Young Writers Society

The clock blinked a minute closer to midnight. Mariam sat straight-backed at the head of the dinner table, cutlery chinking softly against the plate. She ate daintily, winding tendrils of pasta around her fork, bringing her mouth to the food rather than the food to her mouth. Every time she moved, the straps of her dress slid down her shoulders – the damn thing was too big for her. He never got the right size – and every time she stopped to smooth them up again.

She could see him through the open door. Only just, because the darkness was thick – just the curve of his back, turned away from her, and a head pressed against the pillow. Taking up too much space, even now.

She threw her fork down on the plate, then stopped to straighten it. Pernickety. That was what he’d called her earlier, with shades of comparison in his voice. She’d asked him if the girl at the office was enough of a mess for his liking. He’d gone doe-eyed and shocked, blowing air between his lips, and stammered something about paranoia.

We’ll deal with this in the morning, he’d said. Cowardly bastard.

Mariam slipped her plate into the sink, washing it in slow circles. Her toe poked through the foot of her tights, light skidding across the nail, which gleamed red with varnish. She remembered leaning over to paint them, legs still stinging from the razor, the plastic of the bathtub making grooves in the back of her thighs. Which will he like best? she’d asked herself, genuinely asked herself. Like the colour would be enough to change anything.

She stuffed her feet back into her boots, then buttoned her coat up to her throat. His wallet lay flat on the table. She took it.

The night air was warm, the sky fogged to an ashy, starless haze. A breeze skittered down the street, carrying with it crackling leaves and the smell of cheap curry, easing through her hair like tentative fingers. She reached back and pulled the pins from her bun, letting them clatter onto the pavement.

She pushed open the door to the corner shop, squinting in the pale light. Bottles glinted in dark rows on the shelves at the back. She picked the most expensive – a wine, she assumed, but didn’t read the label – and slammed it down next to the till.

“And cigarettes,” she said, nodding to the shelves behind the counter. “Marlboro. Whatever costs the most. And a lighter.”

The shopkeeper – a blonde woman, young, exactly her husband’s type – gave her a lingering look. She reached for the cigarettes as though running on badly wound clockwork, hesitating before placing them down.

“Twenty-three fifty, please,” she said.

Mariam pulled open her husband’s wallet, plucking out a ten and a twenty. “Keep the change.”

“Whoa, really?” the shopkeeper said, turning the notes over in her hands. Her eyes flickered up and down. “Are you alright, miss? You look like you’re…” She gestured towards the side of Mariam’s face.

Mariam wiped it. Her fingers came away red, just at the tips.

“It’s nothing. I must’ve caught myself."

She pushed out of the shop before the woman could say anything else, tasting the spices in the air. She made for the bus shelter on the opposite side of the street. Its plastic panes trembled in the breezy heat.

Her hands shook as she lit the cigarette, but her lungs were well practiced, drawing the smoke in deep, letting it fill her. She’d never lost it, the craving, not after all these years. She’d smoked forty a day once. But he’d hated the smell.

She unscrewed the wine bottle and tipped it back, letting glugs of the stuff wash down her throat. After, she ran her fingers along the label, tracing the loops of curly script. It didn’t taste fruity, or nuanced, or rich, or full of tones, or like any of the stupid adjectives she flung around at the wine-tastings he took her to. It was red. It tasted sour.

She hurled the bottle to the ground, where it shattered like a firework. In the glimmering shards, and the glassy puddle soaking into the tarmac, she saw her face staring back at her. She flicked her cigarette, half-burned, into the centre of it, and lit another.

Her walk back was unsteady. At foot of the flat, she spent a minute trying to claw her phone out of her pocket, and another trying to tap out a number with her chipped nails. The call buzzed against her ear. Went to answerphone.

“Ellie,” she said, slurring a little. “Just calling to let you know that…we had an argument, me and your dad. A bad one. He kept…he was going to leave me, and I did- I did something that I-” she swallowed. “Doesn't matter. Sorry. Love you.”

Her hand dropped to her side. She walked up the steps to the flat as though wading through water.

Inside, silence had settled like fog. The only sound was that of the tap, still dripping, still broken, plinking water against unwashed dishes. Mariam shrugged her jacket off, letting it drop to the floor. She threw his wallet down after it.

Cigarette still trailing smoke, she pushed the door to the bedroom open. The light from the landing sliced across the pillows, over the back of his head. Turned away from her. From this angle, he almost looked as if he was sleeping.

She knelt on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping beneath her, and leaned over him. Her hand moved, tentatively, from his cold shoulder to his collarbone, and then across the jagged wetness of his neck. She put two fingers into the crook below his jawline, where a pulse might have been. Felt nothing.

A noise left the back of her throat. She wiped her hands on the duvet, the pillows, the bedsheets, streaking dark marks across the linen, and backed out of the room. The door clicked shut behind her, and she pressed her forehead against it. After a minute, her shoulders came down, and her breaths grew slow and even again.

She walked to the end of the hall, into the box room. The bed groaned as she settled onto it, and from the pillows came the faintest smell of Ellie’s hair. She leaned into the scent. Her lashes scratched against the fabric as she shut her eyes.

She’d deal with this in the morning.