13/30

It's funny how people from the past just slip into your mind when you're not looking .. like flyers for pizza places you've never heard of clog your mailbox. I was crossing the road this morning when Rachel slipped into my mind. She used to spend a lot of time at the cafe I spent a lot of time at ... my excuse was I worked there. She was young maybe 14 but going on 30. Sadly not a very together 30. She had acres of sisters, only one older, who was pretty grounded, which was lucky as her mother was one of those serial marriage types who project managed the wind festival and then moved to Canada. She was really proud of how her daughters were her friends. But I used to think that sometimes daughters need mothers. Rachel went out with this guy. He had the tattoos, the scarifications, the piercings other mothers might have muttered under their breath about. He was also the guy who could have been the bassist for ... dreamed up the video for ... probably invented ... you get the picture.

They were in love. They took photos. If they had been around they would have made movies on their cellphone. So he gets them printed ... somehow ... and they meet at the cafe to have a look at Rachel artily naked standing up in the bath. Rachel artily drunk face down on the bed. You get the picture.

Something happens, and they leave, and the photos get left behind. Rachel and her boyfriend are not particularly popular with the staff, the managers, the other customers. Someone decides that it would be funny to lift up the glass on the table and insert views of Rachel as the centrepiece. So someone decides it would be funny to expose her naivete her desire to shock knowing there would be repulsion and or laughter, someone decided it would be funny for her mother to find out in public exactly what the boyfriend had invented.

The photos were rescued before any damage was done. They were handed back to Rachel on her next visit, with a fatherly warning from one of the bosses. She slipped into my mind today and I wonder what she would make of it now. I'd like to think it would be awkward memories for her. But who can say...