Blue Windows

She doesn’t hear his key, the latch, the charm-like jangle of the forgotten chain. She doesn’t hear the back-and-forth rasp of boot soles on brown bristles, WELCOME trampled underfoot. She only realises he’s home with the bark of a televised shout, and then an eruption of orchestral strings that crest up through the living room ceiling, through the bathroom floorboards, an exultant fanfare for a shiny new car, or a packet of razors –

The commercial thrums in the gaps between her toes.

It’s more than enough. She throws the test into the cupboard beneath the sink and slams the door, catches her grey face in the dusty mirror. Her lips in the twilight are almost blue.

Her hair splashes over them as she swings away. She’s been in the bathroom for long enough. She’s thought for long enough. Nothing will change unless she starts it. And yet everything is different no matter what she does –

But before she can barrel downstairs, before she can rush him, the sky snatches at her. Blind-less, it forms a perfect panel in the neat white tiles. Not a true blue this evening, but a silky, opening mauve. Veined and deep and delicate, like the layered heart of some tropical flower. She feels a chill dab her collar, though the dusk doesn’t appear cool at all, but warm, and secretive.

Like flesh, she thinks and then hastily un-thinks it, drawing back the bolt and crossing the landing, but walking – walking now, not running – down the stairs.

She supposes that this is better, to appear calm. At the living room door, she pauses. Rakes her fingers through her hair, the strands more silvery than blond in the bleary, static light.

Not that it matters; he scarcely glances from the screen. She perches on the armchair at his side.

The programme is familiar. Yet another narrative about people circling their dreams. Every week, the same formula – a bright young couple or sometimes a family with mysteriously disappearing children, strive to build a house. Along the way, inevitably, things go wrong, with building supplies, and with builders and architects, bills flutter out of control – except it is almost at its end now. It’s the moment when everything’s resolved and the mellow-vowelled presenter (Cloud, she thinks his name is?) is led through a glittering palace of glass and clever, winking halogen. The fantasy-house (they’ve done it! Against the odds! What a surprise!) is revealed, as it always is, against a backdrop of incoming night.

The surrounding trees smear beside the building’s gleam; they bow respectfully, shuffle back. And it’s not the vast windows that are blue of course, but the world beyond their clean-cut gold. It’s as beautifully shot as ever and yet she thinks how her own bathroom sky was so much more palpable, a living thing –

"What now?" he says, and she jumps.

The remote’s clenched fatly in his fist.

"Shall I switch channels?" he asks "Or d'you want it off? Do you still want to talk..?"

She opens her mouth to begin it. She needs to explain.

About the test tossed with the unopened tampons beneath the sink. About windows, changing colour. She tries to imagine how his face will transform too, with her confession, but instead becomes distracted by the TV’s glow, the way it slides across his well-known features, remaking them already. And that blue flickering in his eyes. It brings to mind her Nana’s gas fire – the one she reached into, when she was five. She remembers how, because it danced so prettily, like water, she’d kept her fingers there, unbelieving, even as her skin began to curl.

"I," she says, but finishing off, the Cloud man interrupts her.

"This home," he says, "is an act of faith."

And for a moment, she watches her lover's thumb hover, considering Mute, before he shrugs forward. Breathes out. Turns over.

Second Person

5.33pm
You’ve reached your flat, your doorstep. At last, you stop, but you’ve scarcely any breath and your head goes on echoing with the harsh ticking of your heels. You still can’t quite believe yourself, how you forgot your phone. Today, of all days. When you promised you’d call as soon as you’d told him. There’s somebody else. By 2, you’d said.

You drop your keys. Bend awkwardly to retrieve them, unbalanced by your heavy bag. It slide-slumps from your shoulder to your elbow, the strap catching, snapping, at your hair. A battle to simply get past the door and even once you’re in, you go on fighting yourself. Knocking your knee on the hall table so that later there will be a bruise, not unlike those others. Those perfect, purple petals circling your wrist. Not that any of this concerns you now –

The pathway to the kitchen, where your mobile surely waits, becomes a wind tunnel, sucking you on.

And it’s there. Thank god, it’s there.

Lying on the counter beside the fruit bowl (two browning, wrinkling apples, a skeleton of grape sticks), like something innocent. In relief, in triumph, you pounce. A greedy child grabbing at the last fat wedge of cake. But in your hand –

5.36pm
The phone is lifeless.

You don’t take your eyes from its screen as you rush through to the bedroom, to where the charger waits amidst a tangle of other wires. Irrelevant leads. You squat clumsily to plug it in and your skirt rides up, revealing a milky slice of winter thigh. While you wait for the connection, the acknowledgement, you grow aware of the different places where your blouse is sticking. And that exposed skin distracts you. The pale, dimpled meat of it. Hastily, with your spare hand, you tug flat the crumpled cotton. You can’t afford to think about your imperfections. Of how, even after everything, you might not be enough. With the first pulse of the battery bar, you dial.

5.40pm
Except apparently you can’t. Not yet. At least not without a glass of wine at your side. You return to the kitchen, where the light is changing, pinking. Reaching into the cupboard, you look deliberately past the way your fingers tremble through that pink. Only you can’t help wincing when the glasses knock together; their thin, piercing ring reverberates right through you.

It's the fear. The fear that despite all the planning, the daydreaming, the reality of your freedom will change everything. The fear that though you’ve kept up your side of the bargain – that you’ve actually done it, you’ve left him - you might after all, remain alone.

You go to the fridge, and as you pour, you’re suddenly, distinctly, struck by a whole new guilt. A cold, far brighter and sharper than the slow, pervasive, mud-like sensation that you’ve been carrying for months. So clearly, you feel the waiting beyond yourself, and you know that this delay is madness. In your renewed haste, clenching your Dutch Courage, you leave the fridge open, purring, behind you.

5.55pm
Still, the phone goes on lying in the soft dark beneath the bed.

You needed to finish the glass first. Although between each starched sip, your afternoon snapped back at you in pieces. How he slumped forward when you told him, the colours changing in his face. You’d never seen him cry like that before. Such a slow, sad breaking… And it’s all wrong. Of course it’s wrong –

You ought to sound happy when you ring. You should raise your cool glass to your new future. You need to believe in that future, to trust it, to move beyond the fear. After all, you’ve done everything you were begged to do. Except even now. Even now.

There’s too much love inside you. Too much hope. You return to the kitchen to fetch the bottle. You go on pouring, drinking.

6.27pm
The bottle’s empty.

Though you lost the last half-glass of it, tipping it stupidly, soaking your skirt. For a moment you just sit, watching the stain. Feeling the wet, feeling caught out. You don’t know how you’ll explain this wait, why you still haven’t called. When you said 2. What if it’s unforgivable?

In the next moment, you’re up, fumbling with your waistband, desperate to be rid of the sodden fabric. The zip’s tearing sounds far louder than it should. You feel it in your teeth. And there’s your body again. Your legs. You cover them quickly. A pair of ancient pyjama bottoms, the first thing to hand. You can’t stand your skin, that sallow gleaming, made worse by the shadows. Grey flowers, cobwebs, in every corner. The scent of your own sweat turns your stomach. And your breath’s rough with the wine. Something sourer underneath.

Your dread becomes clearer. What if you get what you deserve?

But with it, the longing –

6.32pm
You’re calling.

The phone damp already in your hand.

You’re calling.

And between the ring tone and your heartbeat, it occurs to you that its small, glowing screen revealed no new messages. No missed calls.

And you look at the bruises on your wrist. The bruises that I put there. And I join you in your wondering, about whether I’ll reply.