Goddess Fish Promotions Presents

Verb Tenses
by M G da Mota

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Thirty-four-year-old Raquel Whiteman has it all: beauty, a high-powered career, a very rich fiancée, a loving brother and a stepfather she adores. Life is good. Until her mother commits suicide. Clearing the paraphernalia of her mother’s life she finds old photographs and journals which plunge her into a search for the truth about her real father and early childhood, forsaking everything including her engagement to travel a path she is powerless to resist. Like a giant wave the past travels fast and comes crashing down on her, flooding her mind with incomprehensible fragmented memories and continuous questions – What? Why? Why?

Ken’s journal, December 2017

In hindsight, I would have acted differently. Hindsight is a great thing. It’s a shame we don’t have it when we most need it. We would then be able to weigh our decisions and ensure the future wouldn’t be negatively impacted. As it stands, regret sets in and regret is a useless feeling, as it always arrives too late. I wonder why we even have it within the range of our human emotions. With her strict Catholic upbringing my darling Matilde would have said that God decided humans needed to feel regret to enable them to eventually redeem themselves of their sins. She would have added that we are not to question God’s reasons, as we don’t understand them. Sadly, I don’t believe in God. I believe in Matilde and my love for her. I believe in my children and the people I care about, which is probably the whole list of my beliefs though actually that is not strictly true. I believe in science and the scientific approach. It is logical and based on fact and evidence.

All these thoughts however are irrelevant. They are just ramblings of an old man with too much time on his hands.

I continue to worry about my children even though they are now middle-aged and can fend for themselves very well. But I suppose that once a dad, always a dad.

It is a warm day for December though grey and wet. I’m sitting in the conservatory, looking at nothing in particular. I’ve tried to read but cannot concentrate. I can hear the noise from the television. It is tuned into some sports channel. Not that I care about it; it’s all white noise to me but it’s a company of sorts. A fake company of course but I got used to leaving it on all day after Matilde died and, somehow, I feel the need to hear it in the background. I dozed earlier, listening to its distant, monotonous sound. I dreamed that Matilde appeared at the door and called me in for a cup of tea. Then I woke up and of course there was no-one. Just the endless white noise of the TV. I decided to write down some of my thoughts after Matilde was gone from me forever. It’s not for anyone to read but writing my thoughts makes me feel less alone in this house. In hindsight, as mentioned earlier, I’d have done things differently.

M G da Mota is Margarida Mota-Bull’s pen name for fiction. She is a Portuguese-British novelist with a love for classical music, ballet and opera. Under her real name she also writes reviews of live concerts, CDs, DVDs and books for two classical music magazines on the web: MusicWeb International and Seen and Heard International. She is a member of the UK Society of Authors, speaks four languages and lives in Sussex with her husband. Her website, called flowingprose.com, contains photos and information.

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