Letters to Holly; an introduction.

     Lynn looked at me in total horror. “What the hell do you think you are doing sending your ten year old daughter stuff like this?” She slewed the laptop across so that I could see that to which she was referring.

     I craned across and strained old eyes until they focused on the object of her outburst.

      “It’s ok”, I said apologetically, (Lynn may be years younger than me, but I still feel that I’m being bollocked by my mum) “Holly didn’t get that one. Actually she got hardly any of them. Anyway what are you doing in there? They’re nothing to do with the book”

      “Having a shufti,” she said, without any hint of apology. “and perhaps they should be.”

      “Should be what?”

      “Part of the book.” She noted my vague expression (I’m good at that one) and pointed an impatient finger at the laptop. “These letters, they’re part of the story too aren’t they?” she paused for a moment as she tilted the slim white case back and studied the screen. “If this is not a letter to your daughter then why is it in the ‘Letters to Holly’ folder?”

     It was a fair enough question, but it felt strange and uncomfortable putting the answer into words. Still it had to be done, this, after all was Lynn, who along with her husband Stuart headed up Marlin Training out of Birmingham. They had proved their friendship, especially in the heat of my battle with cancer (when a couple of my older, more established friends had gone unaccountably missing in combat) and were currently offering invaluable moral and technical support to my endeavour to write. Given that they had also witnessed my small but impressive collection of failures and fuck-ups as they had unfolded over the previous ten years I figured nothing I could say now was going to faze her in the slightest, and so I told her.

      She, of course, knew that my daughter and I had been estranged since the time she was two. She knew also that as a result of the illness and surgery that had caused me to re-evaluate my life I had made a few gentle but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to see Holly. This was not an altogether unreasonable rejection on her mother’s part. My past record was not exactly Mr dependable in the Holly department and she had no reason to assume that I had changed.

      But whilst this relationship was in limbo the strangest thing occurred. I had been attempting to deal with a chapter on my moment of crisis, a strange moment where your body actually wakes you up just to let you know that you’re in fact dead. I couldn’t get to the meat of it. It either came out mawkish, or too dramatic (passing on is in fact very ordinary) or without the fear factor I’d experienced, whatever I just couldn’t do it. As I sat there wondering as to what in god’s name had made me think that I could write a book in the first place, I suddenly found myself thinking of Holly and what I would have told her about the episode if only I had been given the chance.     

       And suddenly I was writing her a letter, and because I wasn’t writing ‘the book’ it all came pouring out. After that, every time I had a problem I couldn’t resolve I simply wrote a letter to Holly. That did the trick, it seemed that removing myself that one step away from the project allowed me the clarity of thought that tended to elude me at moments of stressful recall.

      Of course the strangest and best of twists had come just this last autumn when, out of the blue, my ex partner had made contact. Negotiations were gentle and painfully slow but at last my ‘ex’ decided that Holly and I should get to know one another. To my delighted astonishment she suggested that I should start by writing Holly a letter and furnished an address to that end. Unbelievable! After writing to a ghost for two and a half years I was about to get the chance to do it for real.

      I sat watching an expressionless Lynn  as she wandered through the rest of the folder. She hadn’t said a word since I’d finished talking, and so I just sat nursing my cold coffee cup, waiting for her reaction.

      “We should blog these,” She murmured at last, “you’d need to trim them a little, but I think you should do it.”

     It was my turn to wear a blank expression. I lifted a hesitant hand, (I’m always hesitant when I’m about to make a prat of myself) “What the fuck is a blog?”

     The Holly and me thing and the book are both works in progress because, at present, the stories are still unfolding. Me? I’m holding out for a happy ending.

                                                                                                 

Chris Wilson White