EMILY GIGHT IN LOVE.

Emily Gight was in love; she knew she was and wanted everyone else to know as well, but her family and few friends seemed to think it a phase she was going through, or a misunderstanding on her part what being in love really meant.

It was no fun, as far as she was concerned, to be in love, and be in love alone; she wanted an audience; someone to congratulate her, listen to how she felt, what she wanted; how it would all turn out at the end, if there were to be an end, and she supposed that all things ended somewhere, but not until marriage, children, a nice house and maybe, if she lived long enough, grandchildren, one of each, at least.

But all her mother would say about it was, that she was too young, and didn't know the first thing about how to run a house, or to darn a sock, let alone cook for her husband, if she ever managed to find one, daft enough, to want to marry a girl who couldn't darn a sock or cook or dust a shelf.

Her father, when he managed to lower his newspaper, and give her counsel of any kind, merely said, that she saw things through rose-tinted glasses, and had to know what the real world was about, before she should venture out in the pursuit of marriage with anyone, let alone the boy she was proposing to them, every hour or so, in that moaning voice of hers.

Emily pouted; sighed, and stomped off to her bedroom, and slammed the door; she watched as dust dislodged itself from the curtains over the window; stood against the door; stared at the dull light of the Sunday afternoon as it sneaked through the partially parted curtains of an off-white colour.

She clenched and unclenched her hands and sighed again. Parents were like old clothes one has outgrown, she mused, walking away from the door and plonking herself on her unmade bed, they need to be cast off or given away to those in greater need. She put her hands into her lap and lodged them between her thighs.

She wondered what Eddie was doing at that moment; what his parents thought, if he had told them about being in  love, as she had her parents, for what good it had done, she might have said nothing, or have commented on the size of her father's nose. She imagined Eddie was out in his garden; or had gone fishing with his brother Dudley; or was sitting like she was in his room thinking about her, and wondering what she was doing, not knowing that she was sitting on her bed, wishing he was there beside her, and that it was his hands where hers were; that if he were careful maybe she'd let him do things, as her mother said she ought not, until she was married. However, she would, if only to show her mother, how grown up she could be, if she put her mind to it, and find out just how good this sex thingamajig was.

There was a knock at the door. She rose from the bed and opened the door. It was her mother with a letter. Her mother said it was from that Eddie who Emily talked so much about, brought around by his sister Bridgit, the one who has had that child out of wedlock, and who ought to have known better. Her mother went off, muttering about knowing the right sort of family and that they were not the right sort.

Emily closed the door and stared at the grubby envelope. She walked to the window for better light; slit open the envelope with her thin finger. The handwriting was poor; the spelling was like a child's. She scanned the page and gobbled up the contents greedily.

Eddie hoped she was well; he had enjoyed their evening at the dance; he had not wanted to leave her at the bus stop as he had, but had to be home in time for the football match on the television. He forgot to mention that his girlfriend, Lucy, who has been away for a few weeks with her aunt in Dorset, was home on Tuesday and that maybe, she would like to meet her and they planned to be getting married in June.

Emily screwed up the letter and threw it in the bin by her bed. She went to the window and stared out at the grey sky. Down below Mrs Wilson's son Gavin was in the garden with his father messing around with bulbs. She watched as he rose and bent over the ground; watched his broad shoulder; gazed at the back of his brown-haired head; gaped at his spread legs. She wondered if he liked dancing; whether he would enjoy a meal out with her; then maybe, if he was willing to go halves, go to the cinema and kiss as other couples did on the back rows, where it was dark and no one minded such things. Emily Gight was in love; she knew and wanted everyone else to know as well.