Fenlandphil's Blog A blog from the low country

I wrote this piece as an entry for a flash fiction competition. A member of our writing group asked me if it was autobiographical, apart from the reference to Jimmy Mack all of it is the product of my imagination.

Do girls still dance around their handbags? Wondering, seeing again, remembering fondly the long-legged girls of my teens… Joyce would dance around her handbag with girlfriends in a circle, or sometimes in a line, to Jimmy Mack or Heatwave. All I could manage was a slow cuddle around the dance floor with her as When a Man Loves a Woman played. My efforts to dance more energetically or remotely in time with the music, were a lost cause.

Joyce was petite, pretty, bubbly, kind, and altogether lovely; I couldn’t believe my luck when she agreed to go out with me. We were together for a few months after leaving school – both fifteen. Joyce worked in a grocer’s shop; I was an apprentice car mechanic.

Joyce was adopted. The relationship with her adoptive parents wasn’t good; boyfriends weren’t allowed to visit her home.

One dark Friday night Joyce disappeared. There was no trace of her after that.

It left me heartbroken. The only information I had was that she had been seen at the station boarding a London train alone, with just a suitcase. A letter from her arrived a month later, apologising for the sudden departure and saying she would be in touch when things had sorted themselves out. There was no return address.

I heard nothing more, and a year later Rose entered my life. We fell in love and married – and were happy until Rose died suddenly last year.

I turned Joyce’s new letter over in my hands, wondering what to do next. Fifty years is a long wait to get in touch. Now it is my turn to pack a suitcase and catch a train to London. Perhaps in a few days we will return together, there is a lot to talk about.

Some of you may not be familiar with Jimmy Mack.