THE HISTORY OF CIRCA

It's the rush of emptiness that I can't stand when I think about her; the space of all that silent nothing rushing past her ears and frightening her. It was no jump; I can't get that off my mind. It took no effort at all for her to leave the earth. She stepped off the edge and let gravity do its work. That silent second separates us entirely.

She said a funny thing to me the day before. She took the day off from the library and we were at home. I was mucking round with my clay as usual out in the shed and she watched me for a while. She said that she wasn't feeling like herself anymore. She sounded calm and I didn't even look up from my work to ask her to explain. To my shame I hardly listened to her elaboration. It was something about how all these questions were flying at her. Or in at her, I think she said. I didn't know what to say and there was a silence. When I looked up she was gone. And now I can't stop thinking over the history of our friendship and the memory of that silence between us makes my heart shiver with cold.

But still, there is a nagging belief in me that her death had always been present in her life. Her sudden and tragic death I mean: her decision to finish early and slip away. To step off the earth lightly as though she was creeping away from a room full of people where she didn't want to be. Her deliberate ending makes me more selfish about my own life-story, I realise. I cling to what I still recognise of mine without wanting to look too far ahead into the next chapter. I am hanging on with claws of steel to what is left of me. But left in the darkness that is the awful absence of her.

Everyone used to say of us, Circa and I, that we were secret twins and that if either of us would come to a bad end it would be me. I was the dark half of the whole. Circa was my bright and vivid Other. We grew up together like sisters because I practically lived at her house. I hung my clothes up there and Circa had a fold-up bed in her cupboard just for me. When I was five, my father evaporated from alcohol poisoning. At least, that's the only story I could ever get out of Mum and for a while I thought that made him a little bit special, like my dad was a genie who lived secretly in a bottle. Mum burnt everything of his the night he died while I was asleep in my bed. So the next morning all traces of him had gone like he was a genie who magically disappeared. I don't have any photographs or bits and pieces to put his memory together with and sometimes I regret that. Meeting Circa and her Mum made me realise how important history is, even if you didn't know the person. But Mum is still there in our old house. Sometimes I go over to see her. She was never that lively from what I can remember but now she hardly talks at all. I come and go as I please, and have done for a few years now, and I swear she doesn't notice. Circa says her history has stopped: that Mum is living in one long day. The 'continuous present' Circa calls it.

Circa's dad wasn't with his family either. He had absconded with another woman. That's the only way that Circa's mum let us talk about it "Abscond is what criminals do" she always said.

Now Circa had the opposite problem to me and that was her mother would never stop talking. One of her favourite subjects was: the betrayal of that man, the Criminal. Anything could get her started and she would launch into one of her long complicated stories of how they met and the loving words he told her. Then came the awful day when she sat at another table to spy on him. She cried so hard that she vomited into her soup and created a scene all of her own. He watched her blankly as she was helped out of the restaurant, with a stained dress and her face folded up in desolation. But she wasn't always hysterical like that. Most often she was busy working at her books. In fact she was quite important at her university, and she had a rich and absorbing life there. She was an historian and that's why she called Circa, Circa. The jelly baby inside her - like it was some kind of rubber infant - was small and the doctor had trouble calculating the estimated time of arrival "So we can expect her circa December tenth?'

"Yes, about then," the doctor replied.

But she's past tense now too: she died last year from pneumonia.

Circa never liked her name and she suffered at school because of it. Teachers often asked her why it was chosen and when Circa got tired of explaining she invented stories. She could be like that - impulsive, cheeky. She got away with a hell of a lot and it was one of the things I loved about her. She was cleverer than most of them and they never recognised it because they never expected it.

Circa's Mum never seemed to mind me being there, or asked me why I was virtually living in their house. I expect Circa talked to her about it. And my Mum was the same. On the occasional visit home for clothes or something, Circa came with me. She said it was the right thing to do. I eavesdropped in the hall instead of collecting my things, my cheeks alight with jealousy. Circa seemed to light Mum up in a way that I never could. She fascinated people but I was dull; opaque contrast to her glitter. Circa never made me feel like that but I only ever seemed to really come alive when we were alone together.

When we got out of house and away from her relief flooded through me. I could see Circa's discomfort struggle against her overpowering sense of comedy at the whole weird scene my Mother played out every time. I remember once, inspired by my freedom and by the fact that the ordeal was over again for a while, I yelled out at the top of my voice "Get a mirror, Mother. Get a mirror and take a look at yourself!" We laughed so hard we dropped everything and continued to fall over bits and pieces all the way home. But that night in my little fold-up bed I paid for my sins. I could not stop painful tears that scratched my eyes like shards of glass from coming up to the surface. I could not suppress them and when my strangled feelings built into a crescendo of sobbing, Circa woke, and took me into her own bed and hugged me. All I could think of was that I shouldn't have been mocking my mother that way. I only wanted her to ask me some questions every now and then. Even the dumb ones she asked Circa would be fine.

I never fitted in at school and when I had saved enough money from packing at the supermarket I left and got my own wheel. It was installed at Circa's house and by then I was living there permanently. My room at home was empty, except for my bed, and a few games in the cupboard. When I visited Mum, conversation was unnecessary. Nothing ever seemed to change with her, except for maybe a new hair dye. She bought her clothes through a catalogue and, except for food, she hardly ever left the house. I started working in a craft shop where I also displayed my pots and plates and by then Circa was studying for her finals. And then I started to write a diary. It was mostly about her anyway; the boys she liked and the funny things she said. But when she discovered it (she knew all my secrets) Circa claimed it as the growing story of her life and we agreed that we didn't want to leave anything to chance and that we would finish it together. I guess our pact could be called something gruesome now - now that Circa has actually gone, but I never thought of anything like that. I only thought she was saying that we'd always be together. And I now I know that she was thinking more of the ending than anything else, even way back then.

Sometimes we argues over the way I described her like she was some distant character from ancient history. I said that this was a record of her history. We took our argument to Circa's mum, who was after all, a professional historian "She writes me all the time in the past tense. A diary isn't meant to be a history of something, it's a story."

Her mother disagreed. "Every second past has turned into history not yet considered. If you look closely enough at past events and people, intricate patterns begin to show themselves. There is a pattern of repetition in all of history, in anyone's story. Every episode is unique, but is also part of a larger design that can't be seen without the telescope of distance. Time sharpens the focus on what we see." Circa used to sigh and groan at her mother's speeches.

"Why does history have to come into everything?"

"Because my dear it is an inevitable force. All those stories that you're so fond of reading, you think they could even be dreamed of if we didn't have historians to untangle the messiness of human life and organise it into one narrative strand that fits neatly into books?"

"Mum! History is not life you know. It's not the actual events, it's only a context around them! History is only the background to the action. And I would rather be where the action is."

I remember that conversation with all its strange visionary undercurrents so clearly now. It has taken me this while and all this pain to work out just what it was that they were arguing about. Circa's passion for reading caused endless discussions about whether it was fiction or history that could reveal most about the mystery of life itself. She lived in a world of stories and after school she went to university to study them some more. Her involvement with books, and with people who would talk about books, seemed so complete and satisfying that I often felt currents of jealousy pass through me. When she got home she would come out to the shed and tell me about things; the latest book, or a new person she had found to talk to. I wanted so much to join in, but I could never keep up with her. She asked me about my potting (I had sold a few pieces by then) and was always overjoyed at my successes. I remember the night of my first opening; Circa looked so beautiful and she bought me new earrings to wear. I was so proud. And Circa invited some university friends along. I was transported into an alien world of being one of those people who make things happen and have interesting lives. For one night.

When her mother died Circa organised the funeral. It was a wet day and cold. She read a passage from Ecclesiastes and to hear her reading it was like hearing silver and gold "Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. The wind blew rain onto her face as we stood by the grave. I held an umbrella over her. Afterwards there were sandwiches at the house. When the people went, we sat in armchairs and let the room grow dark around us. We didn't speak but I knew we were both thinking of our family. Just us; twins. We didn't speak a word but I remain certain of this. After some hours I lit a few candles and we sat in the flickering light until far into the night.

And now Circa's funeral. She left me a long list of instructions: she wanted to be cremated, she wanted to wear purple and she wanted her copy of Anna Karenina to go with her. I looked after the details the way she had done for her mother. She also wanted Beethoven's Appassionata played at the service. And she asked me to read the passage from Ecclesiastes because she had found it so meaningful at her Mother's funeral. I added a psalm as well. I didn't think she'd mind but my voice was so broken and ragged and I couldn't do justice to the beautiful poetry. And all the time I was preparing things I was imagining myself sitting in the armchair afterwards, alone in our house, with that eerie feeling that the characters who played our lives were disappearing one by one. And all the time I was hanging onto the backs of chairs, or whatever was in reach, so that I wouldn't see the pattern in things. The awful and inevitable pattern of history.

Just one last thing - whenever it rained Circa always said "This is the signal for the end of the world. And the funny thing was, I believed her every time. She was a prophet after all and she was right in the end.

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