False Start Friday: Charleigh, 1971
This may or may not be a false start; it might be the start of a second novel.. In a rush of a day, so slinging this up without thinking about it- will be round to visit fellow false starters sooner or possibly later this weekend. Or Monday. Busy weekend! Charleigh, aged six, looks in the mirror; she's standing on the double bed in the room she shares with two of her sisters; and this is what she can see:- The mirror; a circle of glass in a yellow plastic frame. The wallpaper; a fat field of sunflowers growing in swirls of brown. Herself; only just visible, hidden in between the representations of field and flower like a fledgling pushed out of the nest. If she concentrates, she can just about trace her skinny framed outline trapped in the rows of yellow blob flowers, just about see, with her chinky blue eyes, that her straight, pale brown hair is still too thin to cover her sticky out ears. Damn, she thinks (but dare not say aloud). Her mother has been