The Playground.
Nina disinfected the playground at 8 am every morning undeterred by wind, rain or snow. ‘Dettol is my life,’ she told Gloria when she’d visited the store to buy a special gift for her ailing father. ‘A clean playground is a fun playground. A change from the old days. ‘
‘Not necessarily,’ said Gloria who was well acquainted with the playground‘s noisier, more bloodthirsty past, particularly after her twilight shift when with the blink of her heavily mascaraed left eye, St Hilda’s regained something of its earlier, more gladiatorial glories.
Then, in this fading light, liberated, laughing shapes hurtled unsupervised across the uneven tarmac of the school yard flinging themselves up the damp, slippery steps to the platform at the top of the slide before plunging headfirst down onto the tarmac piling into friends and foes alike.
When Gloria blinked again, other figures were leaping onto the whirling roundabout that some demon child spun as fast as a Mini Cooper on sheet ice. Brains grew dizzy, stomachs revolted and then the true warriors threw themselves off the speeding roundabout, staggering around until the earth became flat once more.
At the edge of the playground, in the leaden light, three swings dangled their rusty chains like empty gibbets awaiting their next victims. Yet moments later Gloria watched a trio of screaming brigands lift their swings high into the dark sky before abandoning their virtually vertical seats and tumbling onto the tarmac, ducking their heads to avoid decapitation.
When Gloria blinked again, they had abandoned her, and she was alone.
