Boon's Bookcase

There is Always More To Say

by

Lynda Spiro

Today I would like to welcome Lynda Young Spiro to the blog. I have an extract for you, but hope to have a review for you soon.

Extract

“We are made wise, not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.”  – George Bernard Shaw 

MONDAY 1 SEPTEMBER, 2014 

Sensitive, gentle and thoughtful soul. I want and need to know more about you and I want to tell you more about myself. I haven’t wanted to tell you anything that might put a blot on the excitement of your first visit in twenty years. I haven’t told you what happened after your last visit. But I will. When we meet. I haven’t told you where I had been in 2004. I want to tell you all these things now when we meet. Tomorrow. I also want to tell you my reasons for not having told you before now. But I’m not so sure I know what these reasons are any longer. I have so much to tell you. So much has happened in my life. And there is so much I want to hear about you and your life. I have so much more I want to share with you, I think to myself. 

My feelings for you have grown more intense over the last few weeks, as you have begun to hover on the edge of my day-to-day life. You have become more real to me. 

The advancement and development of communication has benefited us no end. Or has it? You have entered my life. But you are from my other life. The elation I feel when I hear from you. The disappointment when I don’t. You are my drug. Not my raison d'être. Now is better than never and maybe.

I should have said something before. I don’t know why but suddenly I am overwhelmed with the idea that now is the time to tell you what I should have told you some twenty years ago. I am your secret. Perhaps it was time to tell you one of mine. Now was as good a time as ever. To tell you. To tell you the truth. To tell you what happened. To apologise. I don’t know. I must be careful. What the outcome would be I didn’t know. But I had to tell you. Well, the truth is I wanted you to know. Because of your imminent arrival. The thought of looking you in the eye and not telling you after all these years was an impossibility. You would see it on my face before the words came out. I knew that you would still have the ability to read me like a book. 

You read about people like us all the time. They all have their own reasons for why they can’t be together. What were our reasons then? I can remember. What are our reasons now? I can’t answer that one. Always so many questions. And so few answers. We are surely not isolated in our situation? 

Sleep doesn’t come easily to me and there have been a few long dark nights over the last couple of months, but then there is plenty of time to sleep when I get to the other side. I can’t believe that tomorrow we will meet. After twenty years. The last time I saw you was when I dropped you off at East Finchley tube station in 1994. After you had come to stay for one night. You had taken a chance by coming to London on

your way back from a convention in France. The last time I had seen you we had shared a lingering kiss. In my car. On the forecourt of my local tube station. I had been nervous that we would be seen. That our kiss would be spotted. I was not nervous that we would be seen at Shepherd’s Bush tube station. Where we are meeting tomorrow. I cannot wait. I am beyond excited. 

“Though sleep is called our best friend, it is a friend who often keeps us waiting!”  – Jules Verne