Living Upside Down. John Hickman

sideways at June and Charlotte and June catches herself smiling back.

      If only they could have their life back but without Zelda. June thinks that often.

      How much she misses her Mum, and why, oh why did she have to leave her. She misses her more each day becoming an icy heaviness in her heart threatening to topple her over.

      If June was subjected to a natural disaster, it could not have come in a worse form than Zelda. A death in the family that broke their biological bond was tragic. She now feels as if flung aside like a piece of seaweed.

      Zelda clears her bath, takes a large fluffy wrap around towel, and dresses.

      The rain has eased and night is upon them. Edward returns from work with dinner. Back in the drawing room, she can see both her reflection and Edward’s in the window glass. He never takes his eyes off her but she doubts his interest is romantic. No. His interest, she knows, is the now fast failing light and not wanting to be alone.

      Later that evening Edward struggles to fall asleep. Outside has returned to being wet and windy. What use are expansive sea views if you can rarely see the sea? he thinks.

      His mind continually needs to unfold the day’s events and his dreams often return to the 1940s when he struggles to survive his bombing missions. Often he relives his Lancaster holed by flak and he is without controls. His flaps and hydraulics shot away, oxygen tanks exploding, flames spreading throughout his plane. As the plane begins its rapid decent, he leaves what controls he has to his co-pilot, unhooks himself from his seat and squeezes through the hatch into the belly of the flaming beast. There he goes looking for his crew crawling on bended knees but he cannot find them. In his dream he watches through a gaping hole in the fuselage another Lancaster go down. He feels another shockwave from a direct hit; beneath him a larger hole appears from a ground to air canon. The air rushes past him then turns and sucks him from his platform. He falls from the plane into the abyss. Edward awakes in a cold sweat.

       Fuck!

      He lays afraid to sleep should his demons revisit him. He feels as if he has been connected to an improperly calibrated drip of adrenalin as seemingly every ounce of belly bile begins to incinerate his throat. He draws long, grateful breaths.

      As 57,000 RAF aircrew perished, Edward’s concerns were indeed very real. He knows how fortunate he was to survive that madness.

      As he lays in the darkness next to Zelda, Edward struggles to collect his thoughts and return to being hopeful about his future. He speaks to Zelda essentially to see if she is awake.

      Zelda’s sleep was thin.

      “I’ve just had another awful dream. My Lancaster crashed, again.”

      Zelda raises herself up on one elbow, moves closer, and takes Edward’s hand in her own.

      “Ve all get de bad dreams, Edvard. I lost family and friends in dose raids. Mein Gott, Edvard, your bad dreams, don’t you tink I have zese nightmares. I vas a young girl in var torn Germany. De constant bombing, de hunger it vas no picnic. At least you ver a young man, I vas a young girl. Dere is a big difference. A girl must do many tings to survive und eat in vartime.”

      Zelda has not told Edward about her pregnancy to her tall, squinty-eyed Sergeant in the SS. She had become well practiced at pleasuring a man by her mid teens.

      “I know,” Edward squeezes Zelda’s hand in friendship. “I too lost people in the war Zelda but I’ve never quite mastered being alone at twilight.”

      “I know Edvard. Shush now. I do know.”

      Zelda moves away and lays quiet in deep thought. If she does not want sex, she knows now is the best time to fein sleep. In that all men are the same, she knows that.

      As Edward drifts off to sleep, he wonders if the English novelist Aldous Huxley was correct when he philosophised, ‘Maybe this world is another planet’s Hell?’