Everyone Is Amazed

by Beth Kilkenny (Runner-up)

You step out with nowhere to go, only to walk, to think, to escape, you can turn left or right, and most often it is right, so you turn right and walk up the hill where your heart starts racing before you’ve hardly begun, and there is the supermarket that will soon be open and about which you are so excited although you think probably you shouldn’t be excited, probably it is bad for community and environment and everything good, but it will be fierce handy for those evenings when there is no time and hungry mouths,

then the houses, which are only for rent, on the land that is not properly drained, and the smell that drifts, and the horses in the field above them, and the children who stop to feed them, and the people at the bus stop clocking off from their shift at the care home, and the roundabout at the top where it flattens out and you can breathe again,

and think, you pull down the zip on your coat and you’re hot now already even though it's only four degrees out and you should have worn a lighter coat, but you forget every time how hot you get when the blood starts moving, now it's all downhill from here, the hard part is out of the way,

then you cross the bridge that goes over the motorway, and the fence must be seven or eight foot and it has a canopy, to stop people climbing it you suppose, and you look down at the people who have somewhere to be and a purpose and they're gone before you have a chance to imagine who they are and who they love and what they want to do with their lives, you can keep pretending you are the only one, you in your mind and the thoughts running over and over and it can’t be like this for everyone, or else how would anything ever get done, now down,

down the hill passing the new houses which are all the same, even to the pictures over the fireplace, and you can stare right in to their living rooms so you do, of course, and you wonder are all of the people inside living the same lives, are they watching the same TV shows, the boxset death march, probably they are, and you remember years ago a friend said to you that it doesn't really matter who you marry, and you think of all of the people on the street where you live all the families just like yours, little boxes made of ticky tacky, and wonder would what would happen if you went home to the wrong house and put the wrong children to bed, got into the wrong bed yourself and had a different body breathing too loudly next to you and listened to your own husband through the wall, would anyone even notice except you, then you’ve reached the bottom of the hill,

and you take a left and here you always look up, up towards the hills, little boxes on the hillside, back to where you started, and you’re always looking back, now you are anyway, you didn't used to but that's because you used to be young, the other day on a walk you listened to a podcast about writing and they said, ‘why not write something you don't understand,’ and you thought, yes! because you don't understand anything, but that’s probably not what they meant, and when you listen to writers talk you feel like such a fraud because they all know what they’re doing and you're just someone who types out half thought out ideas in the notes app of your phone, and you never even took any drugs or anything, you are safe, a safe bet, boring maybe, you always have been, but actually you are happy now with who you are, at last my love has come along, finally, it only took 42 years, it’s fine to be a quiet, safe person, not everyone can be extrovert, and you remember when you were a child someone said about you, ‘she's smiling on the inside,’ and funny how you remember things isn't it, funny what you remember, but joke’s on them because haha you’re not smiling on the inside either, you think about what you might have said as a passing remark that your own children might remember in thirty years’ time and it's actually terrifying that kind of worry because you can never tell what someone will remember,

then you come out of the new housing estate and you’re walking alongside the road and the path narrows and there's always lots of people on this stretch and usually you end up walking on the grass which is always muddy because of the rain and the people and the dogs and then you’re at the school, which is the school you wanted your son to go to but he didn’t get a place because you haven't lived in this part of the city all your lives, in fact you’ve lived in four houses in ten years, and therefore you did not put his name down when he was a foetus, when he was a foetus you didn’t think past leaving the hospital let alone going to secondary school and how does one become the person who thinks that far ahead, and those long lonely days when you never walked alone, and life was measured out in three hour segments and now you look through his social media messages for traces of misogyny and, yes, you find them, and your heart races while it sinks, and it feels like the worst thing in the world and they’re only kids, babies really, and how can it be like this already, and the school is a mixed- sex school and you think that has to be the answer to something but girls aren’t rehabilitation for badly behaved boys and what about when you were at school and were the boys awful or was it the girls who bullied you for being clever and good, or was it everyone, and your daughter plays football at the pitches behind the school, and the men who coach the girls are so good and gentle and sometimes you watch them train and laugh and tie their shoelaces and it makes you cry, but really everything makes you cry and you don't mind, it’s proof of life, though maybe not when you're watching a TV show about weight loss because you shouldn't even be watching those shows, not in this day and age, you’d want to hug them, though, the people on the show, because they're so sad and it's not the weight, it’s the sister who died, or the relationship lost, or the baby they didn't know they were going to have,

then you're at the second bridge that crosses the motorway and this one doesn't have a high fence, this one the fence only goes up to your shoulders, and every time you walk you think this is the bridge I don't throw myself off, this is the bridge this is the bridge, and it's not that you want to throw yourself off , but you can't help thinking how easy it would be,

then you take a slight left and you're walking uphill again, a long, slow incline, and you're facing the hills where sometimes you walk alone in the early mornings before work, and when the woman was killed in England it reminded us all that we weren’t to feel safe in quiet areas, so when you would go out you would tell your husband where you were going and how long you were going to be just as a joke really, because you didn't really ever think anything would happen to you, because things like that happen to other people, and then you would be walking in the hills and sometimes it's quite tiring, or sometimes it's beautiful, and you want to stop and take a look and breathe but you can't because you’ve told your husband how long you will be and maybe he will worry if you're longer than that, and then another woman was killed, because there’s always another woman, but you won’t be afraid because these places are yours, they belong to you, and you will not be afraid, and often you think about death when you walk and isn't that strange, when the blood and the heart are pumping fast and you are so alive, and your body is alive, that you would think about death at that moment? then there is the Spar

and the chemist and the shop that sells the Bubble Tea that your daughter and her friends like and who knows what it is but they stand outside the shop and take their photo, tilting their legs and their straight long hair and the peace signs, and they are young and beautiful and they should not be afraid, and you will not tell them to be afraid, and the boys on their bikes who must be the same age as the girls, but do not make peace signs and they are only children, too, they shouldn’t be afraid either, and how can they be bad at that age, and what makes them bad, and is it inevitable, and what can you do so your son does not get swallowed up by anger, and you love him and you want to keep him all yours, part of you like he was in the womb, part feminine, part female, we were part of each other, we all were, we all are, and when does it change, then you've made it

again to the top of the hill, and you’re at the roundabout where you need to turn left and this is where you yelled at your daughter when she had only just learned to ride a bike and the roads were quiet and she didn't look and cycled straight out and a car came round the corner and you screamed and the car slowed and really it was alright and it was always going to be alright but you were scared and, ‘I’m sorry,’ you said later, ‘I was just scared,’ and you’re always a little bit scared,

and the apartments have stopped now and there's an empty field with a sign up for planning permission, and it’s a strange place this on the outskirts of the city and the hills so close and the depths of suburbia, a kind of liminal place, you sometimes think, where you can walk past a Spar and a chemist and be looking at the hilltops within walking distance, and what goes on up there at night when all the people are gone, which animals live in the woods that hide away during the day, and sometimes now when you walk in the hills you see coffee cups thrown into the heather and what kind of person does that and why can't they go for a walk without a cup of coffee, you’re almost home now,

and tea would be nice but water first, you’re thirsty now and hot, after the walk, but then tea would be nice and a book and comfortable seat and nothing to worry about, and then just ahead a deer crosses the road so fast you hardly saw it except for the white of its tail, and it runs through the gate of your estate and up through the trees into the field where more houses are to be built, and on and up, you suppose, into the hills and what was it doing down here you wonder, on the streets, and what if you’d been closer to it, you would have got such a fright, or if it had been hit by a car, and what was it doing here, or what are you doing here, or what are we doing here on the outskirts of the wild,

you’re home now, and nothing to worry about, and you open the door, and it’s the right house, this is your husband and these are your children, and you tell them about the deer and everyone is amazed.