Oh Dear Silvia Read Online Free Page A

illae, crescit amores”, “As these letters grow, so will our love” into the bark of that immense matriarch.
    ‘So that’s where I was heading, Silv. I found her, after a bit ofpalavering about and tripping up. A beautiful, monumental big fat beech with our memento tattooed on her. I felt guilty when we did it, like it was tree vandalism or something, but you said it was a badge of honour for the tree, that she would be proud to display our epigram along with all the other human markings made long before us. By schoolchildren in breeches and petticoats? By lovers in tight collars and corsets? I had to fumble about in my pocket for my keys so that I could use the pathetic little key-ring torch to search the giant trunk to find it.
    ‘It was, of course, further up than we had carved it, twenty-seven years further up in fact, and further in, which isn’t so much on a colossal mama like that. I found it though. Still there, holding fast. Unlike us. I sat back down on the ground beneath it. Exactly where we had made love, and I unwrapped the fish and chips. They were a bit cold by then, but I gorged on them anyway. Delicious. “Have a lovely night.” I looked at the noose I had flung on the floor nearby. It definitely wasn’t going to be lovely.
    ‘The noose was well made even if I do say so myself. I had been practising making it with various kinds of rope, different thicknesses. This one should be just right, I thought. I bought the rope in a chandlers, it was nylon and strong and manoeuvrable where it needed to be. The slip knot was well executed. That was the most crucial part. It must work first time, and it must take my weight. As I fall, I need the knot to jolt my neck forward and snap it cleanly. No fuss.
    ‘Jump. Snap. Done.
    ‘I tied and retied it sitting next to Ma on the sofa whilst she was watching
Midsomer Murders
. She didn’t notice.
    ‘I finished my fish and chips, and tidied away my mess. I didn’t want to leave a mess. More mess than there already was. Which was a massive bloody godawful mess. Holding the torch in my mouth, I flung the length of the rope over a strong lower branch and secured it to the trunk of the tree. Nothing would loosen it, it would remain firm, I was sure of that. I positioned the noose just above a massive old log that I could use to step off. It was all ready. I realized that these could be my very last moments in this world.
    ‘What does one do? Or say?
    ‘I wanted to be quick or I knew my courage might fail me, so I rummaged around in my brain for anything of significance to think or feel. In the end, I mumbled something pathetic out loud like “Dear God, if you exist, and I’ll know pretty soon, help my children to forgive me for this, and please be the strength in them that I can’t find in me. Amen. Oh, and sorry for being such a prime tosser …” I climbed up on to the log and tried to balance. It was hard because there was slimy lichen all over it, and because I was brimming with tears. Stinging my eyes, then streaming. Thousands of tears. Mostly self-pity I think, and self-loathing. But Silv, I didn’t know how to pity and loathe myself ’til you taught me. What an accomplished coach you are. So well acquainted was I with my shortcomings, thatI could end up on a slippy log prepared to donate my life to them. Feeling like absolute shit, Silv. Absolute shit.
    ‘In that moment, all I wanted was for you to find out that’s where I hung myself. On “our” tree. Because of you, you, you. So, I reached for the noose and pulled it towards my head. Just as it was slipping over my ears, I lost my footing on the wretched moss and tumbled unceremoniously, arse over tit, on to the forest floor. My back scraped down the bark of the big old dead log and I was scratched to hell. Then the crying turned into sobbing. Completely involuntary. I just felt like such a useless dickhead, I couldn’t even off myself well. Couldn’t do decent dying, I felt utterly