Born and raised in Southern California, Cheryl Bradshaw became interested in writing at a young age, but it was almost two decades before she put pen to paper. In 2009 Cheryl wrote her first novel, Black Diamond Death (Sloane Monroe Series, Book 1). Within six weeks of its release it was in the top 100 in two different mystery categories on the Kindle and has been a top ranked novel since April 2011 averaging 4.8 out of 5 stars from reviewers. Since then, Cheryl has published two more novels in the Sloane Monroe series. Her novels are all Amazon Kindle Best-Sellers in Mystery: Hard-Boiled and Thriller: Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue.
Find Cheryl online at cherylbradshaw.com
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Louise Voss
Dear John,
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It seems unbelievable that it’s thirty years this summer since you died. I often wonder who you would be now, had you lived – possibly an army colonel. Or maybe a used car salesman! Your ambition was to become an officer, and you would have made a good one, although I always had a sneaking suspicion that perhaps I wouldn’t have liked who you became. You always did have an arrogant streak – why wouldn’t you, with your jet-black hair and olive skin, and those gorgeous tawny eyes, the like of which I’ve never seen on anyone else? Your arrogance, and the power bestowed on you by a high army rank... hm... sounds like a recipe for Dickhead, in my humble opinion. I’d say ‘IMHO’ but you wouldn’t have a clue what that means, having died in 1983, before even fax machines were invented, let alone mobile phones and text speak and Facetime.
I’d love to do Facetime with you now. I bet you’d look exactly the same, only older, a few more lines and probably less hair – although I don’t imagine you as having gone bald. It would be a minor tragedy for you to have lost that thick, black wavy hair.
I still dream about you sometimes, but in my dream you’ve just been away somewhere, or you pretended you were dead and I’m furious, but either way you’re still young and healthy and passionate, never middle-aged and paunchy.
Would you still fancy me, I wonder? There was such a spark between us. I can still recall the feel of your hot, dry hand in mine. You were my first real love, and one of only two men in my life that I’ve ever felt truly passionate about. Heart-jumping, adrenalin-rushing, sleep-depriving infatuation. But it was a very stormy, on-off relationship, wasn’t it? You are one of very few boyfriends I’ve had that I used to fight with – big, dramatic gestures and storming out, only to make up later with sweet words and lingering kisses. You strangled me once, do you remember? It was for a bet, though, nothing sinister. Stupid sixteen-year olds messing around, laughing, and you pulled the scarf tighter and tighter around my neck ‘to see what would happen.’ I was sitting on a stool in my parents’ kitchen, the yellow vinyl-covered barstool with the small rip in the top that brown spongy stuffing leaked out of. You kept pulling. I was giggling and trying to act tough. I said I’d slap you round the face as hard as I could later – I can’t remember why, perhaps it was something to do with the strangulation. Suddenly everything went black and little dancing stars dazzled behind my eyelids. I slipped sideways off the stool and you caught me. I felt sick, and for a moment neither of us spoke. You held me. We’d stopped laughing. Normality resumed a few moments later, but I hadn’t forgotten my threat to slap you. As you were leaving, after a fond kiss goodbye, I whacked you across the face so hard that you were literally speechless, clutching your cheek and staring at me. I felt terrible. I have never slapped anyone since, in jest or anger!
But that was the only day we were violent with one another. My other memories are of many ‘firsts’ with you. The closest I’d yet come to full sex. The first time I ever ate spaghetti bolognaise, cooked by your Italian mother. It was a disaster, and you laughed at my attempts to get the meal from plate to mouth – I was mortified! The first – and last – fur coat I ever owned was given to me by you as a Christmas present, a huge old beaver lamb that you bought off your big sister. I loved it. I used to wear it to parties so I had something warm to sleep in when we all crashed out. Arguing, then making up. Splitting up, then getting back together again. We always used to say that we’d get married, then get divorced – and then re-marry. Jealousy strangled me even harder than you’d done, when you dated other girls in our ‘in between’ times.
In the summer of 1983, after several months apart, we had a brief reunion. You had just finished your ‘A’ levels and left school, being a year ahead of me. Our reunion only lasted a couple of weeks, because there was someone else on the scene for you, a girl called Ali in our circle of friends who had let it be known that she was absolutely crazy about you. So was I, but I played it too cool that time, and you couldn’t resist being adored. I remember you saying ‘I’ll always love you, but Ali’s just so mad about me... I just want to see where it will go,’ as if you had no choice... We agreed to cool it, just for a while, in the acknowledged but mistaken assumption that it was only a matter of time before we would soon get back together. We thought we had all the time in the world.
I never saw you again.
Two weeks later I was at home in the bath, listening to Radio One on my transistor radio, up to my neck in bubbles. It was about 8pm, a balmy summer’s night. There was a knock at the front door, and my mother answered it. Things were not great at home at that time, as my dad had been diagnosed with liver cancer just a couple of months earlier.
‘It’s for you,’ Mum called up the stairs. ‘It’s Rob.’
Rob, your best mate. He had never called round to visit me before, not on his own. I was puzzled, but not alarmed.
‘I’m in the bath!’ I yelled back. I heard a brief muttered conversation, then footsteps on the staircase.
‘I think you’d better get out,’ Rob said from the landing. I still wasn’t overly concerned, although I thought it was odd that he’d come upstairs. I hauled myself out of the bath and wrapped a towel around my body. Unlocking the bathroom door, I came face to face with Rob. He looked as unwell as I have ever seen another living person. His face was greyish-green, sunken, eyes red-rimmed and puffy.
‘What?’ I asked, alarmed now. ‘What’s happened?’
He reached out a shaky hand to me, looking thirty years older than someone who’d recently turned eighteen.
‘It’s John,’ he said, his lips wobbling. Tears jumped into both our eyes. ‘He’s dead. He died in a car-crash on his way to work this morning.’
You idiot. You arrogant, stupid, boy-racer in the Lancia you were so proud of. Six in the morning and you assumed there would be no cars on the road as you screeched along the country lanes to your summer job in the supermarket. The one car you came up behind, you decided it was a good idea to overtake - on a blind bend.
Obviously you hadn’t expected there to be a motorhome coming the other way. It was a head-on collision. In one split second you killed yourself, and orphaned two small children whose parents were driving the motorhome. Your beloved Lancia exploded in a ball of flames, and you had to be identified by your blackened wristwatch. Apparently the firemen were vomiting by the side of the road as they cut your charred body from the wreckage.
I gaped wordlessly at Rob when he told me, tears now pouring down my face. I remember the feel of the bubbles from my bath sliding in tandem down my legs. I had to sit down because I was worried I was going to faint, and my towel would drop. Even in the middle of the crisis, I was aware that I didn’t want Rob to see me naked. We hugged, awkwardly, desperately, and I clung on to my towel with my free hand.
I don’t remember him leaving. I just remember that nothing was ever really the same again. I remember your funeral, the raw pain of it, and that I didn’t know that everyone was going back to your house for the wake afterwards. So I missed out on getting drunk and crying with all our friends - but perhaps it was for the best. I heard that Ali was there, in bits, and that she got presented with a montage of photos of you and her (even though you’d only been dating her for two weeks, she was part of our circle of friends, and had loved you for a long time before you ever acknowledged her). If I’d been there, that would have snapped the final pieces of my heart into brittle fragments. I only have three photos of you, and not a single one of us together.
Dad died the following May, and it was a double blow that took me at least twenty years to fully get over. It’s entirely possible that you and I would never have drifted back together again, especially if you had joined the Army. I certainly can’t imagine myself as a military wife. Maybe you and Ali would have married instead? Who knows.
I still think you’re a prat. But I do miss you, even now after all these years. And I’m glad we had our funny little teenage on-off relationship for those couple of years, because you showed me how love can be – exciting, strong, hot-headed and passionate. I’m sure it would have subsided to something more manageable had we had the chance to get back together. That, or petered away into nothing. We’ll never know. But thank you, John, for being such a vivid and enduring part of my life.
With love, Louise xxx