Sweetheart by Ben Blyth

Last night, I felt her heart give out. Four and half thousand miles away, I felt it. Hers or mine? Hard to tell in this thick-chill kept at bay with Old Fashioneds in the blood as the red lights flash and barriers tick down at Banff Trail station. Just missed another one. Yesterday, she called me her ‘childhood sweetheart’. Funny turn of phrase, I thought. At fifteen, we would weave amongst the headstones and lock ourselves in church towers to make out. More than one. More than once. A funny phrase: ‘childhood sweetheart’. Just last year, we locked ourselves in the boot room and made out on the washing machine. Just the once, this time. Mum and Dad are still asleep inside. They’ve seen it all before, of course. Twenty years is too short a time for thirty-something teenagers unwinding the lives we could have lived by tangling new ones on our tongues. She had travelled the length of Britain—Kent to Orkney—for one short day. A ‘childhood sweetheart’ come to soothe a heart shattered by his own ‘great love’. One short day after one long night in Scrabster. Scrabster. The end of the world. I had called her over the edge. From the ferry, the dawn hit the Old Man of Hoy from behind, silhouetting the sandstone in a thick brown that hides his vanity. Hoy. From the Old Norse meaning ‘high’. This far north the summer sun reaches right across the Atlantic. Toes in the sand as capillary action draws the salt-water up her legs and sticks her jeans to skin. For a beat or two we are together and watch the sun sink in the north. She tells me she has five years at best. She needs a new heart. She is ready for another child. We both finish a bottle—Jackson Triggs Summer Fruits (hers) and mine a blood-thick Malbec (corked)—before heading home, weaving among the headstones. A third of the way, her heart monitor flashes red and the barriers tick down at 200bpm. Catching breath in the long grass she reminds me of the time we were chased by cows—jumping barbed wire and hiding out in a neighbour’s garden. Her heart was so sweet back then we could not see the sickness. Funny turn of phrase. In the morning she will leave and I will sour the wine. Four and a half thousand miles away and red lights flash. No, not yet. She needs a new heart. This is too short a time. She is ready for another child. She came to the end of the world. She is not done yet. I had called her over the edge. Please let her be not done yet. Just missed another one.