5 Books For Eveline

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Returning back to the large house, empty save for spectral presences and unheard conversations, Purdy collapsed onto her sofa, rubbing her forehead. The silence felt both comforting and cloying, but it felt orders of magnitude better than the constant noise of the outside world. Still, she didn't feel like sitting in silence. She wanted some noise. Something to take her mind away from that book and the treasure hunt it promised.

An old record player sat in the corner. One of the few things she had not thrown away after returning from months in the hospital. A collection of vinyl records sat upon a shelf, to the side, their thin edges looking like a long, closed up fan, ready to waft away suffocating heat, or fetid smells.

She rose, limping across to the shelf and began to flick through the albums. She didn't know why she had held on to all of these, she hadn't even counted them and the shelving appeared to hold hundreds of the black, grooved plates. Something had told her to hold onto the records, where everything else had become fodder for land fill, or charity shop resales.

A vague knowledge of the artists flittered in the back of her mind. The covers showing art and photographs, of esoteric landscapes, or people with a wide range of expressions, from fake grins to sullen stares, looking out from the fantasy of the slip cases, out into a real world that had almost forgotten them. Purdy had forgotten, of course, as she had forgotten most things.

As her fingers picked through the albums, tilting them in order to see the next and then the next and the next, she caught sight of one album that felt almost familiar. A picture of a tall, metal creature, towering above a listing ship, a line of flame burning the ship among turbulent waves. Without thinking, she pulled it from the shelf, flipping it over to read the reverse.

Reaching down, behind the record player, she blew the dust away from the plug socket, wafting her hand as the dust rose into the air, then switched it on. A dull whine escaped from the speakers as she removed the first record from the sleeve, careful not to touch the surface. Turning it, she found the first side, placed it on the spindle and moved the arm across to the beginning.

The music began to emerge from the speakers, not too loud, not too quiet, and Purdy returned to the sofa as the first song played. Once again, she rubbed her forehead and then her eyes. The music felt pleasant, reassuring. As though someone had collected her into their arms and held her tight as they listened together.

Lifting her legs up, she hooked them to the side, leaning her elbow upon the soft cushions and her head upon her hand, allowing the music to carry her away, to drift into a story that she couldn't remember ever hearing before. Listening to that music felt like listening to the past, but not her past. A past that belonged to someone else, someone better. Someone free and happy. Not, by any stretch of the imagination, her.

Catching herself, she almost fell asleep. She never slept during the day. Not through choice, but because she could never manage to relax enough. Days felt tense and full of thoughts. At night, she could close her eyes and the world would fall away. Night was her favourite time. A time where only dreams expected anything of her.

Shaking her head, she reached across for her handbag, dropped at the other end of the sofa. The book still sat within the bag and, as she opened the handbag, she saw the book sitting atop all the other things within. As though it had crawled its way to the top in order for Purdy to see it first. To only see it.

Below the book, lifted out and placed to the side, she saw the little notebook that she had once used every day. Feathered and ragged, now, she had not used that notebook in a long while. Within it, Purdy had collected her thoughts and details of her encounters. A therapy to enable her to better return to everyday life, though it had never helped. She had written names within that book, along with her interactions with those people.