The Diary

Sometimes it is as though the time we live through has all the appearance of some kind of dream: as though this is not our real life, as though this is some kind of practice for the main event, a rehearsal. At least, that was what Beth thought as she sat up on the high headland, looking out across the beach way down below her, where the rest of her family were living through their summer. Beth had her diary open on her crossed legs in front of her. She had picked a few daisies and buttercups and left them lying on the blank page of that day when she began to wonder if this was really some kind of diary she was writing after all.

After all, if this was not her real life, as she was becoming increasingly convinced it wasn’t, then this could not be her diary, her record of her days as she lived through them. Rather it was… it was… what was it?

It was not fiction, at least not in the accepted sense, but neither was it fact.

This was not real life, nor was it invented. It was not a play; it was merely the rehearsal for a life… and one that she could see was not going well.

Now she came to think of it, Beth sat up straighter with a start; it seemed that none of her family, with all their secrets they kept so imperfectly from each other and all their ruses and stratagems they played out against each other, really thought this was real life too. All of them knew – or seemed to know – that this was just some elaborate dress rehearsal for some play that had yet to stage, where they were all both actors and audience.

Smiling, Beth clicked her pen, ready to begin.

At the top of the blank new page she wrote:

ACT ONE.