Recap: Words on the page have unleashed voices from Veronica’s past. But maybe the real question is this: what if women over 40 didn’t fade out quietly — what if they turned the volume back up?
Need to catch up? Chapter index.
Veronica
It began to happen like this.
I’d be doing something mundane – hanging laundry, cleaning the fridge, trying to locate the source of an unholy smell coming from Jack’s schoolbag – when one of my characters would appear.
Not in the flesh. Obvs. I’m not that crazy. Just… in my head.
Today it was while I was pairing socks. Not a glamorous setting, but apparently my brain doesn’t care about ambience. One second I was holding two greyish blobs that might have once been white, and the next –
There she was… Kat.
Not as a voice or a scene, exactly. More like… a memory. But sharp, as if it really happened.
She was seventeen again. Sitting on the front steps of the music block after rehearsal, guitar case between her knees, eyeliner smudged from the heat. Her head tipped back, laughing at something Tracey said. Sunlight catching on her battered Nomads, biro flowers and band logos scratched into the leather.
That was all I got. But it was enough to stop me mid-fold.
I dropped the socks and bolted for my notebook, scribbling as fast as my hand could move, afraid the whole thing would vanish if I didn’t pin it down.
And then it unspooled, clear as a film in my head:
Kat, today, standing awkwardly in the back of the school hall where Mrs. Hynde’s memorial is about to start. She notices them all before they speak… that’s the thing about Kat. She notices everything, even when she pretends not to.
It still smells faintly of linoleum and Lynx body spray.
Kirsten’s already there, sitting near the front, arms crossed, eyes scanning the program like it’s a contract she didn’t agree to. She’s got that low-effort high-impact look: short silver hair, black jeans, a watch that cost more than Kat’s fridge. But there’s a twitch in her leg – nerves, maybe. Or anger.
Tracey’s the one talking too loud. Brunette bob, tailored jacket, phone face-down in her lap like it might explode. She makes jokes before anyone else can. Laughs a beat too early. She once convinced them to dye their hair blue before the talent quest and still carries that unearned confidence.
And Rose.
Jesus, Rose.
She hasn’t changed.
She’s leaning against the back wall like she owns the place. Wild, red hair refusing to stay in the elegant up-do she’d gone with. Tattooed arm crossed over her chest. Docs scuffed. Band tee faded to ghost grey. And that same wild glint in her eyes – the one that says, I dare you.
Kat feels like a stranger inside her own skin. She doesn’t know what she’s doing here. She only knows she had to come. To honour Mrs. Hynde. To remember who she was… once.
And maybe to see if the others remembered too.
From the washing basket, the socks nagged at me, but the girls had other ideas. They dragged me on to the next bit which flowed out — less like notes, more like the beginnings of a scene:
After the service, the four of them linger. The crowd thins. The cheap flower arrangements wilt a little more.
They drift toward the stage, not quite ready to leave. A board leans against the side wall, covered in snapshots of Mrs Hynde’s life — weddings, staff photos, Christmas concerts. But it’s the largest one that stops them: the four of them frozen in time, guitars slung low, eyeliner crooked, Mrs Hynde herself beaming in the background.
No one says it. Not out loud. But they all hover there, caught between the photo and the boards under their feet, feeling that shift — then and now.
Then Tracey breaks the silence.
“We were actually kind of good, weren’t we?”
Kirsten snorts.
“We were loud.”
Rose stretches her arms overhead, spine cracking.
“Loud counts.”
Kat surprises herself by speaking.
“We could play again.”
They all turn to her.
Then – unexpectedly – Rose grins. That slow, dangerous grin Kat remembers from a thousand years ago.
“Alright,” she says. “Let’s fucking go.”
***
I blinked back into the real world, notebook full of half-formed lines and scrawled dialogue. The socks were still on the table. The washing still needed folding. But the fog that had settled over me all morning had started to lift.
This was the deal now. These women – my girls – they lived somewhere in the back of my mind. They showed up uninvited, took up space, made noise.
And I loved them for it.
Because what if they weren’t just memories? What if these women — midlife, overlooked, written off — decided to drag their old band out of the grave and make noise again? The sheer audacity of it made my pulse kick. Teenage girls with guitars were expected to be loud. But women our age? We were meant to shrink, smooth the edges, fade.
What if we didn’t?
I picked up the socks and folded them. Badly. But I folded them.
I had more to write. The girls weren’t done talking.