This is a true story, but I wish it wasn’t. It happened a fortnight ago and I’m still trembling.
I’m 42 and I lecture in Media Studies at the university. I’m known as an ‘empiricist’; that is, I deal in facts, not fancy theory.
It was 4.30 and I was carried along by the crowd in Church Street on the way to Central Station. There was a clear, cloudless blue sky; so, not typical of late autumn in Liverpool.
Then I saw her: Kate Cobb, a girl I knew at uni. twenty years ago. We had been lovers (well, we had sex together, if that’s the same thing). She hadn’t changed one bit. Still 22, with a fair, luminous complexion, and a delicate dusting of freckles across her cheeks. I recognised her t-shirt; she wore it constantly that summer, tucked into distressed low-rise denim jeans.
She was close enough for me to see but too far away to speak. Then, she saw me. She gave me a smile, that gorgeous toothy grin that had stolen by heart. She breathed ‘hello Rick’, waved and walked away. In a frenzy, I pushed my way through oafs staring into their phones. Desperately searching, I walked around for an hour before admitting: she had gone.
Next day, scrolling through Facebook I found the message that ripped my guts out. It was from my best mate at uni. Had I heard? Kate Cobb had died at 4.30 yesterday after a long fight with breast cancer.
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 