against the tide of the floor, pushing against the resisting forces, her quivering fingertips reaching tentatively for the envelope that still lies winking at her, inviting her back. Sophie carefully removes the letter from within, holding it as though it might sting or bite, and dares to read once more.

29th June, Karachi, Pakistan.

Dear Sophie

I hope this letter finds you and that you don’t mind me writing to you. I know it’s been a long time. I saw in the English newspapers here, about what happened to your parents and I just wanted to write and say that I am so sorry for your loss. I cannot begin to think how you must feel.  

Having not seen you for such a long time, it’s difficult to find the right words, but I want you to know that I am thinking of you. I wrote to you so many times without any response and in the end I thought that you must have forgotten me and moved on with your life. I can’t blame you for that, we left in such a hurry. I always wished I’d been able to say goodbye.

I’ll keep this letter short as I just wanted you to know how sorry I am, to lose your parents in that way must have been terrible. I hope that you’re coping and that some words from an old friend are some comfort.

I will be in the UK again very soon as I’ll be starting a new job in the autumn at a firm of architects in London. Perhaps if you remember me, we might catch up. Once again, I send you heartfelt condolences.

I always did, and still do, love you entirely,

Adam x 

Sophie’s heart is bleeding, breaking, as if it could not break anymore than it did that dreadful morning ten years ago, but it can, and it does, infinite pieces of love, hurt, and loneliness flood the kitchen floor where she sits. ‘I always did, and still do, love you entirely’... Nothing is making sense and all Sophie can see is her father’s black briefcase, her mother at the sink, her mother at the doormat, the pain, and the blue envelope, did she see it? Did she see it more than once? She shuts her tear soaked eyes, trying to grasp at memories of what her eyes have seen but not seen, of the days, weeks, years after Adam’s death. Adam’s death. A letter from beyond the grave. A letter she was not meant to see. The torrent of questions that she has never asked come flooding her mind like a fleet of boats carrying her past towards the present, chopping waves heaving everything up and down. A wave of sickness and she’s at the kitchen sink, the sink of the scolded and burned pots and her mothers hands, and she’s retching, retching the last ten years, deep from within.

Wiping her mouth and eyes, Sophie picks up the letter and returns to the table, trying to reconcile the truth and the lies, adjusting to the words, replaying in her mind the lost time, the falseness in which she’s existed. Her pale fingers trace the dark black, beautiful ink, ‘Adam x’, and her tears cascade in deep rivers, warm and salty wet and full to her very brim.

The red number nine bus has reached the terminus close to the docks and the man takes the boy’s sticky hand and leads him towards the harbour where amongst the ships, brightly painted boats are bobbing in the sea. The boy loves to watch the boats and counts on his small chubby fingers the number of vessels that his little eyes can see. He stands beside his father who gazes out to the skyline above the slight arc of the earth and wonders what it would be like to follow that curve.

Sophie holds the letter to her face, taking in and absorbing the unknown, yet somehow familiar scent. She folds the paper and carefully returns it to the blue envelope, where on the reverse she sees a sender's address. The dog next door yaps loudly, batting the blue ball with his paw, and something in the deep pit of Sophie’s stomach moves in a way she’s never felt before.

In the bus terminus, the girl with magenta hair drops her bag to the ground and crouches to place coins carefully into the plastic cup of a woman sitting huddled by the air vents of the station cafe. The woman gives a small smile, and inside the girl's bag, the concentric circles meet each other, both spinning, twisting and expanding to the size of the sun, while in a small suburban garden, a white Jack Russell terrier chases a blue ball, and overhead a blackbird sings.