lang=EN-GB>When the crying subsides she is on the floor, her knees wet from the
tea she is sitting in. She
has soaked up the tea and shampooed the carpet, carefully, fanatically
scrubbing the stain inwards so as to avoid a tide mark.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Then, for sake of simplicity and her own
peace of mind she sits for half an hour holding a hair dryer over the damp
patch. She is just about satisfied and
when quarter past three
lang=EN-GB> comes and it is time to leave.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>No-one need know.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> No-one will know.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>
lang=EN-GB>She surveys the carpet from several different angles, and after
while can’t really remember where the stain was anyway.
lang=EN-GB>She gathers her coat, puts on her shoes and then catches sight of
herself in the mirror. Her cotton track
suit bottoms scream out the fact she hasn’t left the house all
class=GramE>day, that she sits for six hours in front of the television,
almost gormless, everyday. She runs
upstairs to change.
lang=EN-GB>She runs back downstairs in a pair of sheik black trousers and a
blouse which these days she only ever wears to go shopping and decides this
will do. The little make up on her eyes
and lips she looks… she looks….
class=GramE>Dried up,
old and fake.
lang=EN-GB>
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Lifeless, I look completely
lifeless.
lang=EN-GB>She stands, caught in her reflection.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>No I look alright.
lang=EN-GB>
lang=EN-GB>She smiles, and wonders if she looks that desperate every time she does
so.
lang=EN-GB>She leaves the house, gets in the car and is away.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>
lang=EN-GB>‘Little woman has a little car’, behind her is a short laugh, but
she is away, her wonderful children will smile when they see her and she will
feel some semblance of the life she wants.
lang=EN-GB>Like always she watches her ‘home’ shrink
away in the mirrors. She will hear
nothing more now until tomorrow, when she is alone again.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Structure and distraction keep her head above
water through the evenings.
lang=EN-GB>Things to do, people to feed.
lang=EN-GB>Her children smile as they get into the car, laughing their hellos.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Emily, her sixth birthday just a few weeks
away, stands on the back seat to give Ruth a hug, and her life has meaning again.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> As her daughter sits back into her booster
chair, excited words begin to jumble from her mouth.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>
lang=EN-GB>“Mummy, Mr Knell says that… that… that I’ve got to bring something
that is… fallen for autumn in on Monday.” She announces
lang=EN-GB>“Really?” Ruth expresses some excitement for her little baby.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> “you mean like a leaf?”
lang=EN-GB>“Yeah but a leaf is easy… they’re everywhere.”
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Bless her.
class=GramE>“Alright.” Ruth
smiled. “We’ll go for walk somewhere
over the weekend and see what we can find.
How about that?”
lang=EN-GB>“Will daddy come?”
lang=EN-GB>“Well, he might, we’ll ask him.”
She looks forwards keeping the truth of her eyes to herself.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> In the mirror she sees Stephie give Emily a
dig in the ribs.
lang=EN-GB>“Daddy works Emily, you know that.” She whispers at her younger
sister. A silence falls over the car
that lasts until they reach home. But
it’s still better.
lang=EN-GB>When they get in, the girls immediately plug themselves into the television.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Ruth settles herself into the kitchen.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> She takes great joy in the abundance of things
to do. Her system of saving these things
up for when there are people about is her safe guard,
if she is occupied she is less likely to drift away.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Today is cottage pie, and she is half way
through peeling potatoes when Emily comes into the kitchen looking for treats
or ‘bikets’.
Ruth bribes her little daughter, half heartedly with a test on her two
times table. Her little face beams as
she gets all the questions right, even able to work out with relative speed two
times fourteen. She runs back through to
the sitting room with biscuits for herself and Stephie.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Ruth has the potatoes done and is slicing an
onion into perfectly uniform squares when from the sitting room “URGH!”
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The carpet!
lang=EN-GB>“That’s disgusting!” and they laugh.
lang=EN-GB>Just the television, Ruth breathes again and finishes up on the
onion.
lang=EN-GB>The radio tells her a short story about a tramp.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> It is in two halves, first the story of a
girl from a modest back ground who marries into an extraordinary amount of
wealth. She occupies her afternoon with
shopping for over priced things that her new friends will ‘just love’.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> As she leaves she sees this vagrant, and
curses the state of the country. ‘
class=GramE>can’t these people all just be put somewhere?’.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>
lang=EN-GB>The second half of the story is a man who once was very happy, with
a family, a nice home, with joy in his heart.
But it fell apart, his business collapsed and in a matter of weeks he
found he had nothing. Now he lives on
the few coppers indignant passers by spare him.
He has no access to clean clothes or washing facilities and so can’t
even use the library and read. His mind
is rotting like his body, from disuse, when suddenly he sees his daughter, who
he has not seen for over ten years. She
looks so good, very well dressed, still beautiful, his little girl.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> But she does not see him.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> She knows there is someone there but he is
class=GramE>an un-person, and she does not see him to recognise him.
lang=EN-GB>Ruth finds the tale terrifying, could her family fall apart?
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Would Steph and Emily forget her?
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>No, pull yourself up.
lang=EN-GB>She hums a happy tune and taps her feet, filling the kettle and
reaching a stock cube down from the cupboard.
She turns back to the cooker and sees Steph stood in the door way,
looking appalled.
lang=EN-GB>The kettle is beginning to hiss and moan, Ruth looks uncomfortable
at Steph and waits for it to boil.
lang=EN-GB>“Was that ‘If you’re happy and you know it’?” Steph asks.
lang=EN-GB>“Was it?” Ruth fails to be casual.
lang=EN-GB>“Yes it was,” Steph nods “and you were jumping up and down.”
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Was I?
lang=EN-GB>“Was I?” a light laugh, Steph looks like she might go and ring the
funny farm.
lang=EN-GB>“Err yeah!” Stephanie
Exclaims.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Oh god, she’s turning into
one of those American valley girls, it the television!
lang=EN-GB>The kettle boils. Ruth pours
the water into Pyrex jug and drops in the stock cube.
lang=EN-GB>“Can I have some coke?”
lang=EN-GB>“Have some water.” Ruth replies.
lang=EN-GB>“But I want coke.”
lang=EN-GB>“No, it’ll rot your teeth, you only have
coke with a meal. You can have milk
water or fruit juice.”
lang=EN-GB>“Alright, can I have pineapple juice?”
lang=EN-GB>“You can have apple.” Ruth
walks to the fridge and pulls out the carton and passes it to Steph, who has an
unnervingly cunning look in her eyes.
The little girl stands smiling, her face has a
sincerity that is almost frightening for someone so young.
lang=EN-GB>“Thank you.” she says at last.
She leaves an understanding in the air as she turns to return to the
precious television. Stephie is bright,
and older than her age suggests at times.
lang=EN-GB>The potatoes boil over with a hiss and Ruth realises something about
her daughter. Now once more occupied
with her thoughts she sets about finishing tea.
That smile had touched her, but should Steph, just a little girl, be
able to see into the plain where Ruth lived most of her life?
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Surely not.
lang=EN-GB>These family interactions though, were what kept her on the surface,
not swimming, not by a long stretch, but treading water.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Comfortably.
lang=EN-GB>Now she knows for a fact what Steph knows, it will be harder not to
act on her nagging doubts, harder to wear this dumb mask of… of… what is this
mask she wears? It used to normal, just
enough to hide her jolts and appear, fine.
But as normal became a memory of weeks, months and then years ago her
act had mutated, it became sketchy. In
order to hide the holes she had ended up developing diversionary eccentricities
to hide the real ones, lies to hide lies.
All of it just to cover the few times when it would slip, when the mask
fell away and the real face of her constant screaming was shown underneath.
lang=EN-GB>‘Slip, go-on.’
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Not the voice, but an echo,
what it would
say if I were alone.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Am I alone?
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Can I hear it?
lang=EN-GB>
lang=EN-GB>While this goes on Ruth is standing quite motionless at the sink,
staring out of the window over the back garden.
Eyes see, but the mind doesn’t.
Her breathing is slow, her pulse steady and
calm, Ruth is gone.
lang=EN-GB>She drifts repeatedly through the last time she shouted at Emily,
only this time she knows, and she does not shout when her daughter spills paint
over the carpet. She laughs, sighs,
shakes her head, every time something other than shouting, then pulls Emily up
towards her and holds her, kisses her, ruffles her hair and tells her she loves
her.
lang=EN-GB>The sound of the front door closing snaps Ruth back into the
kitchen.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Shit!
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Andrew’s home!
lang=EN-GB>For a moment she thinks she has drifted off for a whole hour, but
looking up to the clock she sees it was five minutes, maybe ten at the
max. It’s just
Minute="30" Hour="5">half past five
lang=EN-GB>. Thank god. She spins around,
just taking this in and feels the need to explain her presence in the kitchen.
lang=EN-GB>When Andrew enters, his tie is loose like a school boy and his shirt
undone.
class=GramE>Strange.
lang=EN-GB>Ruth is standing awkwardly against the work surface, holding a dirty
potato masher like a trophy.
lang=EN-GB>His face is flush and his normally immaculately neat hair is
ruffled.
lang=EN-GB>Has he been running?
lang=EN-GB>As he sees her he freezes, his smile gives way to… to… something
else. Ruth looks around, desperate for
something to do, and as she does a range of expressions seem to be battling to
take control of Andrews Face. His hands
move in and out of his pockets. His eyes
however remain constant, and she can not read them, there is a new colour stirring
in them.
lang=EN-GB>It is Andrew, but, his straw fair hair, his posture is even relaxed
(?..), no, not relaxed, he is uncomfortable and
constantly shuffling, but he’s slouching.
He smiles, a short nervous laugh and then “Ruth…”
lang=EN-GB>“You look different.” She bats casually at him as she filled the
kettle. “Something happened?”
lang=EN-GB>“Er, well has it has actually… look…” he
tries to catch her as she moved scattily round the
kitchen gathering vegetables. She finds
she is suddenly very afraid, and unsure, her chest is leaping each heart beat.
lang=EN-GB>“I err…” he stammers as she reaches past him for a saucepan.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>
lang=EN-GB>He has some new purpose to him today, and what ever it was he wanted
to say she doesn’t want to hear it.
class=GramE>Change.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>
lang=EN-GB>He is going to say something… difficult.
lang=EN-GB>“Ruth!” somehow this stops her and she turned to face him.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> He seemed almost embarrassed.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> “Look, can we sit down for a moment?”
lang=EN-GB>“Oh I’d rather get on, since you’re home early I can see if I can
give tea a it of a push and…” his eyes cut her short, she knows his indecision
is over, he has taken the plunge and was now going to drop his announcement on
her.
lang=EN-GB>Her jaw wobbles just for a second before she clenches her teeth and
catches it, holds it, and turns to face him.
class=GramE>He has seen, he looks suddenly broken.
lang=EN-GB>“Oh god… I’ve been such a shit to you Ruth… I know that…” he makes
to take a step towards her but stops, his feet shuffling.
lang=EN-GB>Ruth says nothing.
lang=EN-GB>“I left my job today.” He blurts out.
lang=EN-GB>“What?”
lang=EN-GB>“I resigned, this afternoon.”
lang=EN-GB>Ruth feels the weight on her to say something, but can think of
nothing.
lang=EN-GB>He laughs, a strange sad laugh.
lang=EN-GB>“I’ve just given up my job on nothing more than a whim and we still don’t
have anything to say to each other.”
lang=EN-GB>Still she stands, she would not be able to move if she wanted to.
She wants her brain to take her away, to drift away and down and come back when
it’s all gone.
lang=EN-GB>“Oh god Ruth I’m so sorry.” His held tilts, he has pity in his
eyes. She finds the emotion this stirs
in her unusual.
lang=EN-GB>“Well…” she stammers.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Let me go, let me drift,
please.
lang=EN-GB>They stand, feet apart, bouncing unspoken emotions off one another
for thirty seconds.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Is this how a marriage
ends?
lang=EN-GB>“You know…” Andrew struggles to break the silence.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> “I realised today we don’t really know each
other anymore. We just co-exist; we’ve
been doing it for years.”
lang=EN-GB>“Well I suppose that’s just what happens.” says Ruth, before she has
really thought about it.
lang=EN-GB>“No it’s not… and it shouldn’t be.” A quizzical smile pulls at his
face. “We’re lucky the kids don’t know.”
lang=EN-GB>She feels the pulse in her temples and says nothing.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Both tears and words are pushing at her throat.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> There is no way of knowing which would make
it out first if he opened her mouth.
lang=EN-GB>“What? Why… what?” she manages to get out.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Her vision clouds in and out, and she fights
to keep control. “Why suddenly… do you
see this?” The anger that wells inside
her grows a little bit. “
class=SpellE>Wh…?” Her mouth
shakes and she knows her words are barely making sense.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Going down
class=GramE>Going to
drown.
lang=EN-GB>Another echo wafts through her mind.
‘Fuckingsomeoneelse’
lang=EN-GB>“Look Ruth, I met someone today, someone extraordinary.”
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>This is how a marriage ends.
lang=EN-GB>“In one half hour conversation I think my whole perspective has
changed, I feel great.” That smile is
back. “and I can see now, that you and I, we can’t go
on with this another day. It’s a waste
of our time, of our lives. I think we
have to stop it now before we both end up trapped in
something we hate.”
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>This is how lives end.
lang=EN-GB>Ruth’s legs cease to exist and she slides down the cupboard fronts
into a heap on the tiled floor.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Where now?
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> What now? Children, food, home?
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> What happens tomorrow?
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Ruth’s senses begin to fade away as thought
bombard in from every direction.
lang=EN-GB>“No baby, Ruth please…” Andrew moves
swiftly towards her crouching, reaching his arm out to reassure her but she
jerks away, her body repelled by the pain he could bring.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>
lang=EN-GB>He looks like a lost child, reaching out for her again, and his eyes
show the heart ache that swells in him when she recoils once again.
lang=EN-GB>He gives up. “Oh god.” He
sighs as he flops on to the floor in front of her.
lang=EN-GB>“So that’s it.” He says, holding her eyes.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> She can not look away though the hurt of her
gaze was agony.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Is this it?
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> How should I know?
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> How should I know anything now?
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> What’s happening?
lang=EN-GB>“I…” he looked way to the tiles of their floor.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> “I thought it might be.”
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>What?
lang=EN-GB>“I could have not said anything, we could have carried on in this
rut, but that would just be more time.
Besides, you knew the moment you saw me.
I couldn’t hide it.”
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>What is this?
lang=EN-GB>“I love you Ruth, I’m sorry I forgot that.” He leant against the
freezer and sighed, again.
lang=EN-GB>“What?”
lang=EN-GB>“I know you don’t believe me, it’s alright… but I do.”
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> He seems like a child that has just learned
to spell his name. The pride in a form
of elementary identity
lang=EN-GB>“What the fuck are you
talking about?” she pushes out through gritted teeth.
lang=EN-GB>He seems lost.
lang=EN-GB>“What happened?”
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> God,
I’m angry, I didn’t know I could be.
lang=EN-GB>“Oh… god it was so weird, err, this old gentleman came to my office
today.”
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>A man!
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> So not fucking someone else!
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Thank god.
lang=EN-GB>“He just showed up said we should have lunch, so we did…” he looks
at her, hoping this has clarified things, and sees it hasn’t.
lang=EN-GB>“I don’t really know what happened, as we were talking he asked me
about things, life, home, work, family, and as I answered him…
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> It was weird, the same answers I give anyone
who asks but, every time I just realised what a load of bullshit it was.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> It was horrible in a way. I’m so sorry I
never saw how unhappy you were.” Will he
cry? He sees like he might.
lang=EN-GB>His fingers fidget, she can see he wants to reach out but is relieved
when he does not.
lang=EN-GB>“It was so weird, I’ve never met the guy before, and he didn’t even
tell me his name.” the curious smile returned.
“After lunch I didn’t even think about it, I just went back and handed
in my letter of resignation. I just
don’t want to work for them anymore,
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> you know?
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> They were so scared about that baby milk thing
that I was escorted from the building immediately, I get my notice paid, three
months, but they don’t want me to go back. I feel… changed, reborn, a new man.”
The delirious grin again. “I’d like to
try, and work things out.”
lang=EN-GB>He pauses, his eyes hoping she will break her silence.
lang=EN-GB>“I’m sorry.” He looks around.
“I should have waited until we could talk properly, when the girls are
asleep or something. Maybe we should
finish this later.”
lang=EN-GB>Andrew begins to heave himself to his feet, nearly, but then not
offering Ruth a hand to pull herself up by.
She uses the work surface.
lang=EN-GB>“I was impatient. All excited
I suppose.” He takes a breath of air in
through his nose. “Dinner smells
lovely.”
lang=EN-GB> She can’t remember the last
time he told her that.
lang=EN-GB>“Just tell me.
lang=EN-GB>” She jabbers, trying and failing to hide the pleading in her
eyes. “What’s happened?”
lang=EN-GB>“I don’t know.” he says. “But
I think maybe we’ve just had our first honest conversation in about two years,
but then you barely said a word.” He
shrugs his shoulders and leaves the room, still smiling.
lang=EN-GB>Ruth splashes some cold water over her face and busies herself with
dinner.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>What did he say?
lang=EN-GB>She cuts up vegetables, battling the rush of thoughts,
interpretations and panic.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Mustn’t drift, must stay here.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>
lang=EN-GB>She had wanted to hit him at one point; the anger had surprised her,
but faded, like most things, if left long enough.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> But they had broken the taboo and the shock
was great for both of them she presumes.
No, mustn’t examine it.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Runaway…
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Dinner…
lang=EN-GB>She just has to get through dinner then she can run and hide.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Get though dinner, with Steph, who knows,
keen observant and clever Steph. Ruth
feels a chill in her chest.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>I can’t do it, I’ll crack.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> He knows, Steph knows, Jesse has always
known.
lang=EN-GB>She brings herself back and puts the plates on the bottom of the
oven to warm.
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Steph knows.
lang=EN-GB>In the end Ruth buckles, she packs her own food onto a tray and
makes an excuse about a headache and runs to bed, Andrew’s eyes warm as she
talks and as she turns away, she knows he will cover for her.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> She daren’t look at Steph, who she knows can
see right through her now. But it
doesn’t matter. If Andrew knows then
it’s over and that must surly mean that something else will now take its place.
lang=EN-GB>Andrew says he will bring her a cup of tea up in half an hour or
so. As she leaves she feels Steph’s eyes
on her back. She is also aware for the
first time of the distance Steph is capable of putting into the few feet
between her father and herself.
lang=EN-GB>Ruth only eats a small amount of her tea, and the rest seems to go cold
surprisingly quickly. In actuality it
takes a full forty five minutes, but Ruth is only there for about five of them.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> The rest of the time her fork hovers over the
plate and her eyes look nowhere.
lang=EN-GB>When Andrew opens the door, peeking round with his nervous eyes, she
is away in the future.
class=GramE>Or a
future.
lang=EN-GB>She has an awful job, struggles to keep her daughters, her babies,
near her, lives in the shadow of Andrew and his perfect new wife.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>
lang=EN-GB>“Christ!” she jolts as Andrew hovers over her with a cup.
lang=EN-GB> This new face he wears, or
is it the old one, his features all vivid and strong reminds her in someway of
when they were at university. Somewhere
inside she feels warmth she has quite forgotten about.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>
lang=EN-GB>Wily Andrew, smooth, debonair and even slightly dangerous, well reckless
at times. Making love in the rowing boat
for half an hour only to realise they are nearly out of
lang=EN-GB>Oxford by the time
they look up. They must
class=GramE>floated under countless bridges, past school children on
paths and other appalled on lookers, but they hadn’t noticed.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> She remembers this and throws herself up
kissing him before shoving him away and crying.
lang=EN-GB>She had been gob smacked when he proposed.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> She couldn’t believe it then either.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Then he got his big break… and life became an
opportunity.
class=GramE>“Tea.” He says
simply.
lang=EN-GB>He hands it to her, their eyes meet and they smile, a surface smile,
but a shared surface smile nonetheless.
lang=EN-GB>“You know we’ve got it good Ruth”
Why does he have to keep saying
these things?
lang=EN-GB>Relieved of his burden Andrew stands, hanging on his last
words. Behind the pleasant smile Ruth
sees he is all but begging.
lang=EN-GB>In the dryness of her mouth her tongue sticks to the roof of her
palette. She swallows but it does not
help. She knows there is something to be
said. She can feel it pulling at her,
but it is too far away and she cannot identify it, so she just smiles.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Andrew leans down by the side of her bed and
picks up her plate, in an effort to justify his loitering and then leaves.
lang=EN-GB>How has it come to him begging her?
lang=EN-GB>What was she supposed to be forgiving him for?
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Is it he who has her crying at the same time
in the same chair from the same abusive taunts day after day?
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> She has always presumed she does it herself.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> No-one else is taunted day in day out, or if
they are they keep quiet about it.
lang=EN-GB>She keeps quiet about it, but that is different, somehow.
lang=EN-GB>She stays with these thoughts for a while, they feel significant.
lang=EN-GB>Next to her, the cup of tea is slowly cooling.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Andrew has left the room.
lang=EN-GB>Andrew doesn’t come to bed that night, and that on its own is not an
unusual thing. He would be in bed in the
room that doubled as his office, as he did when he had to get up early or was
going to bed particularly late.
lang=EN-GB>It is one
thirty in the morning when Ruth, grabbed by
the burst of courage which through her blurred mind she sees is too precious to
risk wasting, gets out of bed. She tip
toes along the upstairs landing, hearing the sleeping breaths from the girls’
bedrooms. She creeps downstairs and into
the study where Andrew is asleep.
lang=EN-GB>“Ruth, is that you?”
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Not asleep.
lang=EN-GB>“You’re awake.” she says, surprised at how easily she can talk to
him. Good, she wanted to be calm for
this. She finds the calm and confidence
strange, but liberating. She kneels down
beside the bed, Andrew sits up to look at her.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> She loves, him, she knows that right
now. Feelings well inside her but she is
in control and she holds them with steady breath.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> It feels wonderful.
lang=EN-GB>“I need to leave this house… go somewhere new… out of this fucking
town, I don’t care where, I never want to see this house again.”
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> She gasped, feeling euphoric now this is off
her chest.
lang=EN-GB>“Okay.” Says Andrew, taking her hand.
lang=EN-GB>“Okay?”
lang=EN-GB>“Okay.” he nods, “I’ll call and have a valuation done tomorrow.” He
laughs at how easily they decide.
lang=EN-GB>The simplicity of the resolution holds them both in disbelief,
content to hold the gaze together.
Eventually, Ruth breaks it with the one other thing she needs to ask.
lang=EN-GB>“Who… was this man?”
lang=EN-GB>“I don’t know, he didn’t say, I didn’t need to ask, it was like I’ve
known him forever. All I know are his
initials, and I know those by peeking at his jacket when he went to the
toilet.” Andrew squeezes her hands, “If
I were a sillier man I’d say he was an angel.”
His hand unstuck her hair from her face and brushed it back.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Her little eyes darting frantically, she was
still somehow afraid.
lang=EN-GB> “Well?”
lang=EN-GB>“Well what?”
lang=EN-GB>“What were his initials?”
lang=EN-GB>“oh… R.G.”
lang=EN-GB>
lang=EN-GB>
lang=EN-GB>And it was that easy, they held each other for all the time they had
lost, for all the damage to be undone before going to sleep, not the passionate
hold of lovers but the understanding and comfort of friends and companions re-found.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> They whispered to each other and felt each
other breathe until the sun came up.
lang=EN-GB>The next day they had two valuations done and got a pleasant
surprise from both of them. Andrew
didn’t go to work, and it was weeks before Ruth was next alone in the house,
and when she was, it said nothing.
lang=EN-GB>It was that day that Andrew came running in with the beaming smile
of a school boy.
lang=EN-GB>“I think I’ve found it baby.” He said as he swooped
her up and swung her round. Her first
thought when she saw the house was he had lost it, but he won her round,
eventually. And by Christmas, Ruth had
said good bye to house that watched her.
lang=EN-GB>“I beat you.” She smiled, walking through the door for the last
time. It said nothing.
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> She felt its damaged pride, in her own
strength, and stroked the door as she thought of what might have been, what would
have been, but for one strange anonymous man, who, unbeknownst to either of
them, had much in store for both of them.
lang=EN-GB>
lang=EN-GB>
lang=EN-GB>
lang=EN-GB>
lang=EN-GB>
lang=EN-GB>
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