Transition

By MJ Morton

Transition is a collection of short stories that unravels the joys and challenges of day-to-day life, offering an insight into the complexities of relationships.

 

Harold and Sophie - Middle-aged and stuck in a rut with their daily routines, life has become boring for Harold & Sophie. When a mysterious new neighbour moves in Thanksgiving weekend, their lives are turned upside down in a way they could never have imagined.

Drop Dead Date - The house has been waiting in limbo for some time… but now the estate agent has banged in the For Sale sign, their life, their existence, is about to change once again.

Odd Job Junior - When Fay rents a cottage to escape the first holiday season, to grieve alone, she doesn't expect to meet and become friends with Odd Job Junior, a young boy in a wheelchair who has his own hurt, his own battles to deal with in life.

Meeting Point - Lillian has always insisted that she and Walter arrange a meeting point on days out, in case one of them should get separated or lost. Her need to plan hasn't changed in the face of their death.

On r way - It's the Christmas holidays and Dan and Jo have a seven-day road trip, during which they'll visit his and her family, to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MJ Morton
• Release date: Dec 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9798201585891

Book preview

HAROLD AND SOPHIE

Thanksgiving was only days away – a holiday weekend that in previous years she would have looked forward to - planning and preparing for the festive countdown from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

This year, Sophie had struggled to generate even an ounce of seasonal enthusiasm. Not that the holiday required her enthusiasm to proceed and progress into fruition: no, it would come and go whether or not she was enthused about its arrival, whether or not she was fully prepared.

These days, time just rolled on: day in, day out.

For weeks her colleagues’ conversation, at the local government office where she worked, had focused exclusively on Thanksgiving: what to cook, eat, wear, when and how best to travel and how to cope with difficult visitors.

Sophie had simply listened, allowing the endless stream to float over her. Aware that she’d nothing to contribute in the way of cheery chatter, she’d kept her head down, pretending to be preoccupied with the stack of paperwork bulging from her in-tray.

Thankfully, her colleagues were too preoccupied with holiday nonsense to notice that the precariously balanced paperwork barely moved. The complaints she started reading first thing in the morning that were still on her desk, barely touched, nowhere near resolved, by the end of the day.

‘So, what are you doing for Thanksgiving, Sophie?’ asked Gemma, a new member of staff who dealt with telephone complaints rather than letters, as she did. ‘Or do you not celebrate Thanksgiving? As technically, you’re still a Brit.’

Technically, she was an American. Although born, raised, and married in England, she’d been an American citizen for so long, she thought of herself as American.

Following a lengthy silence, Sophie looked up, forced to acknowledge the question. Apparently, her colleagues had re-hashed their Thanksgiving conversations sufficiently that they were now in need of fresh contributions from the quieter members of staff like herself.

On an average day of an average week, she barely registered on Gemma’s radar.

The girl was pleasant enough, but young and overly energetic – always needing to be doing something new and exciting: the exact opposite of herself. Hence Gemma’s usual reluctance to address her, and her reluctance to respond, to be drawn into the girl’s meaningless chit-chat.

‘Just the usual, probably,’ Sophie said, keeping her voice low so as not to attract too much attention.

Seemingly, this response, with its lack of details, wasn’t sufficient and Gemma’s interest in her Thanksgiving plans faded. Relieved, Sophie lowered her head again and shuffled the papers on her desk, and then swirled the watch on her wrist so she could see the time.

Ten minutes to go, hallelujah. Ten minutes meant she could finally begin the slow process of packing up for the day.

Harold was always punctual – nobody could say otherwise. Sophie could see their car, Harold in the driver’s seat, hovering outside as she hurried out of the elevator. Scuttling through reception, Sophie looked up at the clock: 4.34pm. She shoved open the revolving door and grimaced at the contrast of temperature, the icy chill of the afternoon air that swept against her office-warm, flushed face.

She gave a quick nod in greeting as she approached the car and Harold raised his hand briefly before leaning over to push open the passenger door, enabling her swift entry into the warmth.

‘Good day?’ Harold asked once she had settled, handbag stuffed between her feet, and reaching across her body to click her seatbelt into place.

‘Good enough,’ Sophie said with another nod, trying to ignore the image of her over-flowing in-tray. ‘You?’

Harold nodded once and then clicked the indicators on. With a slow, thorough glance in the mirrors, he eased the car away from the kerb. ‘Good enough.’

Exiting from the government facility where they worked, they joined the heavily clogged roads, the trail of slow-moving cars. Sophie sighed. It was holiday traffic, no doubt. All those families with visitors driving into the state for the long weekend.

‘Busy tonight,’ Harold said, slowing from their usual pace on the freeway to a stuttering twenty miles per hour. ‘We’ll be late home, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Sophie watched cars in the surrounding lanes slow alongside them. ‘I suppose it’s to be expected.’

‘Shouldn’t wonder that we won’t be twenty minutes late, looking at all this traffic.’

‘The crock-pot will survive another half hour, even if we are,’ Sophie said, wiping condensation from the inside of the window.

‘Well, you’ll never guess what turned up today,’ Harold said, pausing for a beat. ‘My stapler.’

She felt his gaze upon her and turned in the fading light to look at him. ‘Did it now.’

Harold raised his eyebrows and nodded to confirm the fact. ‘It did. Just appeared on my desk this morning, as if it hadn’t been missing the past two days.’

Sophie shook her head and sighed. Harold worked on the ground floor, while she was on the sixth floor. His colleagues included a couple of young lads who enjoyed playing pranks on the senior members of the staff. ‘You should lock it away in your desk drawer, you know, like I do. At the end of the day, I lock all my belongings in my drawer. If you did that, that’d stop them.’

‘Oh, yes, I did today.’ Harold turned the heater up to blast mode to de-mist the windshield. ‘I took your advice. Thought it would stop whoever helped themselves the first time from being tempted again.’

Sophie tutted. ‘It’ll be those silly boys playing games at your expense, I wouldn’t wonder.’

‘Oh, I don’t doubt it,’ Harold said. ‘Ah, here we go. We’re picking up a bit of speed.’

Sophie felt the car speed up. She watched the speedometer reach forty-two, then forty-three miles an hour, until finally they were moving along the freeway at their usual speed.

‘Think I spoke too soon,’ Harold said, tapping his foot on the brake. ‘Heavens. Look at the traffic going the other way. They’re crawling along slower than we are.’

‘It’s to be expected,’ Sophie said, ‘what with the holidays and all, this weekend.’

‘You’re right.’ Harold slowed the car down to a stop as the traffic came to a standstill. ‘I’d forgotten all about the holidays until Marcus asked what we were up to over the holiday weekend.’

‘He asked you that... did he now.’

Marcus was Harold’s new boss. She’d met him at a work do during the summer but hadn’t been overly keen. He was young, twenty-eight years old or so, and wearing a green-coloured suit in a shiny material with a garish tie. And he’d replaced Gerald, Harold’s previous boss, who’d been demoted to the Records office, enabling Marcus’s fast-track promotion.

‘I said, no doubt, we’d be doing the usual.’

Sophie nodded her agreement at Harold’s assessment. ‘Yes, it’ll be the usual.’

‘Something to look forward to then, this holiday weekend, isn’t it?’

‘Oh yes,’ Sophie agreed without enthusiasm. ‘We’ll look forward to it, the weekend, won’t we?’

The next day, having avoided her colleagues’ regurgitated Thanksgiving conversations for seven and a half hours, Sophie hurried out of the elevator, glancing at the clock - 4.34pm - and pushed through the revolving door. She nodded at Harold, who raised a hand in response while she plodded round the car to the opened passenger’s door.

‘Good day?’ Harold asked as she settled into the car and stretched her seat belt over her body and clicked it in place.

‘Good enough,’ she said with a nod. ‘You?’

‘Good enough.’ Harold eased the car away from the kerb. ‘Let’s hope we don’t get caught up in all that holiday traffic again tonight.’

‘We can but hope,’ Sophie said, not feeling at all optimistic about the matter.

Their journey home the previous night had taken them half an hour longer than it should have done. Thankfully, the casserole had survived, and the delay hadn’t ruined their evening meal.

Tonight, she supposed, after they’d warmed through and eaten last night’s leftovers, she must write a shopping list for the holiday weekend. Then they’d have to stop for groceries on their way home tomorrow, which unfortunately would interfere with their usual Wednesday night routine. But with only one day until Thanksgiving, it couldn’t be helped. She was already cutting it fine. Possibly, by tomorrow evening, they’d not be able to buy a fresh turkey, a bag of sweet potatoes or even a pumpkin pie on their way home.

Possibly, they’d have to forgo the traditional festive menu.

Really though, what would it matter if they didn’t stick to tradition but ate, say, a chicken salad?

Sophie watched cars speeding past them, many of them clearly not obeying the speed restrictions.

The problem with that idea was that neither she nor Harold liked salad, even with the addition of chicken. Although the point wasn’t the salad itself, it was simply about whether it mattered. Because who would care if they didn’t observe the Thanksgiving traditions this year? Maybe Gemma had made a good point yesterday about them not technically being Americans. Because what would happen if they simply ignored the fuss and bother and continued with their regular end-of-week routine followed by their standard weekend routine?

They weren’t compelled to celebrate; it wasn’t compulsory.

Celebrate.

Hmm. What exactly were they celebrating, anyway?

‘Did I say,’ Harold said, interrupting her thoughts, ‘did I say already that my Post-it notes went walkabout over night?’

She stared at him in the car's darkness. ‘Did they now.’

‘They sure did.’

Sophie sighed. How many times would she need to suggest, to advise, that Harold store his belongings away each night before he’d listen? ‘Did you not think to lock them away in your drawer?’

‘No,’ Harold said. ‘I didn’t. I was so focused on protecting my stapler it didn’t occur to me to pop my Post-it’s in there too.’

‘You really should have.’

‘Oh, I will. Once they return, I’ll tuck them away each night with my stapler.’

‘It’s the only way,’ Sophie said, clutching the door handle as Harold indicated and turned left onto the freeway slip road.

Five minutes and they’d be home. In forty-five minutes, they’d have eaten their leftovers and washed and dried up the dishes. And then the evening would stretch out before them. The evening hours rolling on and on, minute by minute.

‘Hello, what’s that then?’ Harold said, once he’d guided the car into a left turn, pulling into the top of their road, Hope Springs Boulevard.

‘What’s what?’ Sophie asked, unable to identify anything out of the ordinary.

‘I see a light ahead,’ Harold said.

There were lots of lights ahead of them, from what she could see. Sidewalk lamps were on and several of the neighbours’ houses were glowing from the inside out. Then there was the first arrival of twinkling fairy lights, some wound around gates and others tree branches. No doubt by tomorrow, the entire street would be aglow.

‘A light?’ Sophie queried, thinking maybe she’d tackle the kitchen cupboards in the utility room tonight. That would occupy the evening well enough. After she’d written the blasted shopping list, of course.

‘Yes, look there’s a light on at next doors’.’

‘Can’t be next doors’,’ Sophie said.

‘It looks like