Author Archives: Natalie Reilly-Johnson

Where the Wild Things Are

Posted on by under 2020, August 2020 - The Long and Winding Road

It was the elders visiting for the third time this week that alerted me. The elders and the whispered words that blew across the yard, chilling my spine. “Ten cows.” “Wedding.” “Kutairi” (the cutting).

No-one speaks of my big sister, Amidah. But I remember. I remember the fifty-year-old man to whom she was promised, for a dowry of nine cows. The Ngarida (cutter). The rusty blade. The way they held her down and told her not to scream. The blood spreading over her white dress.

And afterwards, how her body was thrown into the Bush, where the wild things are. My beautiful sister. Fourteen years old to my seven. To escape the Lawalawa curse, there was to be no burial. No mention of her name.

I stopped speaking.

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Darkening Violet

Posted on by under 2020, July 2020 - First Love

The letter arrived out of the blue, her cursive scrawl delivering the blow with elaborate swirls and loops, like a bow decorating a gun. One click on Facebook confirmed the news. It knocked the wind out of me.

Before boys and even before crushes on popstars, there was Violet Anderson. Friendships between girls can crackle with all the turbulence and infatuation of romantic love. And that’s how it was between Violet and me.

Dear Rachel,
By the time you read this, I’ll be dead.

The first time I saw her, she was stomping through the school gates in Doc Martin boots, blowing bubblegum. She flouted the school rules with an air of nonchalance I’d never seen before in all my eight years. I was mesmerised.

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Things That Will Happen After the Divorce

Posted on by under 2020, May 2020 - Survival

You’ll think it’s killing you at first. You’ll want to stay in bed, picking apart everything you’ve said and done (and not said and done) in the last year. What if you’d listened more, moaned less, worn lipstick…?

The last thing you’ll want to do is clad yourself in Lycra and gasp for breath in the gym. You’ll think the place is full of self-obsessed freaks, like that airhead he left you for. But Helen will drag you along.

A routine will form. Those new trainers, the neon pink ones Helen said you should splash out on, will beckon to you every morning before dawn. You’ll sweat a little more and cry a little less. Five rounds of squats, eight reps each. Increase the weight by five kilograms. Go to work. Go to bed. Repeat.

There will be nights when the pain will wind itself around your neck and burrow into your heart. On your anniversary. When his favourite song comes on the radio. When you’ll be at a party and your friends will study the floor and shift their feet when you ask if they’ve seen him. If they’ve met her. Yes, they’ll say, then change the subject.

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The Writing Retreat

Posted on by under 2020, March 2020 - The Island

I glance at the headline of the newspaper folded in my lap, and smile. The plane takes off and the island shrinks into a chocolate-box toytown, surrounded by a champagne sea.

Only a week ago, I hauled my bag up the path that spirals around that cliff. The hotel loomed above me, built into the rocks and incandescent in the sunshine.

She was by the lift, talking into her phone when I walked through reception. I recognised her voice immediately: that same grating, high-pitched lilt. She looked up. A flash of recognition and – was that panic? Then she plastered on a smile.

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My Blind Mind

Posted on by under 2020, February 2020 - Desire

“Can you picture her face?” My words tumbled out of my mouth as soon as my sister picked up the phone.

“Huh? Whose face?” Evelyn replied.

“Mum’s,” I said.

At sixty years old, I had just learned that most people possessed a superpower. They could visualise objects, places, events and people in their “mind’s eye”. I could not. Suddenly the darkness of my mind seemed blinding. What’s more, I felt the loss of my mother more acutely than ever.

Our mother had died six months earlier, after a long battle with cancer. Evelyn and I had nursed her until the end. Now there was a gaping hole in my life. It was Larry, my husband, who had suggested giving meditation a go.

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For Auld Lang Syne

Posted on by under 2020, Jan 2020 - New Year Resolutions

Father O’Brien was already waiting in the confessional. Mary could see his shoes tapping expectantly through the gap under the curtain. But she wasn’t here for the usual forbidden tryst.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”

“Come into the Vestry, Mary,” Father O’Brien interrupted, breathlessly.

“Father, listen. I’m with child. Yours, of course.” She dissolved into tears.

Father O’Brien muttered a prayer. “Wait there,” he said, finally.

His footsteps echoed and faded as he clattered out of the church.

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Turning to Glass

Posted on by under 2019, November

They sparkle like diamonds, the sharp angles of their colourless faces reflecting beams of light through the computer screen. They are The Glass Girls. Dazzling the brightest of all is Anastasia Parfait, queen of the online Pro-Glass-Lifestyle world.

How glamorous they are. How happy, cool and confident. How completely the opposite of me: A teenage failure. Unpopular, unprepared for GCSEs. Sad about my parents’ divorce. Missing my Nan. Suddenly there’s nothing in the world I want more than to become glass.

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How to survive a (man-made) natural disaster, by Sophia, aged 9

Posted on by under 2019, October

How to survive a (man-made) natural disaster, by Sophia, aged 9

  1. Don’t rely on the grown-ups

The climate change scientists warned that the wave was coming. But that was before the government silenced them.

Our parents were all too busy arguing about Brexit to help.

“Dad?” I said, “Can we move to the Midlands?” 

“Is this about that tsunami nonsense again?” he laughed, stuffing yet another loaf of emergency No-Deal-Brexit bread into the freezer. “It’s scientifically impossible, Sophia.” 

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Feathers in the Wind

Posted on by under 2019, September

The locals call her “Eighties Kate.” She drives a Ford Cortina, her hair a tangle of permed curls and her clothes the ultimate in retro-chic.

But those who know Kate Archer will know the sad story behind her vintage style. It isn’t a fashion statement. Kate is frozen in time because she has been waiting for her husband to come home for thirty-two years.

Tom Archer has been missing, presumed dead, since he drove out to buy a late-night kebab just as the Great Storm of 1987 was gathering momentum. His car was found wrapped around the railings above the arches of Brighton beach. His body was never recovered.

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Six Little Numbers

Posted on by under 2019, August

It was love at first sight at the Tesco checkout. “Magdalena,” her name badge said. As she scanned my ready meal for one, she looked at me with her huge doe-eyes like she was peering into my soul and cleansing it at the same time.

Every Friday night, I passed through her till. It became our little conversation piece.

“It’s Ready-Meal-Friday, yes?” she would say, flashing me a dimpled smile.

It wasn’t until the fourth week that I finally plucked up the courage to ask her out.

To my surprise, she said yes. She walked into my flat after her shift, all wide-eyed and waif-like. We ate two ready meals. That was a year ago today. The rest, as they say, is history.

And now, six little numbers threaten to ruin it all.

“Check my lottery numbers for me? It’s a Roller this week”, she said, on her way out this morning.

“Rollover,” I corrected.

It was only when a text message popped up on my computer just now, from Magdalena to her work-mate, Adam, that I remembered to check for the ticket. “I need a lottery win” she joked in the text, declining an invitation to drinks tonight with her work-mates.

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