Beth
Beth
Beth gets through the day, grateful for the distraction of rehearsals and for the critical new director they’re working with, who delights in shaming particular actors. Justin thinks he’s a bully but somewhat perversely, she likes it. She knows she’ll need to be strong, resilient, to have any hope of making it in the acting profession.
Her mother phones her at lunchtime and they have a polite, awkward conversation in which she asks Beth about her health and her course and doesn’t bring up the fire at all.
But Beth knows the anniversary is the only reason she’s ringing. She feels a rush of love for her mother for remembering.
But when she’s alone, walking back to her student house after the final rehearsal, she finds her feet taking a left where they should have continued on. She must continue walking, that’s all she knows. Walking and walking and trying to ignore the pain in her heart.
She’ll get through this day, and then it will get easier. Everyone always says the first anniversary of anything is the hardest. But time is a great healer, and next year will be easier, and the year after will be easier than that…
At least she has her studies. A passion and a focus, something to keep her going, something to distract her.
It begins to drizzle but she continues to walk. It was dry this time last year. She remembers the cold wind as they walked around the park behind their building, Nick’s arm wrapped around her. Perhaps if it had been raining, the fire wouldn’t have spread. Perhaps if it had been raining, then Beth and Nick wouldn’t have gone for their walk, and they would have been inside when the fire broke out, and then…
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps… So many alternate scenarios, alternate worlds, none of which would have brought her to this.
She does three laps of the campus before turning right and cutting across the park. There’s no logic to it, just propulsion. But soon she’s unsurprised to find herself standing alone, looking up at the white boarding that encloses the space where the Cecil Broad Building once stood.
Students have taken to sticking up flyers on the boarding. Advertisements for club nights, union elections, even one of the student productions she’s involved in.
Some of the flyers are peeling off, flapping in the wind.
She stops short, staring up at them. There’s no mention of Anna here. No mention that this is where Anna lost her life, and where Beth lost everything except her life.
She cried a lot after Nick left. She felt betrayed, by him, but also by love. Love wasn’t meant to do this. Love wasn’t meant to cause this agony.
She takes her phone out of her rucksack, looks at Nick’s message again.
Are you OK? x
There’s only one response that’s truthful, and it’s probably not the one he wants to hear.
As she writes the words – as she shares the truth with someone who surely, surely can understand? – a strange sense of peace descends.
Her reply is an unburdening – perhaps not fair, perhaps not kind, but it’s one she knows she deserves.
Not really x