Time Out

I didn’t go in to college today. There wouldn’t have been much point as I can’t seem to concentrate – keep thinking about Danny and wondering when I’ll get to see him again and if he’ll talk to me next time. Things were good between us once but that seems a long time ago now – everything’s different since Middleton. I stayed in my room most of the day, photographing the dolls, making them interact with one another. It’s weird how their personalities seem to alter when you change their clothes. I took the doll I call Elvira who’s tall and thin and coffee-coloured and cut and thinned her long hair to a frizzled mop, painted her red lips a natural brownish pink and her brown irises black. I don’t know why I did that but when I’d finished it was like a smack in the mouth how like Danny she looked. I took off her red spotted dress and found some black trousers and a sweater that belonged to Justin, sat her in a makeshift chair with her long legs spread the way he sits, low down on the seat and staring at the ceiling, arms flopped over the sides, hands hanging like dead wings. Then I set the camera up and took some pictures from different angles, went and got Jazz (my special doll who looks like me) and put them together like we used to be, took some more, used up the roll. I need to get a digital camera for stuff like this as it’s getting expensive with all this developing, but you need a decent camera for the longer range stuff like people if you want them natural and unaware that someone’s stealing their image, and of course the special work. Maybe I could learn to do it myself – the developing that is – take an evening class or something.

When it got dark I went out to look for the little hedgehog but couldn’t find him. Under a streetlight a man and a woman – she blonde and middle-aged in a long pale coat with a fake fur collar. He had his back to me but was all bulky baldness shining in the orange light, his long hair tied in a grey ponytail at the back of his neck. Funny how men who’re losing their hair on top grow it long everywhere they can. Close they were like plotters talking low but they lapsed into silence as I walked past. I’d have liked to get a good look at them just in case they’re in the news later for murdering her husband or his wife but their eyes were pushing me off and I kept mine straight ahead.

Danny, Danny, Danny. I repeated his name all the way home in time with my footsteps until it became Edan, Edan, Edan. Eden, the garden of. Danny’s not Eden or paradise, I know that, but how I want him back as he was before.