In the shadowed folds of a dream, Roxanne floated through the misty streets of London, having divorced her husband with a muffled sigh that echoed across the rooftops. They sold their old flata place that buzzed with forgotten argumentsand from the curled-up notes she received, Roxanne bought a single-bedroom flat somewhere peculiar, in the outskirts where pigeons muttered secrets and the rain never seemed to stop.
After the divorce, Roxanne’s new nest was a squeezed one-bedroom, its windows looking out onto the tangle of an unfriendly district. The nursery and the GP surgery drifted far away, bus routes twisted into confusion, and the nearest supermarket was just a rumour among the neighbours. Her mother, Susan, remained distant, never really backing her daughter when Roxanne decided, at a mere nineteen, to marry.
“Think it through, darling,” Susans words rippled strangely in the foggy dream. “I don’t much care for your fiancé. He seems so altogether juvenile.”
“But I love him, Mum. Hes just playfulthatll pass. Were still young, after all,” Roxanne insisted, defending shadows.
“Youve every right to follow your own star,” Susan shrugged, her hands fading in the air like old smoke.
Her mother warned against marriage, but Roxanne pressed on through the haze. First, she and her husbandMichaelrented a small, groaning flat. When Roxanne found herself expecting, Susan decided to sell her own flat, sliding a share of the pounds into her daughter’s palm. The rest was patched together by Michaels parents. It all seemed to happen inside a house made of wallpaper memories.
Michael worked endlessly, then vanished into the internet during twilight, his attention drifting through electric meadows. Within two years, another child arrived, and Susan became the unlikely babysitter to a pair of grandchildren she did not dream up herself. Roxanne would often grumble to her, the echoes of pound coins ringing through the silence.
As their youngest turned onea small, moon-faced boyRoxanne and her drifting family hit a chasm shaped like a purse with holes. Arguments fluttered in the flat and accusations stuck to the wallsit was discovered Michael gambled their money away on virtual horses and cryptic slots. He promised her, Hold on a bit longer, Roxannewell be bathing in money soon, but his voice melted like candle wax.
Once the ink from the divorce dried, Roxanne used her share of pounds to purchase a little flat, swallowed by the grey of a rough district. The nursery and doctor’s office were ghostly distant, bus timetables slipped through her fingers, and the supermarkets stayed hidden.
So desperate, Roxanne pleaded with her mother.
“Mum, lets swap flats. You can take mine, and Ill move into yours with the children.”
Susan shook her head and conjured a suggestion: go to work, take out a loan.
“But you know Charlie wont start nursery for another year. How do we manage until then?
Susan only shrugged, her gesture vanishing into the dreams mist. Roxanne gathered the children, locked the door behind her, and, for an entire year, cut the cord of contact, wandering the surreal corridors of her dream, clutching her children like faded photographs.
