and Nowhere to Go - JP Relph
APPENDIX 2.1
List of clothing and accessories:
(please package small items carefully)
1 x apricot silk slip and French knickers, ivory lace neckline and straps
You flushed like a Maiden’s Blush apple when you unwrapped his gift. Chosen to complement your muscari-blue eyes, Leo secreted the glossy package in his luggage before you left Montmartre. The water-light silk flowed through your fingers, over the marquise opal, glided over your damp skin. The slip became a beautiful memory when family life raced up on you, plumped you like ripe fruit. It fits again, now.
1 x pistachio-green fit and flare dress, full skirt with embroidered violas around hem
You sewed fun, beautiful dresses - your girls loving their dinosaurs and blousy florals - but this one was just for you. Dainty blackberry and grape-purple flowers reminding you of the Cumbrian holiday cottage. A velvety scrunch of cheeky faces in a jam-jar, brightening breakfast. Leo burning pancakes shaped like diplodocus. You had to adjust it for the anniversary party, that was rough, but the skirt bloomed like a cabbage-rose when Dad spun you carefully in his arms.
1 pair x purple Converse All-Stars
You always coveted trainers - abandoning constrictive flats and heels in hallways, a vibrant wave of flattened backs and scuffed toes beckoning. You wore custom-made ones on your wedding day: white, bedazzled with lace and sequins, they squeaked the full length of the polished aisle, drew giggles from beneath hats. Leo found the purple ones in a Baltimore thrift store. You wore them on the day before the treatment, eating with your fingers in a harbour-side crab-shack as night fell on your fear.
1 x printed vintage Hermes scarf, ‘Seashells’ design
You worshiped Grandma Ruth’s wardrobes, lost for hours in the camphor-scented depths while your brothers barrelled through misty Scottish woodland. You learned Ruth’s skill with styling and colour and when she offered, you chose the sixties Hermes. It reminded you of Welsh seaside holidays; walking miles of tan beach, shell-hunting with Dad. You wore the scarf French-style on your first date with Leo; in a bow around your clutch at weddings; in increasingly creative ways when the last caramel-blond hairs gurgled down the plughole.
1 x gold chain with large swallow pendant
You loved that the girls chose the necklace. Sharing your eye for simple, beautiful things, they made bracelets from tiny acorns and seedheads. On Mother’s Day, the rose-gold swallow took flight from the fabulous cleavage the reconstruction created. When the time came, you hung the delicate gold chain on your bedroom mirror. In those dark, wintry days after you flew from the hollow of your family, Leo was tormented by the pendant spinning slowly in cruel shards of sunlight. Those precious girls insisted it join you again – it has nowhere else to go.
Please sign and print name to acknowledge the use of the above items:
________H Pollard_________ _________Helen Pollard_________
Relationship to deceased:
________Mother________
Signed as Received by: Date:
____________________________ Funeral Co-ordinator _______________
White Willows Funeral Home
Originally published by HISSAC (Highlands and Islands Short Story Association) as the winner of their 2022 flash fiction competition, October 2022
JP Relph is a writer from the Northwest of England, hindered by four cats. Tea helps. She mooches around in charity shops looking for haunted objects. JP writes about apocalypses a lot (despite not having the knees for one) and her collection of post-apoc short fiction was published in 2023. She recently got a zombie story onto the Wigleaf longlist, which may be the best thing ever.
