The Lost Life by Steven Carroll

inhale the essence of you? What happens when all you have left is the love letter but not the lover? What happens then? Do you watch young lovers kiss in the twilight at market stalls and remember what it was to be eighteen?
    Did this muse, did Miss Hale, not only want to step out of the shadows that her role demanded of her but also into the ordinariness of ordinary love, which she hovered over like a bird after a long journey, eyeing land? A destination longed for, and tantalisingly close, but never to be nested in.
    The conversation seemingly over, Catherine turns to the door to leave. But it is then that MissHale slumps onto a chair and invites Catherine to do likewise.
    ‘Ah, so good to have the house to ourselves. All of it.’
    ‘Yes.’ Catherine sits, nodding.
    ‘Not that I’m not grateful to my aunt and uncle for all they’ve done. They’ve been wonderful guardians. But it is good to have it to ourselves, isn’t it? Last night we dined with friends of my aunt and uncle. And the night before. And, of course, they are dear. And their friends. And all the small talk that friends share, which can be interesting or a little annoying depending on the talk and the evening and you.’
    Catherine nods again, agreeing that all this is so, though more perplexed than anything by this sudden inclusiveness.
    ‘Company is good, but sometimes we can have rather too much of it. Don’t you agree?’
    ‘Sometimes. Yes.’
    ‘Like the town. It is pretty. And I do feel like I’m living in a travel brochure come to life — but it’s small, don’t you find? Confining after a while.’
    Catherine, who is sitting more on the edge of her seat rather than on it, nods again, though she is not sure where all this is leading.
    ‘If you are born into small-town country life, no doubt it comes naturally. But you’re not, are you?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Nor I. We’re city people who like the escape of these places. But not to live in.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Do you have any plans for when you finish school?’ It is said as if to imply whatever the plan may be, it is to be hoped it will get her out of the town as much as anything else.
    ‘Yes. I’d like…’ and here Catherine hesitates, sure that what she is about to say will just sound silly. ‘I’d like to go to a university. It’s a sort of dream, I suppose.’ She sighs, her weight now sinking into the seat.
    ‘But these things happen. Like your young man. Daniel, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yes. But he’s very bright. Once you get past all the skylarking, he’s very bright indeed.’
    ‘But so are you, Catherine. Trust me, after years of teaching, I know how to tell the bright girls from the rest. They announce themselves. And you, Catherine, announce yourself.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Catherine says, a trace of a blush returning. She almost adds ‘Miss Hale’, but decides against it in the context of this newfound intimacy.
    ‘I always tell my girls — the bright ones — to believe in themselves. To have dreams. And to be bold in their dreaming. It’s odd how so many bright girls don’t, you know. Odd, how so many choose the conventional when so many have been born for far more than that.’
    Miss Hale then rises and goes to the window and stares out over the garden as she had the previous morning. ‘These towns are nice — but to live in? Sometimes it’s so hard just to get away, don’t you find?’
    ‘Yes.’ Catherine laughs, as if to say she knows this only too well.
    ‘You and your young man, for instance. You must find it difficult to get away, to be some place without the whole town watching.’
    Catherine stares back, knowing full well that she is not at all in control of the conversation, a conversation that still puzzles her. And now she is simply not sure what Miss Hale means. The town watching? Watching what, she thinks? But she nodsin response all the same, because the observation, overall, is true. It is hard to go anywhere without the sense of somebody