Not even crafts glue can fix these fractures.

Just some uni work that was cluttering up my documents

I can hear the clock ticking loudly over the sound of the extractor fan. My anniversary cards have

been a bit morbid for weeks. I carry on trying to scrub the glitter out of the creases in my palms even though I know it won’t work. I’ve had sparkly hands for the last 2 years. Ever since Kate left for uni and I realised I needed a hobby. Then a hobby became work when I started selling them to friends. It had crossed my mind that they only bought them to make me feel purposeful after they all discovered I’d been made redundant. There I go again. I was once told that I had boundless optimism. Somewhere along the way, it’s  ebbed away. Try making interesting greeting cards when the most exciting part of your day is getting the bills and a text from your twenty year old daughter asking for money.

   He’s late, but that’s nothing new. Third time this week. It’s Wednesday. Working late again. Who needs their boiler servicing at 7 o’clock I will never know. I shouldn’t start that talk, but the mind does race. It scarcely matters, possessing a microwave as we do, that the dinner I made sat on the table for an hour before I disposed of it. Every night for the past 3 months this would happen, and I would dutifully wrap it in Clingfilm and put it in the fridge. Not tonight. I’m sick of this s**t. I send the painstakingly prepared dinner sliding into the bin, silently congratulating myself. It does nothing for the nauseating feeling that increases exponentially with the passage of time while I wait. When he’s with her.  

 The front door slams behind me. Only a quick one tonight then. He stalks through the kitchen, a cursory scan of the room with his seedy eyes for his dinner. He opens the doors to the empty microwave and oven before he looks at me. That got his attention. Maybe that’s all I want, not a faithful husband, my daughter back home, or to make f*****g greeting cards. Just somebody’s attention.

  “Where’s dinner?”

  “I gave it to my boyfriend.”

 He lets out a derisive snort. Ouch. I’m not only too unattractive enough to hold his attention, I am not attractive enough to gain anyone else’s. His thinly veiled insult makes me want to prove him wrong. I won’t though, he’s right. His blatant disregard for my feelings fills me with disgust, though I still find myself clinging desperately to any hint of warmth in his shameless grunts, for which I hate myself.

  “Bad day at the office, Gayn?”

 The plate slips through my fingers, trembling with rage. It was already fractured anyway. His

 mocking tone and his ability to hit me where it hurts shock me even now. Sarcasm, the lowest form of wit. That’s something he would say. Pompous, arrogant hypocrite.

 “Guess so.” He mutters under his breath, taking his seat at the breakfast bar.

  “ Well, I don’t have anyone to help me unwind at the end of my day.” Leaving the broken plate shattered at my feet to point at the phone he keeps checking. Realisation dawns on his face as he stares at my defiant expression.

 “You’ve got too much time on your hands, love.”

 “Don’t belittle me.”

 “Jesus…What am I supposed to say when I come home from toiling in the freezing rain all day to your b*****d conspiracy theories? Don’t start Gaynor.” I don’t say anything. I don’t need to. I just look him straight in his cheating prick face with an expression that admits knowledge and mocks his depravity. The understanding on his face goes through stages of rage and disbelief until the only discernible noise that exits the wretched hole beneath his sweaty upper lip is a taunting snarl.

 “You know you really have lost it since you quit your-”

“I didn’t quit.” I whisper, my voice faltering.

    -“since you quit your job. You’ve done nothing but give me grief and make those stupid cards. You know if you’d done more shifts in the upholsterers office, we would be better off and you wouldn’t feel so bloody hard done by. No wonder Kate went all the way to f*****g Bangor for uni. To be free of your smothering. I often wish I’d gone with her! Do you honestly think she’s coming home for Christmas? She only texts you when she wants something! It’s like trying to squeeze blood from a-”

 “What’s her name?”

  “None of your business.” He mumbles, rustling through the fridge for dinner.

   “You’re not even denying it!” Months of humiliation pooling in my eyes and rising in my throat like bile, I launch the piece of plate I’ve been gripping at his back. His secret out, his denial turns into amusement. Now there’s nothing to hide, he flaunts it like a badge of honour. Leaving the fridge open, he spins around to face me with an incredulous sneer as if he had been eagerly anticipating this scene.

 “Well what’s the point? You already know, you’ve known for months!” His words come out with something that sounds like relief. “You were just too much of a coward to say anything before now. It’s about time you said it out loud. Her name doesn’t matter. All that matters is that she has a personality that doesn’t revolve around her kids and arts and crafts.”

“Don’t you feel guilt or shame?” I scream at him, shaking. “Aren’t you sorry?”

   “Sorry for what? Kate was the only one you cared about in this house for a long time and now she’s gone there’s nothing left for you here. Frankly, there’s nothing left for me either. I come home every night to your cold indifference and you wonder why I go to Marriane’s.” The only sign of his slip up on his face is the momentary dilating of his pupils.

 Marriane. My ex supervisor. Cold-hearted b***h. I close my eyes and blurry images of her face as she broke the news of my redundancy to me.  Talk about insult to injury. Next images of her at the Christmas party, newly single, showing off her new found confidence. Flirting with all of the men in the room, with my husband, Andrew.

 “You lost all of your confidence when you lost your job. You stopped making an effort. It’s hard to be attracted to someone who sits around all day, not showering, covered in glue and watching Jeremy Kyle. What was I supposed to do? Do you think any man would stay in a relationship where the sex is cold and boring? I had no choice, Gaynor. You gave me no choice.”

 “Did you have to humiliate me?” I whisper through the tears streaming relentlessly down my aching face.

 “You humiliated yourself. I was obvious to everyone what was going on. Even you. You had your chance to confront me, to regain some scrap of dignity when you found her gloves in my car, but you kept your mouth shut. Making yourself look pathetic. Maybe I would’ve called it off if you’d given me some reason to fight for us, but why would I fight for you when you don’t fight for yourself? Why would I fight for someone so weak? You’ve no one but yourself to blame for your humiliation” He spits at me, venom running through his words like a violent current.

 I turn to face the window. It’s dark outside. There are teenagers sat on the wall again. The girls screeching at the boys for tickling them. Flirting. My eyes focus on the glass. Looking back at me is the exact woman Andrew is talking about. There should be mascara running down my now bloodless cheeks with the cold, drying tears making my face numb at the biting cold coming through the open window. As he said, I stopped wearing makeup, stopped making an effort. Stopped giving him a reason to fight. So I watch his reflection leave the kitchen, hearing a mirthless laugh of righteousness and carry on with the dishes, wondering how I should explain this to Kate.

 

 

Author's Note

Sorry about the weird line spacing/paragraphing. Had to delete line spaces manually.

Reviews

[roarke]

A bleak realization. Nice use of dialogue and reflection to move the story forward. Drama and irony are well used here. Both characters evolve naturally as the reader gets to know them. Some nice grit in this piece.

[Emily Cunningham]

Thank you very much, if you have any edit suggestions or revisions just let me know :)