We've been playing story tag in the on-line writing workshop I joined through the OU. Thought you might like to see the first two stories in the sequence. The idea is one person writes a piece, then next person takes a character from that piece and writes their own story. The third person takes a character from story two and writes a new story, etc. You get the picture. The last story is supposed to bring the whole back to the beginning.
Sisters - Ron Woods
Sandra opened the door to the visitors’ day room and was surprised to see her younger sister already there. Tina was standing with her back to the door leaning on the sill of the open window but Sandra immediately recognised her faded multicoloured jacket and unmistakable shaggy blonde hair. She also noticed her flick something out the window and flap her hands before turning around with a guilty expression to face her.
‘Oh it’s just you,’ said Tina when she saw who had come in to the room. ‘I thought it was that bloody nurse again.’
Sandra wasn’t sure if the look of disappointment was meant for her or the unsmoked portion whatever it was her sister had just flicked away.
‘The nurse told me to wait in here,’ said Sandra. ‘They’ve taken mummy down for a scan.’
‘I know,’ said Tina rooting in the pocket of her grubby jeans, ‘I’ve been on my own here all afternoon. I was with her when they took her down.’
‘I came as quickly as I could.’ Sandra’s cheeks were flushed. ‘I had to get Gerry to come home from work to mind the girls, and then I had to go to mummy’s to collect her things.’
The day room was quite small with too many chairs but against one wall was a small comfortable looking sofa. Sandra put her large handbag and the two carrier-bags with nightdresses and cardigans for her mother at one end and dropped herself onto the other end. She immediately regretted it as she sank into the cushion and the waistband of her skirt dug into the folds of her stomach. She wriggled in the seat to make herself as comfortable as possible. Tina leaning back with her elbows on the windowsill watched her discomfort.
‘Does Margaret know yet?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Sandra. ‘I’ve tried her mobile but it keeps going to voicemail and I didn’t want to leave a message like that on her phone. She’s probably in one of her meetings.’
Tina wasn’t looking at her and didn’t seem to care about her answer. She was looking instead at the toe of her sandal as she rubbed it in circles on the pink floor tiles. Sandra thought she was too thin and her clothes looked worn out.
‘Are you still living with those people on the farm?’ she asked her.
‘Yeah, but we might move on at the end of the summer, I’m not sure, maybe.’
‘Have you no washing machine out there?’ she asked and immediately regretted how her question must have sounded. ‘I only meant...I worry about you...you know?’
Tina lifted her head to look at her. ‘Your blouse is buttoned up wrong,’ she said, then turned to look out of the window again.
‘Oh Christ! Not again,’ said Sandra shuffling forward to sit upright on the edge of the sofa to redo her buttons. Her blouse was almost completely undone exposing the white rolled flesh of her stomach and a bra that used to be white when the door swung open wide and Margaret entered the room with her phone pressed to her ear. She was wearing a tailored grey trouser suit and her shoulder length hair was pulled back behind her ears and held in place by a pair of sunglasses perched on her head. As she turned to shut the door behind her the sunlight from the window flashed off the DG logo on the side of her glasses and the room filled with the scent of Chanel something-or-other. It was always Chanel.
She was still talking on the phone. ‘I see...yes...but can’t you hurry it up?’ As she spoke she looked at her sisters, raising a quizzical eyebrow at Sandra’s naked belly. Her half-smile to Tina wasn’t quick enough to hide her initial look of disapproval.
‘I understand,’ she was saying into the phone, ‘but I’ll need to know as soon as possible. I have to make a decision. Ring me as soon you know.’ She flipped her phone shut and slipped it into her pocket.
‘That was mummy’s consultant,’ she said. ‘We may have to sell her house.’
Tina - Danielle Posner Sykes
‘I want you out by the end of the week.’
Tina was dragged into the hazy light of the morning by this demand, spat into her ear by Jonathan. It was laced with a venom that took her breath away. How had things got so bad so fast? She turned over and looked at her boyfriend of six years. He was sitting up in bed, his spine rigid, arms barricaded across his chest, face cold and resolute. She sighed and rubbed her eyes, wishing she could at least have had a cup of tea before being thrust back into the argument that had begun the previous evening over whose turn it was to do the washing up. It was pathetic. Not only that Jonathan should have felt it necessary to turn a simple task, easily accomplished in minutes, into a major diplomatic incident, but that he should have insisted it was played out in front of the rest of the farmhouse residents and used it as a means to end their relationship. Her sisters had always said he was a bully and a coward. She had defended him until the phrase “the lady doth protest too much, methinks” began to echo in her head. Actually, it had been Sandra who had called him a bully and a coward. Margaret had dismissed him as a sponging waste of space. They were both right.
‘Good morning to you, too, Jonathan,’ Tina muttered.
‘I can’t be doing with this any more. You’re lazy and self-centred and how dare you show me up in front of my friends. My friends, not yours. I’ve carried you long enough. You can sleep on the couch until you’ve found somewhere else to go. No-one wants you here a minute longer than necessary.’
Tina fought back the tears that started to well up and controlled the downward twitch at the corners of her mouth. In complete silence, she got out of bed and picked her away over Jonathan’s dirty clothes, which were scattered liberally over the bedroom’s threadbare carpet, to the rickety chest of drawers. Rays from a chilly winter sun broke in through the gap in the paper-thin curtains tacked to a chunk of wood over the window. Tina pulled on a pair of jeans that were due for a wash and a sweatshirt before starting to remove her neatly folded and hung clothing from the drawers and wardrobe, packing them into the suitcase and sportsbag she had brought with her eighteen months before.
‘And you can leave my grey sweater,’ came the instruction from the bed.
Tina turned to look at Jonathan’s impassive face. His unblinking, steely grey eyes stared back at her.
‘You gave me that jumper.’
‘No I didn’t. You borrowed it and never gave it back.’
‘Oh, whatever, Jonathan. Why would I want a reminder of you?’ She took the sweater out of her bag and then stopped. A look passed over her face. She straightened her shoulders and turned back to look at him. ‘Do you know what, I’m tired of this. I’m tired of you and your sniping. I’m tired of dirty carpets, non-existent plumbing, freezing cold rooms, lentils for dinner every night, listening to Greg and Mandy swinging from the lightshade –‘
‘Well fuck off then, you miserable, middle-class bitch!’ Tina’s eyes widened and her head jerked backwards as if hit from a physical blow. ‘Go on! Fuck off back to your Mummy and those tight-arsed, toffee-nosed bitch sisters of yours with their designer clothes and convertible cars and jobs in the City.’
For a moment Tina was too stunned to speak. Then, unable to bear the sound of thudding in her ears, she asked,
‘Did the last six years mean nothing to you? Did I ever mean anything?’
Jonathan’s eyes narrowed and the corners of his mouth turned upwards in a sham of a smile.
‘Yeah, you meant an adequate fuck when I was horny and someone to roll a spliff when I was too stoned to do it myself.’
Tina blinked, too shocked even to cry.
‘You bastard,’ she thought. ‘I wasted six years of my life on you. Well, I won’t give you the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I won’t.’
She turned back to her bags, finished packing her things and, without a backward glance, walked out, quietly closing the door behind her. She went into the bathroom to wash her face in freezing cold water, brush her teeth and pack her toiletries and then left the house by the back door.
It wasn’t until she was in her battered old Renault and sitting at the end of the driveway that she pulled on the handbrake and started to shake. She retrieved a pack of cigarettes from her bag and eventually managed to light one, dragging the smoke deep into her lungs. She told herself it was smoke in her eyes causing the tears to cascade down her face, nothing to do with the pain in her chest, the lump in her throat or the concrete in her stomach. She refused to shed one tear over Jonathan. Absolutely refused.
‘Shit. Margaret,’ she muttered, a picture of her judgemental eldest sister’s gloating face coming to mind. As she was contemplating how to tell her family that she was now homeless, her phone rang.
‘Tina? It’s me.’ Her sister, Sandra, sounded more flustered than normal.
‘Hi, Sandra. What’s up?’
‘It’s Mummy. She’s had some sort of fall or something. I couldn’t get much sense out of her. I called an ambulance. Where are you? I’ll meet you at the hospital.’
‘Yeah, okay. Is she alright? I mean … is it a heart attack, or –‘
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. Just can you go –‘
‘Yes, yes, of course. I’ll see you there.’
The drive to the hospital and the hours waiting whilst staff came and went with no answers to her questions, only quick flickers of their eyes up and down, as they took in her somewhat crumpled look, blurred together.
At some point in the afternoon Sandra arrived, all awry and puffing and asking inane questions and Tina could barely keep focused on her mother’s plight as the events of that morning swirled round and round in her head. How to tell; whom to tell; when to tell; if she should tell. Maybe she could live at her mother’s while she sorted herself out.
Then Margaret burst in and announced,
‘That was Mummy’s consultant. We may have to sell her house,’ and all Tina could think was,
‘Shit!’
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