What You Wish For by Mark Edwards

to look forward to having a baby brother – I was convinced it would be a boy – to look after. The whole atmosphere in the house changed. My dad seemed to mellow; he fussed around my mum and started turning the spare room into a nursery. They asked me what names I liked.’ She smiled. ‘I really thought things had changed. I was wrong. I was fucking wrong.’
    She took a hungry drag on her cigarette. ‘Because I was twelve, they thought I was old enough to be left alone without a babysitter and one night my dad took my mum out to the pub. I sat and watched TV. I remember it really well because Close Encounters of the Third Kind was on. It was the first time I’d seen it. It was almost finished when the door slammed and they came in. Almost as soon as they got through the door my dad pushed my mum against the wall and started shouting at her. He kept shouting, “Is it his? You slut!” All this shit. He said she’d looked at some man in the pub like she fancied him. He yelled all these accusations at her. I tried to run over to protect her and he punched me in the face. My mum screamed and he punched her, right in the stomach. I can see it now. I tried to jump on him and he kicked me away. Then he kicked her . He was shouting. Whore, slut, bitch . . .’
    ‘She lost the baby?’
    Marie nodded. ‘The police came and tried to get a statement out of her but she refused. I was too young to do anything. When she was lying in the hospital bed I begged her. “Please don’t make us go back there. Let’s leave. Please.” But we went back anyway. And he was OK for a while. I guess he felt sorry. Then it went back to exactly how it was before. I just completely withdrew. This was when I first got interested in UFOs. When I came to believe. I kept praying that aliens would come and take my father away. Dump him somewhere with no atmosphere.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘So when he did disappear . . .’
    She started to cry, the pain of telling making her convulse, pushing sharp tears out of her, like Sally just a few hours before. She looked up at me through her damp fringe. She said, ‘Hold me.’
    A little later she said, ‘I would never take a miscarriage, other people’s suffering lightly. Do you understand that?’
    I nodded. I still thought she was wrong to encourage Sally in her belief that her baby had been taken by aliens. But at that moment I was more focused on Marie’s pain. I resolved to talk to her about Sally another day. But I never did.

    Life went on. The summer got hotter. My love for Marie got stronger.
    Some nights we would go up onto the hill and lie on the grass, looking at the sky, Marie teaching me the names of the constellations. During the days, she accompanied Andrew on trips to visit the sites of corn circles. They visited fellow believers. I tried to distance myself from her professional life, as if it was a job I didn’t have much interest in. She didn’t bring any more ‘abductees’ home, so there were no more arguments about that. In fact, I didn’t really have much idea about what she got up to during the day.
    Marie urged me to do something about the dead end my career was stuck in. ‘You need to pursue your dreams,’ she said. ‘Contact the big news sites and magazines, send them your work. Hustle. You’re good enough. Too good for the Herald .’
    Spurred on by her encouragement, I set up a new online portfolio of my work and began to send links to picture editors. The fire of my ambition was rekindled.
    The only blight in my relationship with Marie, apart from the submerged disagreement about her work, was that she wouldn’t let me take her photo. I tried to cajole her, asked repeatedly why. She refused to give an answer. I pointed a loaded camera at her and she put her hand up like a celebrity being pursued by the paparazzi.
    ‘If you ever take a picture of me, I’ll leave you.’
    I smiled like she must be joking.
    ‘I’m being serious, Richard. I promise you.