young voice with his. In her empty house she slow-danced with an old nightshirt
and imagined a ration-free life across the Atlantic, where her hair bounced behind
her and she had enough fabric to fl are her skirts; a life of sucking milkshakes, kissing
boys, drinking liquor that would taste different to her grandad’s sour whisky and
would leave her pleasantly light-headed and witty rather than sick. She would even
settle for London — gin and a cinema she could walk to, streetlamps that didn’t go off
at eleven o’clock. The road would take her there, to a place where the past was quieter
and the music louder, where it didn’t feel as if her whole life was constructed around
an event she didn’t even remember.
Somehow Angela missed the fi nal meeting, where they took a vote on whether
the Village Council would permit the County Council to approve the road. A pious
majority soundly rejected any intrusion and went home to make their tea.
When she learned of the catastrophe, Angela locked herself in her bedroom with
the record player and her mother’s medicinal sherry. She turned up the volume until
Elvis drowned out her mother’s protests, swigged straight from the bottle until the
world wavered. When all the banging and shouting became too tiresome, she slipped
out of the window and down the drainpipe, nimble in her best shoes.
It was twilight, late summer, and the woods were in full riot. She kicked through
cowslip and dandelion until she was
enveloped in a cloud of white. Midges
followed her in a haze around her neck
and shoulders. Nettles stung her shins.
Her skirts dragged with sap, the foamy
progeny of slugs and the silken threads of
caterpillars. She followed the road until the midges departed in the evening cool and
the moon rose soft and gentle in the sky.
At a familiar turn in the path she found an open space she’d never seen before, a
clearing ringed with birch and a stone in the centre. The moon shone a spotlight in
the clearing. A dark fi gure with a pompadour sat on the rock, tuning his guitar.
“Leave your shoes,” said Elvis.
Angela toed off her shoes. She felt the wet grass through her socks. Elvis picked out
a few notes on his guitar, glancing up at her through his lashes. Her heart hammered
in her chest. When she was a few feet away, her legs folded of their own accord and
she slumped cross-legged on the grass with the dew soaking into her skirt.
Elvis played her many songs in that clearing in the forest. Blue Moon, Are You
Lonesome Tonight?, Heartbreak Hotel, and other melodies she had never heard, and
couldn’t recall afterwards. Maybe they hadn’t made it overseas yet. He kept time by
tapping one foot in its blue suede shoe.
Love me tender, love me true, all my dreams fulfi l...
Elvis put down his guitar. The music carried on without him, sighing through the
trees. He reached out a hand to Angela and pulled her to her feet. One hand in hers,
the other just above scandal on her waist. Elvis steered her around the clearing in a
waltz, their bodies pressed tightly together. When Angela looked up she could see
the rounded bluff of Elvis’s chin. She felt transparent.
“Don’t cry, sweetheart,” murmured Elvis. He spun Angela in a lazy twirl. Her skirt
fl ew around her hips. He reeled her back in.
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