I wrote this story for a competition with the prompt ‘without.’

I was delighted when it won, and proud when it was published in the November 2019 issue of Writing Magazine.

I thought I’d reached my peak. I’d won a writing competition. However, when I read it before putting in on this blog, I realised it wasn’t perfect. There was room for improvement. I guess there always will be.



Here is the revised version. 

Your trousers are ironed correctly, hanging at the exact length you specified. Your jumpers and t-shirts folded just so on shelves. Never to be worn by you again. Never. I understand and wait for the tears. They don’t arrive, instead my stomach boils, and the heat rises into my throat.

I grab your trousers, tearing them from their hangers, scrunching them into tight balls and I throw them across the room. The creases are all in the wrong places now. How angry you would be.

Is that a smile tugging my face, cracking my dry lips? I touch them and flinch at a sharp sting of remembrance.

I pull your jumpers and t-shirts from their tidy shelves, throw them on the floor and stomp them into a mountain of grey and black. What dull colours you wore.

They’d suit you now.

My knees buckle and my hands become fists. I pummel your clothes into submission and a wave of satisfaction floods my tired body. Was this how you felt, each time?

I use the bed we shared to pull myself up. The room is a mess, but I don’t care.

You are not coming home.

I’ll sleep on the sofa.

Bargaining

A thump awakens me. More envelopes piling inside the front door. I don’t want to open them. I don’t want to read words of sympathy. I go upstairs.

I stare at the bedroom floor, gathering your clothes in my arms and sorting them into piles on the bed.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’ll put them back, just how you like.’ I handle them gently, cradling each one before I fold it as if it were the baby we never had. 

‘Your jumpers are sorted. Look, even shades of grey co-ordinated.’ I laugh but the sound is an old woman’s croak. I pick up the t-shirts, but several of them are stained and torn. Was it my nails that caught the threads, my tears that smeared their pristine whiteness?

I’m sorry. I’ll make it better. I didn’t mean to upset you.

I throw the damaged clothes in the bin and the rest into the washing machine. I choose the correct temperature and measure the powder. Just as you taught me.

I run back upstairs and collect your trousers. It will take me hours to remove the creases, but I can. The task of ironing at the correct speed, with the right number of puffs of steam is soothing.

See how much I learnt from you? I hold up a pair of stone-grey chinos with the correct creases and I smile that false smile I perfected over the years. I hang them so the waist band is two centimetres higher than the bottom seam. Perfect.

If you come home now everything will be just how you like it.

I finish restoring your wardrobe. My back aches and the burn scar on my wrist pulls tight. I sit on the bed and rub in some cream before smoothing the sheets and positioning the pillows.

I won’t spoil it. I’ll sleep on the sofa again, then if you come home, we can go to bed together, if you want.

Depression

It’s dark in the house. I’m keeping the curtains closed hoping everyone will take the hint and leave me alone. I don’t need them, and I don’t need sunlight. The table lamps give me sufficient light to wander from room to room, searching for a trace of you.

I stare at the interior of our fridge, then close the door. It’s too much effort to cook. I order a pizza and wait, resting my head on the kitchen table. 

Your mug still sits there. It’s a garden of green and black. I poke it with my finger and filaments of white float to the table. I turn my face away as my nose twitches and I see the kitchen sink.

It is overflowing with half full mugs. Your plate now buried beneath an unwashed mountain of filth.

You’d hate it. I hate it, but it’s too much effort to clean.

The doorbell bleats its two-tone call. Chosen by you of course. I could change it, but what’s the point?

The young man on the doorstep flinches and gulps as he hands me the warm box and hurries away. I watch him jump on his bike and speed down the road before I kick the door closed and turn, glancing in the hallway mirror.

A haggard ghost looks back with glazed eyes and rat -tail hair. She is clutching a pizza box as if it were a lifeline.  

I stagger to the sofa and wrench off the lid. The smell sickens me. I shove the box onto the floor where it collides with another.

I flick on the TV and grab a cushion pressing it into my empty stomach, rocking slightly, seeing colours and shapes on the screen, but making no sense of anything.

If you came home, you’d be shocked.

Acceptance

The house is quiet, you are no longer here to shout, throw things, or slam doors. And you never will be.

You are never coming home.

I savour the words in my head and finally understand what your leaving has done to me. What I have let you do to me.

I am alone and I smell. The house smells.

This is not how I want to live.

I walk up the stairs, stripping off my grimy sweatpants and t-shirt, dumping them on the floor before entering the bathroom.

Standing in the shower, washing the grime of the last few weeks away I set the water at the perfect temperature for me. No more red skin.  I use the softest flannel and the floweriest fragrant soap I can find.

Now you are not coming back I can do things my way. The room fills with steam and my stomach reminds me I haven’t eaten for days.

I wrap myself in the largest, softest, towel. Your towel.

I draw a happy face on the mirror. I’m about to wipe it away but then I remember you are not coming back.

I wander downstairs.

I find a packet of crumpets in the freezer and toast them, slathering on peanut butter and honey, not caring when it drips. I lick my fingers and make a cup of tea. Sitting on the back step to sip it, I breath in clean fresh air.

Change

I fill six bags with rubbish. Some of it mine, but most of it yours. You are not coming back so you don’t need it.

Your clothes are neatly folded, in boxes by the front door. Waiting to be collected for the homeless shelter.

I can imagine your disgust at the thought, you’d be so angry. A shudder travels up my spine and I rub the tiny round scars on my inner arms.

I walk into the lounge. The shelves are empty. Your collection of model cars are in a bag hanging off the fence waiting for the two boys who live next door to come home from school. Those noisy children you hated, those children whose ball you punctured when it dared to land on your pristine grass.

And those ugly china dogs you inherited from your mother. They too are in a box. Tomorrow I’ll take them, your music collection, your magazines and books to the charity shop in the high street. Everything else is going to the dump.

Apart from your mug and the plate from which you ate your last meal. They are on the kitchen table.

I pick them up and roll them in a towel. The wooden rolling pin, which my ribs know too well, smashes the evidence to dust. I dump the towel in the last open bin bag.

Without you, I can live.