This has recently been rejected with the comment 'didn't hold my interest'. thoughts and advice please...please.


There's no excuse, no explanation. This house is only fifteen, maybe twenty years old, at the most. It's so early in its life, so fresh, it still smells of new wood. The stairs feel spongy and youthful. Ceilings and floors squeak like unbroken leather. Nothing here has had time to settle yet. The magnolia paint, which covers every wall, feels smooth to the touch, unmarked and un-chipped. No one has died here, have they? The house isn't old enough to have had ghosts and memories absorbed by its bricks. So there's no real reason why Edward should get the creeps every time he comes in here.
He drops his bag in the doorway, throws his keys onto the low bench by the telephone, places his mobile phone, switched off, on top of his bag ' he has no intention of switching it back on - takes off his shoes and slides them alongside his uncle's mud covered walking boots on the rack.
It's quiet. No TV on. No-one cooking, knocking crockery against sink and pan in the kitchen. No voices. The quiet is hard at first.
He stands in the doorway for a full five minutes, glancing from the living room door (always closed) to the shadow of the spindle banister on the stairway, to the blinking red light on the answering machine in front of him.
He walks into the living room, turns the central heating dial up to twenty-five (Edward's uncle always leaves the damn thing on number five ' what use is that?) and falls onto the sofa.
You can tell a house that isn't lived in. You can feel it. This one always feels like a show home. It's not particularly beautiful or anything, it just has that cold, empty atmosphere about it. It's a holiday home, although it feels nothing like the kind of place any sensible person would holiday, stuck out here in the hills of Cumbria. Only Edward's uncle, who bought it years ago and comes here less and less these days, preferring to rent it to poor desperate souls like Edward who need a place to lie low. It's not neutral or bare like a hotel room. It does have some character - Edward's uncle keeps part of his collection of old cameras on the shelves above the TV. Butterflies, dry, spread out on pins beneath glass and framed in big chunky, specimen-in-a-jar type displays, appear in almost every room. In the cupboard under the stairs a rail of waterproof clothing hangs against the patio set, table dismantled, chairs stacked and rammed in like a man sitting with his knees bent up to his chest in the back seat of a Mini.
But still, maybe because Edward's uncle leaves this place in a state of being semi-lived in, anyone who rents it for the summer weeks while he's away on holiday, or, like Edward, drops in for weekends because they have nowhere else to go, will always feel like a visitor, will never be able to relax here. Maybe that's why the place makes Edward feel so jumpy.

*

It's the morning. No, the middle of the night. It's hard to tell.
He'll never get used to waking up downstairs, no matter how many times he sleeps here. He'll never get used to the layout of a house built into a hillside.
He drank three quarters of a bottle of whiskey he found in one of the cupboards last night, putting some of the stuff he'd brought with him into drawers and in piles on the sideboard in a sly kind of way, knowing he was intruding on the house's peace, knowing, in his present state, there was a good chance he'd spill things and end up being ill.
Now it's five-o-clock in the morning and still too dark in the bedroom. But his brain and his eyesight are mobile in his head, reaching into the earthy black of the room.
Edward's uncle has a heavyweight blackout lining on his curtains. There are no streetlights outside. The other houses that make up this modern hillside estate are either empty half the year like this one or they're occupied by executives who, desperate to be ahead of the game, go to bed at ten thirty with steaming mugs of herbal tea, even at weekends. So the only lights are from cars down in the village or security lamps bleeding brightness onto back lawns at the neighbouring houses every time a cat leaps past their gate.
Edward puts his hand in front of his face. He can see nothing. He rubs his eyes, smoothes his fingers upwards to his forehead, touches something there, a little dent or maybe a small scab. He thinks he felt a trickle of blood. He pulls his hand away and tries to look at his fingers, but then remembers he can't see a damn thing in here. He gets out of bed and feels his way over to the window, opens the curtains and looks out at the sky. The pointed roofs of other houses are cutting through the darkness as the road slopes down towards the village.
Past the stone built houses further down the road, the factory and the deer park sunken in the valley, is the estuary. From the living room window upstairs he can always see its oil slick shape oozing over the land. From down here, he can see nothing. Edward's eyes begin to focus in the dark. He touches his head again and checks his fingers, but there's no sign of blood. He gets back into bed, leaving the curtains open.
*

He wakes again to the sound of cars sliding on the wet road beside the window in the spare room. Turns the radio next to the bed on. Some local station warning of roads that have flooded already and one on higher ground now impassable due to a fallen tree in last night's storm. Edward turns to look at the radio as if it will speak directly to him. He never heard a storm last night. The whiskey had filled his head, replaced anything else that might try to creep in there, but even with the gush of alcohol, Edward is certain the weather is always obvious.
He feels sure he was awake until at least one, maybe two-o-clock. He never sleeps well anymore. Alcohol does that. He remembers the wind beaten air outside the bedroom window while he lay awake, branches tussling at the bottom of the back garden. And the rain this morning, rolling down the hill beside the other window, taking cars a little faster than they dared to go by themselves. But not a storm. Not wind that could rip up trees and lay them over busy roads, causing chaos for morning travellers. Or rain that could flood the valleys and swell the estuary to the size and depth of a small ocean. Was he that drunk last night?
He notices an inch of panic slowly growing in his chest. He gets out of bed, forgetting the open curtains, feeling for the walls and pushing away his hangover, insisting on his balance, and goes upstairs to the living room. He passes the flashing red light on the answering machine on the wall in the hallway and stands by the window in the long lounge, overlooking the hump shaped garden, rows of roof tops, the hidden deer park, and the familiar, runny-egg-yolk spill of the estuary. It's the same as always, the estuary. No bigger. No deeper. It's normal. Everything is normal. Thank God.
*

The walls in the tiny kitchen are covered with instructions, advice and lists of dos and don'ts that Edward's uncle has taped to cupboard doors and pinned up on the notice board beside the fridge. Keep central heating dial on number 5 (like hell). Please leave bin at end of drive every Wednesday morning. No walking boots inside. No eating in bedrooms. No smoking. No pets. Edward smirks to himself as he imagines taking a biro from the bench by the phone in the hall and writing on the end of the list, no fornicating. Well, his uncle had covered just about everything else. Edward giggles. Then he stops. Why did he think of that? He tries to tell himself the alcohol from last night is still rummaging in his brain, dismantling stacked thoughts. But the idea is old inside him already.
He opens the fridge, bending and feeling the heaviness in his head and the pain in his eyes, and takes out a box of eggs. Did he bring those with him? Loosely, the thought hangs there. He must have. God knows how long it is since his uncle was here, how else could there be eggs in the fridge?
He considers listening to the messages on the answering machine now, but he can't face it yet. There's something so big, something has happened that is so huge he can't even look at it. What have I done? It's too big. It's changed his life. What is it?
He takes an egg from the box and rolls it in his hand. He doesn't want to crack it, to spoil it, to destroy it. Too much has been destroyed already. Then he holds the egg a little firmer. He grasps at something. It's about her, isn't it? Edward's girlfriend. The one he's left behind at home. He feels blinded for a moment. He's here. Alone. He's trying to remember why, but knows he doesn't want to. He feels, vaguely, whatever it is, it's too intimate. He looks around the corner of the kitchen door at the answering machine. She's bound to have called. She'll certainly have checked here before she tries anywhere else. Edward has a key to this place that he keeps on a loop with his car keys. And after all, his girlfriend knows as well as anyone, Edward always comes here when there's trouble.

*

He takes the smallest of a family of clear saucepans from the cupboard and defies one of his uncle's don'ts by cooking scrambled egg in it. These pans are bloody useless. The sign above the cupboard says, don't cook any milk based dishes in these pans. Should say, don't cook anything at all in them. He spoons the egg onto toast and drops the pan in the sink, running cold water over the congealed mess left there. His body would settle, the whiskey in his veins disperse, when he's eaten something, he's sure of it.
He has to walk past the answering machine now, to get to the table under the window in the living room. He stops in the doorway and counts the flashes. Three. Three messages. She could have left more than one, he supposes. For a moment he remembers the look on her face yesterday. He knows she was pretty upset when he walked out. Although, they both knew, it wasn't the first time he'd done this.
The other explanations were endless of course. Could be his uncle ringing to check up on the place. Or a disgruntled friend who hadn't realised Edward's uncle would sting him for the use of the house over the summer. Or it could be Edward's mum. She has probably phoned his mum by now and told her that Edward's gone off again. Gone missing. Gone off the rails.
Why can't they understand? If he'd wanted contacting he would have kept his mobile on. It should be obvious.
He eats his scrambled egg, turns on the TV and stares out of the window again.
They argued, Edward and his girlfriend. The day he left, the day before, he can't remember how many days before that. Of course they argued. They always argue. Over money. Over commitment. Over his attention to her. Edward's mum said it was a healthy relationship. She said there was something wrong with couples who don't argue. But this, he knew, was different. Oh yeah, he'd run off before. He'd got in his car and driven up to Hilltop with nothing but the clothes he had on and a tenner in his wallet before. But it had never been like this.
There's a crackle from the TV. A ghost trying to get through. The screen flickers and then returns to the image of a choir singing in a cathedral. It must be as old as this house, that TV, Edward thinks. Why doesn't his uncle get some more modern stuff in here? You can't even get channel five on it. And that's before he starts on the lack of a CD or a DVD player. There isn't even a washing machine. Nobody could seriously live here.
The thought tackles him hard. What if he had to stay here? What if he couldn't go back?
But he's being stupid. She'll have called, will have left her voice in the memory of the phone. Of course she always calls, and then he'll go home and they'll both act as if nothing has happened. That's the way it goes, isn't it? That's the way they always play this game, whenever he runs after the latest argument.
He looks to the door, to the place where the phone on the wall is repeating its signal. No. Not this time. Maybe he won't go back this time. A dead baby kind of complicates things.
He sits forward on the chair and stares at the fuzzy picture on the TV screen. His head is still moving without his say so and his stomach bolts at the food he's put in there. Shouldn't have drunk all that whiskey last night. It was stupid. Shouldn't have been so useless about the dead baby.
No, not a dead baby exactly.
'Foetus' is the scientific term used when miscarriages occur so early on in the pregnancy. He knows that. Everybody knows that. So why did she insist on referring to it as a baby?
He pushes his plate away, surprised to see he's hardly eaten anything, his stomach feels as heavy as a last goodbye. He gets up and goes to the window. Past the overlapping fields, the houses and the roads, the estuary is there, a huge teardrop suspended on the land. It's the right size. The right shape. It proves to Edward that the world is still the same as it's always been. Everything is normal. Edward can listen to the messages now. He'll hear her voice and she'll sound upset, worried, desperate even, and he'll go home and she'll be pleased to see him'¦ won't she?
He goes into the hallway and presses the button. There's a moment before the recording clicks on. A moment in which everything begins to slide back into place. It terrifies him.

- The blood was far more than he could have imagined, streaked down her legs, heavy in the centre of the bed. Edward had moved uneasily away from her, thinking, stupidly, what the hell's happened? She'd put her fingers to her body. Why did she do that? What did she expect to feel? Then pulled them away again, looking at them, crying already. 'The baby.'

The first message is from a friend of Edward's uncle, asking if the house will be free for a few months because his divorce is through and he needs to get away. Edward snorts with a spray of contempt. The house is never 'free', he murmurs.

- Could he remember the hospital? Did he even go there? Everything was done quickly and efficiently. Something she swallowed to make sure it had all come away. He winced. Luckily for her, it had. Edward had bought her a ring. No, he didn't ask her to marry him, that would have been too much. She thought the whole ring thing was soppy enough. So he'd left it at that. Then the moods started. Great swings of unfathomable emotions he couldn't cope with. The questions. The crying. Phrases snapped and barked in the air. 'What are you crying for now?' but that was days or weeks after the event. Why the need to keep crying?

The second message is from Edward's uncle. Strange to hear his voice on his own answering machine. Edward listens to the words and tries to work out how his uncle knows he's here.
'Take as long as you like, mate.' his uncle said. 'No charge. Oh, and, if you need anything, you can get me on my number in Keswick for the next three months.' Edward reaches his hand out towards the phone, thinking for a second that he could catch his uncle's voice in the line and check that he'd really said that. No charge? What's happened to him? Personality transplant? No bloody charge? He thinks, uneasily, the bastard feels sorry for me. Why?

- Yesterday. Saturday. Before he got in the car and drove up here. What started it? She was acting strange. She said she couldn't understand why he didn't want to touch her, touch her in that way. Why he didn't sleep beside her anymore and let his skin warm hers. Why he didn't sleep with her anymore. But he couldn't. The blood was still there before his eyes. That phrase again, 'what are you crying for now?' or 'not again!' Her voice, asking him over and over, what are you crying for now? As if she'd forgotten, and she didn't understand why he couldn't do the same. Leave it behind. Move on. Stop crying. But he couldn't. Tears are like that, aren't they? They just come, at the most ridiculous times. Edward had to stop the car two streets away yesterday because of them. Couldn't see the road. His eyes just filling and filling. He'd phoned his mum on his mobile, crying and mumbling like he was drunk. He told her where he was going. He told her why. It was no mystery really.

The third message is from Edward's mum. She said, 'Give her time, it's been traumatic for both of you. I'm sure she didn't mean it, love. She'll want you back, I know she will.'
Edward sits down on the floor, arms around his knees, beside the bench with the shoes on it. He lowers his head into his hands. He feels sick. Not just hung-over, but sick in ever pore of his body. Beneath his fingers he can feel the slight dent on his forehead and the scab already covering it. Why is he here? Because he has nowhere else to go. He'd left. This time he'd really left. But only because he had no choice. She couldn't stand anymore, his girlfriend said. Couldn't bear his face, his crying, his endless self-pity. He had to go, she said. Get out. Just leave.
And the last thing he remembered about yesterday? Her. Taking off her new ring and throwing it, the spinning oval of gold, diamond topped, hitting him above the eye.

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