Your prince died and left you alone, pregnant. Your unborn baby winked

out of existence. Now you wander, awake but dreaming. Cinders,

in tatters.
           This world is shapeless, blurred and unfocused. Voices come at

you, speak, direct, but of late you’ve had less visitors, less interest in

your state. Some friends simply don’t want to be infected by the sorrow.

One is even pregnant and fears a miscarriage by association. So, she

painfully smiles and pats your hand and now you haven’t seen her in

three weeks.
           You open the Ladybird book. It was yours as a child. Scribbled

name, and badly drawn fairy godmother on the first page. The rest, you

left unsoiled, having the sense to leave the pretty illustrations alone. Cinderella, silly stupid girl. Your thoughts hurt. Cinders…waiting for the idiot rich prince. Your Pete wasn’t rich. He wasn’t stupid. He just stepped off a kerb and got hit by a bus. Everyone speculates on the likelihood of suicide. You know he was just clumsy. Did he need to take the baby with him? Reaching out and yanking her soul away.
           You wrote on your laptop yesterday:
           ‘I will never know you. Yet you grew inside of me. I will never experience what it feels like to be exhausted. Never watch you sleep or feel you watching me. The smell of you. The vulnerability that would split me in two.’
           Now, you turn the pages of a child’s book as if it holds coded secrets. Your favourite Cinderella gown was the blue one. You marvel at the artist’s rendering of silk. You’d wanted to name the baby ‘Blue’ and Pete eyed you like you were mental.
           ‘Blue was always my favourite colour as a kid…What about Indigo?’
           He shook his head.
           ‘Screaming Alice?’
           He laughed and scolded you for being mean, ‘Poor old Alice.’
           Alice was homeless and could regularly be found in the Bigg Market in Newcastle, a bustling area of pubs and fast food places. Drunken revellers would laugh as she yelled and shrieked, nonsensical. They called her ‘mental’ and ‘looney.’ You both felt pity. You spoke to her once and she didn’t yell, but listened, intent, and then pressed her hand on top of yours, smiling. That was the end of it.
               You think she’s in her sixties. You tried to find out a little more once, but no one seemed to know her. Where does she go at night? Poor Screaming Alice. Though you never put it out there seriously, knowing what Pete would say, you love the name, Alice. Baby Alice.
           You wander into the back yard, filled with potted plants. Dead plants browned and decayed, hanging limp and abandoned. You pick at one, sinking guilty fingers into cold soil, hoping it will jolt something inside.
           ‘I should have taken better care of you.’
           You need a big grave, walls of heavy scented earth to swallow your body whole. A suitable punishment. You can’t quite imagine Cinderella with blood running down her legs. Her blue gown ruined. Defiled, unmarried and all the shame of the non-virgin bride. Everyone says it’s not your fault and crinkle their temples. You want to say, fuck off.
           ‘It’s too painful to imagine.’ Your Aunt muttered to one of your friends.
           Painful? You felt the visceral tear when Baby Alice left. Liquid running down white legs marked the departure. And you cried, felt deserted, even by her. Cinderella had her fairy godmother, an array of animals and an enormous vegetable to reorganise her life. And that frigging wand and a ball to go to, to pick out the perfect man. Cinderella was an idiot. Prince Charming a predator. The animals, pawns for human use and the fairy godmother, an interfering wretch.
           So, as the wrong liquid ran down your legs, the baby draining away, you abandoned all frilly thinking. Cinders died, falling to the bottom of the grand staircase, feet cut by glass, skull caved in. Just a bloody mess to be cleared up by the bin men.
#
It’s been months and your counsellor advises you to write a letter to Pete and the baby. You want to punch her. She’s well-meaning though, so you write while on the bus home.
           ‘You do not need the fractured person I am. The twittering, up-down seesaw mentality and broken history. Life has run me through on the sharpest blade and unlike some, I have withered and died, though I walk around in a zombie state and order coffee, tea and eat perfunctory morsels. I blink. I breathe. I sweat. I sigh. But I do not feel more than a passing discomfort, an obscured watery lens that follows me everywhere. And when I seek clarity you are gone. I am gone. When you both left me, the pain, hot and slicing was at least something real.’
           You consider leaving the page on the bus but crumple it and stuff it into your pocket and later, shred it into tiny pieces.
#
There’s a cat that keeps coming into your yard. You read his pet tag once, Maurice. He’s young and rescued from the local shelter. The couple next door keep apologising but you don’t mind. You give him cheese and he sits in your doorway, never coming in, yet never running away. Today, he looks beautiful bathed in sunlight, though the dead plants behind him are unflattering.
           ‘It’s a shamble, Maurice.’
           He looks at you. A black furry patch surrounding one eye on an otherwise white cat. Curious and patient, he waits for you to fetch his cheese. He eats and stays a while, licking his paws. He’s polite that way, and then turns and leaps for the wall, off home. He would be one of the coachmen, you think. And when transformed he’d be handsome and mysterious. Maybe even good enough for the role of Prince Charming?
           ‘What are the other animals? Was there a cat?’ You grab the Ladybird book. You thumb through it, thinking how you might need a rescue cat to curl up alongside and feed inappropriate amounts of cheese. To help your fractured self. To stop the thoughts of wanting to kill yourself. Poor Cinders all broken, reduced to ash.
#
The days move, and the mockery of time never stops. You have to return to a life of sorts. You’re not dead. But you open your laptop and ignore the ringing house phone. Work have stopped asking how you are. Your parents are dead anyway and your friends are too afraid to come over in case you act insane.
           You stare at your laptop screen.
           ‘Rhodopis…’ You mumble. ‘…a story recounted by the Greek geographer Strabo around 7 BC, about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt…’ You take a gulp of tea. ‘…is usually considered to be the earliest known variant of the Cinderella story.’
           It’s now dark outside and the backdoor is still open. Maurice has returned.
           ‘I didn’t see you.’ You get up and wander to the fridge, but his cry is a little different this time.
           ‘What’s wrong?’
           He yowls and limps forward and you notice his paw is bloodied. Glass slippers cut your feet. Cinders all in tatters, Cinders…all battered.
           ‘Shit.’
           Thinking he might run away, you move slowly, wanting to get the door closed behind him. You manage it and pick him up.
           ‘Poor little bugger.’ You sound like your mother used to. The rescuer of all thing’s animal and the occasional drunken human passed out on the garden wall. You tend the wound as best you can. You can see the cut on the pad of one paw. Not big, but enough to bleed heavily. He lets you clean it and even licks your hand.
           ‘Can you put plasters on a cat?’ He looks at you. You try it and it seems okay for now.
           Then you both settle as night creeps in further and you wait for the clunk of next door, so you can salute, report your good neighbourly duties, and reunite Maurice with his human cat-mad parents. Parents? The word feels like vomit rising.
           Maurice climbs onto your knee and stretches out his front legs. They hang there. One handed you open your laptop alongside and attempt to type.
           ‘I’m not coping well, they say. As if the guidebook didn’t come on order…from Amazon. I don’t even look okay…As if any of that shit mattered.’
           Your moment is broken when someone knocks. Maurice jumps down and you gather him up then pull open the door.
           ‘Oh thank god he’s here. We saw blood next to the cat flap.’
           She examines him and thanks you repeatedly. You nod, bobbing your head too much. She’ll think you’re mad and too keen on her cat.
           ‘Thank you so much. Sorry, I don’t even know your name?’
           ‘Maddie.’ You want to say Cinderella, but she might keep Maurice away from you, the nutter next door.
           ‘I’m Christine.’
           They leave you and you feel bereft without Maurice. The dark snuggles closer, determined to put out the light in you.  
           You stare at the wall. You’ve lost track of the practical. Cinderella had room and board, though she worked her arse off for it. You have responsibilities. At least you don’t have the wicked stepmother. Pete’s mother died years ago, and his Dad lives in Australia. You open your laptop and start searching for stuff on Cinderella again. Charles Perrault’s version of Cinderella is where most of the Disney stuff comes from. The glass slippers, golden carriage and fairy godmother. The Grimm’s version is just that, grim. Stepsisters cutting off their own toes and heels to squeeze into a golden shoe. Cinders appears to be hiding from the prince as if he were a stalker, in the pigeon coup and a pear tree. It’s underlying threat and potential violence disturbs you. There’s blood in this one. It makes you remember the feeling as the sticky substance stuck to the tops of your thighs. And you were alone in the house. You made the 999 call. Your voice rasping as waves of pain pulled you apart.
           Getting up to get a glass of water from the kitchen, you remember to lock the back door. You say aloud,
           ‘The dream of me is done.’
           And you root around in the kitchen drawers looking for any pills worth taking. Not to kill yourself but to sleep. There’s tramadol. Pete had a bad back before he died. You take two and manage to curl up on the sofa, dreaming of Maurice.
#
Eyes crusty, you wake to another day. You’ve been crying and as you pass the hallway mirror, notice swollen eyes and puffy cheeks. You don’t want to go out though you promised yourself between fits of sleep to go and find Screaming Alice and give her some money. After throwing water on your face and pulling on a coat over clothes, you don’t know how long you’ve been wearing, you walk into the city. You pass a second-hand furniture shop and think of that time you bought a wardrobe on eBay with a crappy door Pete couldn’t hang properly. It lays open as a gaping mouth. A fixed scream.
           Your mobile rings and you answer without thought. ‘Hello?’
           It’s a blur of conversation as your Aunt asks a series of things you don’t really understand. Then she says,
           ‘Did you pay the bills with the money I sent?’
           ‘Yes, of course.’ It’s a lie.
           After a series of excuses you manage to get her to hang up.
           You’ve already got some money out of the cash point and you just need to find Alice. You pop another tramadol and think the city looks quite pretty in the winter sunlight. Your frosted breath propels forward. It leads you. Cinders…is on a mission. 
           You make your way to the Bigg Market but get distracted, crossing the road and heading for Newcastle Cathedral. Inside, there are three people dotted around the pews. You’ve tried out most of the churches around the city and can pick their quietest periods. Though to you, most churches seem deserted with faith diminishing in a world of media bilge. The faithless shop outside and seek out a decent cup of coffee for salvation. Today you pretend to believe in god.
           Are you finished with this world, Cinders?
           You stare at the altar, demanding that god appear…or what about your fairy godmother? When Pete died you tried to come into any church and talk to him. You were never religious, nor he. It was worth a shot though.
           ‘Pete? My baby Alice, can you see me? Hear me?’
           You take more tramadol, though you can’t recall how many you’ve taken since you walked into Newcastle. There’s two women in the small gift shop watching and muttering. It’s your cue to leave. Outside, you head for the Bigg market, searching for Screaming Alice. She’s nowhere. You fear she might have died.
               It feels as if your body is ahead of you. You laugh and don’t know why. You look down at your feet and see crappy old baseball boots. Not a glass pair of slippers in sight. Crossing over the road back to the Cathedral, you take a road down to the Quayside. A distant clock strikes four. People mingle, making their way in and out of restaurants and bars. You drop your bag and pick it up. Someone asks if you’re okay? Ignoring them, you move away, uncaring as to how you look. Unlike when you were pregnant, reading all the right books, taking advice eagerly from any friend and stranger. Eating only what was good for the baby and slapping on makeup to make sure you had that pregnancy glow, though in reality you were so sickly and unable to hold it together for very long. But people said things like, …oh the first one is always tricky, if you are sick now, you can guarantee you’ll have it all great later after the birth. You were never sure what that meant? A great baby? Great health…or something else? Divine providence and great life guaranteed?
           It’s getting colder now as the light fades. You think of your mother, your Mam. She read that little Ladybird book to you over and over. She also loved the blue dress. You clench your fists, wanting to drop to your knees. Cry for your Mam…and Dad, of course. They’re long gone. What would they do? They’d barge in and enforce their will in a kind, smothering deluge way, and you’d break apart, sobbing and wailing. You’d shatter like glass slippers and even then, they would sweep you up and rebuild. But you don’t want to be rebuilt. You want to die but you’re too afraid to try. Cinders is a dead bitch walking. You blink, trying to see if the traffic lights have changed. But what about Maurice? Who will feed him cheese? You’ve looked up stuff on the internet about suicide. A lot of it ends in failure, not enough pills, rope snapping. You don’t want to end up vegetated and kept alive.
           ‘These help though.’ You say it aloud and put another pill in your mouth, pausing to look at a woman alongside waiting to cross. She grimaces but then looks sympathetic and as if she’s about to say something. You run out and cars screech to a halt. Someone’s yelling and you stumble but get across, thinking that might be Screaming Alice. But it’s you that’s screaming. You walk in the direction of the Millennium bridge.
           You had a history here. You met Pete at one of the quayside pubs. Pete was far better at navigating life than you. A good job and array of friends. You were so crap at everything and he gave you constant sympathy for your mishaps. Pete said that he loved your creativity, your artwork and mad-cap sculptures. Little Alice would have been messy like you, splattering paint beyond the paper but had the common sense of her Dad to fuse it into something focused and worthwhile. We would have had a cat and maybe a dog and walked on the beach when it was too cold, then complained and snuggled beside an over stacked open fire in the house.
           You should eat something. Cinderella was half starved and generous enough in the Disney film to feed her animal friends. You read once that if you don’t appease your ancestors, they will eat up your life. Angered, they will rein havoc. Was it a Mexican thing? Some South African tradition? You can’t recall it. But you have never paid any attention to your family line. Have the ancestors eaten baby Alice? Did they kill Pete? Cinders was simply good, and all went well in the end.
           Night has fallen. You watch the river. The Sage concert hall is lit up, warm and inviting. You don’t know how long you’ve been standing here. The Baltic, looming large and industrial and at one time, a place you wandered with Pete, mocking some of the silly art pieces and rendered silent at a good piece of work. You search your bag and find the Ladybird book. You stagger a little and blink, you can’t see properly. People spar wide as you mumble to yourself.
           You get onto the Millennium bridge, which is split into two paths, a pedestrian path on the right, raised up and a lower bike path on the left, though people walk on the bike path too. You take the left, wanting to look East and away from the city. You stop at the midway point and hold onto the rail. The river is coursing its way out to sea and it seems wrong to be here, next to water. And as your eyes focus on the book, the bridge lights illuminate the pages and the first image you see is Cinderella by the hearth. Flames blazing behind her and tears running down her pink plump cheeks. A watery grave didn’t seem to fit.
           You imagine falling into the cold depths of the Tyne, floating like a bloated dead fish…carried along past the old ship works, the tributary river Don passing Bede’s old church…further until the gaping piers of North and South Shields beckon. Sinking finally. Numb. Sea-salt veins. You always were a terrible swimmer. Didn’t even manage to do your ten metres at school. You look at your feet again. No fine pretty slippers of a princess. No carriage. No animals that transfigure into humans. No fairy godmother. No wand. Just a crappy old phone and a bag. You’ll miss Maurice. You might have liked Christine too.
           You breathe. All muddled and stretched out in your head. Panicky. Voices unclear in your mind. Pete? Baby Alice? Screaming Alice?
           ‘Are you okay?’
           It’s a man. He’s got a rucksack and a camera. Not one of those little digital things but something with lenses. He’s here for the bridges and the reflective river. Does he want to capture your last moment?
           You bite your lip and begin to cry. It’s not a happy ever after for you, Cinders, pet. The voice inside your head sounds like your mam. Help me Mam. Help me Dad.
#
You look at the mint green blanket draped over your crisp cotton sheet. A good hospital bed corner, your Dad would have said. You’ve been okay for over two weeks. The overdose had been a large one. Your Aunt came down from Scotland and is staying in your house. You wonder if she’s met Maurice? You told her to give him some cheese if she did, but you were all bleary eyed and she looked at you with pity and fear. The Consultant says your kidneys are okay even though they feared you’d damaged them. You told the lady in the bed next to you about baby Alice and Pete. She says you are such a strong woman. She’s nice, but wrong. They have a counselling group for people like you and her it seems, her husband died of cancer last year. You ask your Aunt if she will give the baby clothes to a charity. You will deal with Pete’s things when you come out.
           The life insurance has come through and it’s like you’ve won the worst lottery. But you think you’ll have to make a concerted effort to find Screaming Alice and help her somehow. Alice, you correct. Hating that cruel name now. 
           Of course, you’ll need to take in a rescued cat, though one that gets on with Maurice. Christine comes to visit you and you’re so embarrassed. She tells you about her life and how she took an overdose once. She smiles a lot and fetches coffee and doesn’t seem to think you’re weird or insane, just heartbroken. When she leaves you, you drink the remaining coffee and reach for a book on the bedside cabinet. Flickering through the pages, you turn to the blue shimmering gown. You always did like the blue one.