The Girl in the Red Coat

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I dream about Carmel often. In my dreams she’s always walking backwards.

The day she was born there was snow on the ground. A silvery light arced through the window as I held her in my arms.

As she grew up I nicknamed her ‘my little hedge child’. I couldn’t imagine her living anywhere but the countryside. Her thick curly hair stood out like a spray of breaking glass, or a dandelion head.

‘You look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards,’ I’d say to her.

And she would smile. Her eyes would close and flutter. The pale purple-veined lids like butterflies sealing each eye.

‘I can imagine that,’ she’d say finally, licking her lips.

I’m looking out of the window and I can almost see her — in those tights that made cherry liquorice of her legs — walking up the lane to school. The missing her feels like my throat has been removed.

Tonight I’ll dream of her again, I can feel it. I can feel her in the twilight, sitting up on the skeined branches of the beech tree and calling out. But at night in my sleep she’ll be walking backwards towards the house — or is it away? — so she never gets closer.

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