The Parcel
a collaborative novella
authored by the students of the
‘Creative Writing – Intermediate’ course,
winter 2015
edited by co-contributor Morgen Bailey
The Parcel Project
‘The Parcel’ is a collaborative novella written by the attendees of the 2015 winter-term ‘Creative Writing – Intermediate’ ten-week class hosted by co-contributor Morgen Bailey.
Morgen then collated the stories and made minor edits to turn each chapter into a cohesive novella before designing the cover and upload the finished package between weeks nine and ten of the course so all the contributing attendees left the course as published authors!
We all hope that you enjoy reading this novella and that it feels seamless to you.
We would love to know what you think and invite you to email Morgen at
[email protected] who will pass your comments on to the relevant authors. We would also be very grateful if you left a review as an encouragement for others to read the novella.
You can learn more about this project on www.morgenbailey.wordpress.com/the-parcel-project where you can leave comments and read those left by other visitors.
Thank you again for downloading this eBook – your support is much appreciated.
Contents written by…
The Parcel Project
Chapter 1 – Lois Morgen Bailey
Chapter 2 – Alexander Lily-Ann Harvey
Chapter 3 – Robert Jill Morris
Chapter 4 – Kathy Doreen Setchell
Chapter 5 – Ben Neill Maycock
Chapter 6 – Yvonne Morgen Bailey
Chapter 7 – Alice Kathie Green
Chapter 8 – Charlie Morgen Bailey
Chapter 9 – Laurie Liz Rich
Chapter 10 – Anna Paula Sussex
Chapter 11 – Kyle Mandy Sampson
Chapter 12 – Terry Alex Green
Chapter 13 – Katie Karen Pomerantz
Chapter 14 – Jay Ann Rumsby
Chapter 15 – Zoë Morgen Bailey
Chapter 16 – Daniel Lauren Lewis
Chapter 17 – Fran Dennis Carey
Chapter 18 – Henri Morgen Bailey
Note from the Editor
Chapter 1 – Lois
Lois smiled as she penned a kiss under her name on the ‘Happy 70th’ birthday card. She sighed at the small gift nestled under layers of pale green crepe paper with the box. She wished she could afford to send a more expensive present but her friend Normandie Belfont would understand. It had never been about money; their friendship having spanned more years than either of them would care to remember.
Gasping as the clock clicked to eight-thirty, she knew she had to hurry to get the five-past-nine bus. She tucked the card inside the box, wiggled the parcel to the centre of the brown wrapping paper and pulled up each side in turn, folding the corners against the box so they formed perfectly square edges. The final side taped, she turned the parcel so it faced her and wrote the letters in black marker pen, being careful that her arthritic right hand stayed steady for long enough to keep the writing legible.
Mme Normandie Belfont
21 Rue de Safont
35500 Béziers
S. France
Shaking out a folded Tesco carrier bag, she placed the parcel into it. She knew the parcel was far too big for the contents and imagined Normandie expecting there to be something of an almost equal size but it was all Lois had. The only alternatives were jiffy bags and although one of those would have been adequate, it had a long way to travel and would have stood more chance of getting there in one piece if it was surrounded by cardboard rather than air. She imagined her late husband Ernie tutting and telling her to use the bag but she liked parcels. Opening a jiffy bag for a present didn’t have the same feeling; there was no wrapping to pull away, even if in this case it was brown paper rather than glitzy patterns or ‘Happy birthday’ emblazoned on it which she knew Normandie would have appreciated. Lois regretted not getting some of that paper and then putting the brown around it but it was too late. She only had a week before Normandie’s seventieth as it was and to get so many hundreds of miles – she wasn’t sure how many, she’d never worked it out and didn’t know how to switch on Ernie’s computer let alone look something up. He’d spurned her interest in the machine and had spent so much time on it buying and selling – and only making enough profit to top up their pensions – that she wouldn’t have had been able to get on it anyway.
She added a couple of library books to the carrier bag then zipped up her handbag, its purse containing little more than she suspected the parcel would cost. She had an old post office price list Ernie used to refer to when he’d send off eBay sales; items they’d both agreed had gathered enough dust over the years… the dust of course removed before being packed, Lois contribution to the process. The price list was more than year out of date but even if the prices had doubled, Lois would have enough money. Much more than that and she would just buy less at the supermarket next door but one to the post office.
Out of breath from the quicker-than-usual walk to the bus stop at the end of her road, Lois smiled at the driver as she showed her bus pass. She and ‘Frankie’ had met often enough for the pass to not be needed but Lois knew it was procedure and Frankie always looked at it and nodded, a brief reddening to his face before Lois took a seat next to the area allocated for buggies. Today there weren’t any but she’d normally revel in the chatter between new mums, middle-aged women taking their grandchildren to the town to spoil them rotten, or a change of bus to go the zoo on the outskirts of town. Lois and Ernie hadn’t been able to have children so she’d known for years that trips to the zoo would be something they’d only do as a couple, or for the past couple of years something she’d have to do on her own. She’d never been since Ernie had succumbed to his asbestos-ridden lungs but thought she might… on a brighter day than today.
Lois stared at a red brick and aqua wooden-cladded building as the bus trundled past a small industrial estate. The cladding sat between rotting-framed windows and a single garage sized concertina door which from one angle read ‘E P C E R O N U E’ but when the bus was level revealed the other letters to form ‘KEEP CLEAR DOOR IN USE’. She wondered who worked there and if any of them lived on their own, as she did.
She wobbled gently in her seat as the bus stopped a few yards away from the cladded building. Lois craned her neck to look back at the garage door which now read ‘K E L A D O R I S’. She smiled at the word ‘Doris’ as it reminded her of a former colleague, then turned to face the front of the bus and wobbled again as it continued its journey. Without looking to her side, she tapped the Tesco bag before bringing her hands together on her lap and closing her eyes, recollecting how she and her friend met. Lois’ parents had been approached by one of their neighbours. Normandie’s parents were friends of theirs and had been looking for someone nearer to London than Kent where she had previously visited. The neighbour had explained that while they had the space, their daughter had left for university and they’d not thought it fair to take Normandie in with no one of a similar age to keep her company. Lois’ parents had been hesitant at first as Lois had exams coming up but she’d been so keen that they’d agreed Normandie could come over after the exams had finished.
The girls had hit it off from the moment they’d met, the local railway station being the backdrop to their rendezvous, something that had reminded Lois of Brief Encounter, a film she and her parents had watched numerous times, except that Lois and Normandie weren’t lovers destined to be kept apart by circumstances but schoolgirls whose language differences meant they took time getting
to know each other before the bond settled in.
The bus juddered again, waking Lois from her remembrances. Glancing through the window, she instantly recognised the department store she had worked in many years before. Still back in the 1960s, she leapt from her seat, forgetting about the Tesco bag and the parcel that lay within it, thanked the driver, whose name had also been forgotten in that instant, and almost slipped as she rushed out the bus’ double doors towards the 1920s ones welcoming its patrons ‘Underwood’s Emporium’.
“Wait!” Lois shouted as the bus’ doors closed. “Please!” She watched as Frankie slammed on the bus brakes as the bus had already started moving.
He pushed the button for the doors and they reluctantly peeled apart. “Alright, love?” he asked.
“Sorry,” Lois panted. “I forgot something.” As Frankie nodded, Lois apologised to him and the other passengers as she went back for the parcel.
Grabbing the bag by its handles, she tugged the parcel off the seat and made as quick an exit to the bus and she had entered. Face flushing, she mouthed a ‘thank you’ to Frankie, who nodded again, and stepped off the bus. Without turning round, she heard the doors close, the bus sigh as if less patient than Frankie, and pull away from the kerb. She looked at Underwood’s but decided to go in later. She’d see how much the parcel would cost before spending any spare money she might have left.
But first, she wanted to call in to the library. The bag would be lighter without the books she had to return before she incurred a fee, and she’d have a rest before climbing up the hill to the post office.
Lois knew she could borrow more than two books on her library card but that was enough to carry at one time and she didn’t real as quickly as she used it, preferring large print when there were new ones available. She’d thought about audiobooks but the only CD player they had was on the computer. A television advert for an electronic book machine had told her it could enlarge the print so that could be a start. She knew a neighbour could probably show her and thought maybe it was time to learn.
Walked into the library, she expected the detector to bleep but remembered the library volunteer swiping the books over a black pad when Lois had checked them out and assumed that did something to stop the alarm. Lois knew that some technology would always been unknown to her but she only needed to be shown something once and she’d get the hang of it.
As she headed for the counter, the same volunteer met her. ‘Tony’ according to his badge. He’d always been busy when Lois visited the library and wondered why he couldn’t be paid for the work he did but thought that at least the library was open and they should all be grateful.
She took her books out of the plastic bag and put them on the counter.
“Hello,” Tom said, then looked at Lois’ choice: Alan Titchmarsh’s novel ‘Rosie’ and his non-fiction work ‘England, Our England’. “A Titchmarsh fan, I see.”
Lois flushed. “He is nice. My Ernie didn’t really have time for him but he was very gentle. Alan, not Ernie.” Why was she telling this semi-stranger everything about her life, she wondered. “I particularly liked his explanation of the rules on cricket. I did ask Ernie once as it was his favourite sport but he said I wouldn’t understand. Glad enough to eat the Victoria sponge and fish pie I made from the book though.” There, more inside information. She just liked having someone to talk to. She’d learned not to say too much to Ernie when he was watching a programme, doing some DIY or anything that occupied his mind. She’d take herself off to the back bedroom, do the ironing at stare out at the night sky wondering which star was which. She’d always been inquisitive but knew, as a married woman, that it wouldn’t get her very far. “Do you have any books on astrology?”
“Plenty. Did you just want the signs of the zodiac or something more detailed?”
“Oh, no, sorry. I mean astronomy. Stars. Ryan’s belt, things like that.”
Tom said nothing and walked towards the non-fiction section, using a finger to encourage Lois to follow.
She did and took three books he offered her. As if addressing Queen Elizabeth the first, Tom pulled a chair back from a small round table and made circular motions with his curved palm, Lois giggling as she sat down, placing the Tesco carrier bag on a spare chair beside her. A queue was forming at the help desk so Tom bowed and joined a colleague.
With her favourite astronomy book of the three chosen, she picked another Alan Titchmarsh novel, this time ‘Love and Dr Devon’, and took them over to the counter.
Tom was busy serving another customer but Gladys, another volunteer, was only too keen to help. “Oh, this is really good,” she said, holding up the novel. “Funny.”
“Really?” Lois asked. “I could do with funny.”
Gladys tilted her head in sympathy then put down the book and played with her wedding ring.
Lois wanted to say something but decided against it. She waited for Gladys to check out the books but instead she picked them up and walked towards a small bank of computer screens. Lois followed, wondering what Gladys had planned.
“We have self-service now. We’re always here to help but do have a go and see how you get on. It’s very simple. I’ll show you with the first one and then I’ll watch you do the second. Do you have your membership card with you?”
Lois nodded, delved into her handbag and pulled out her purse. In the card section, she retrieved the red rose-adorned membership card and watched Gladys get the machine to scan it. “You only need to do this once, not for each book.” Gladys handed back the card and Lois returned it to the purse, and the purse to the bag before zipping it back up. Gladys then scanned the book and pressed confirm on the screen. She invited Lois to do the same and when Lois and run through the same process.
“That was easy,” Lois agreed and clung the books to her chest before walking back to the bus stop.
It was only on the bus on the way home that she realised she’d not only not been to the post office but had also left the parcel in the library.
She closed her eyes and wanted to cry as it was too late to get off the bus and go back to the library. All she could do was hope that Gladys or Tom found the bag and kept it safe so she could return the next morning to claim it. It had to be safe anyway; who would want a parcel that was worth next to nothing addressed to someone in France?
Lois crossed her fingers and hoped that no one would. It was then that she realised she had forgotten to put her address on the back in case it got lost. It wouldn’t though, would it. She only had to go back the next morning, and take it to the post office a few yards away. What could possibly go wrong?
***