(Authors Note: This piece was originally written in 2012. It has been edited because there are some thematic issues I have with the text looking back. Part 1 remains largely intact as it wasn’t too awful, looking back. Part 2 required some severe editing. The piece was originally written in my Year 12 Literature class. It was an attempt to ape the novel ‘Atonement’ in its style and plot elements. Brownie points if you can spot the other literary references)

Part I

Perhaps he should not have come at all. Something about this meeting felt incredibly forced. She had sent him a message. Clemens St, Tuesday, 7pm. In her usual fashion, she was infuriatingly brief. Did she mean he was to wait outside on Clemens? It was a cold New London night and he hadn’t had the forethought to bring his jacket. No, she definitely meant the café. It was their place. The café was irrefutable a fact in their relationship as the war, and if there was one thing Milton know about her it’s that she was as sentimental as she was fanciful.

April turned into Clemens St, her brand-new heels clicking along the pavement and digging into her heel. She had half a mind to take them off but she persisted. She couldn’t appear weak in front of Milton. It had been five years; no contact between them. True, the war had not made things easy. Upon seeing her again, he would probably wring her throat. He was the type. The man had a violent streak, and his years in the army were unlikely to have satiated his bloodlust. April was drawn out of her thoughts by the realisation that she was supposed to be looking for Milton. She looked around. Clemens St was no longer the bustling street of eateries it had once been. All along the street there used to be little cafes with idyllic, outdoor dining areas. Half the shops were now closed, the other half were little more than rubble. The German had bombed New London, and Clemens St had suffered for it. Then she saw it, the humble little café they had visited years ago. By some stroke of luck, it still stood. Open, waiting for her entrance. Back when they were on friendlier terms Milton had stared bewildered at the French name of the place. Boire, she had told him, It means to drink. Of course, the word on his boorish tongue, he had mispronounced it. She had laughed. What had made her laugh in those days now made her wrinkle her nose in displeasure. Indeed, there seemed to be little to laugh at these days.

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[Author’s Note: Originally written October 2015]

As the sluggish train carried him into his work the skyline cast a dark shadow over the dreary landscape molded by the winter. It was an inescapable aspect of the city that was well known and oft parodied by its residents. The mood of the city became exactly like people outside it imagined it did in the winter months. Those travelling to work were covered in black, scurrying about in such a rat race that from above they must’ve looked like ants, ants tracking the same path every day. As he thought the train arrived painfully slowly into the city.

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