Writing Magazine April 2020

I

’ve just had a pay rise, he says,

and there’s your redundancy.

Stop worrying. See your friends,

go shopping.

She does go shopping, she fills

their wardrobe. She lunches with old

work colleagues, pizza, tapas, and

that new place, Turkish. They soon

run out of things to say.

The new clothes rustle and waft

as she slides open the glossy doors.

They dangle like demi-people, heads

and limbs severed. Ghosts. She

slides the doors shut again, roams

the house, goes into bedrooms

where snotty toddlers once crawled.

Bathrooms, lemon-scented and

gleaming from the cleaner’s buffing.

The dining room, little used. The

utility room, where the ironing gets

done. His shirts, her silks.

There are other places. The attic

with a pull-down ladder. One day

she yanks it free, climbs up and

flicks the light-switch, wondering

what’s in the boxes, why they keep

stuff they never use. Her long

painted fingernails prise open her

crumpled sofa cushions, no scummy

mug on the coffee table. A text.

Sorry darling, worked late, checked

into the Travelodge.

After her granola she goes up into

the attic and reaches for the little key.

Later, much later, she creeps back

down with the rucksack, legs feeble.

Dusk is settling, she doesn’t know

how long she’s been gone, day-

dreamy, stuck.

She lays the rucksack on the bed.

Gives it a sniff, fiddles with the

buckles and straps. It’s a little musty

but it seems intact. She looks out

the window, sees it’s been raining.

She brings up strong coffee and

opens drawers. T-shirts, sandals.

Jeans, jumper. A waterproof. Phone

and charger. Credit cards. She laces

on her comfy walking boots.

Lingering in the hallway, she

considers leaving a note. She decides

to text, Good luck, darling. She

swings the rucksack onto her back,

locks the front and posts the keys

back through the letter box. Looks

up. Day is sliding into night.

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34 APRIL 2020 http://www.writers-online.co.uk

old trunk, picked up at some junk

shop years back. Decades. She stands

and watches the dust float and

swim. Then she looks inside. Fraying

straw hats, and the black platform

boots she wore when she was a

teenager. The old rucksack she took

to Thailand a year before she met

him, dark blue canvas and cracked

leather straps. A scrawny stuffed

lion, browning paperbacks. Diaries

she daren’t open in case the essence

of her younger self escapes, wraps

her, suffocates her.

Her mother’s water-ringed bedside

cabinet sits by the chimney stack.

It opens with a little verdigris key.

She brings up a bottle of whiskey, a

tumbler, places them inside. Lugs up

a fluffy cream-coloured rug, adds a

satin cushion from the bedroom. Lies

back, only aware of soft radio-voices

in the kitchen far below. She pours

and sips. Pours some more. Loses her

sense of where she has belonged.

She gets out of bed, opens the

blind. There’s no sign of him. No

towel on the shower room floor, no

by Jeanette Lowe

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Jeanette Lowe

is a southerner now resident

in South Yorkshire. She’s a former

specialist literacy teacher who escaped

the grind to do an MA in Creative

Writing at the University of Sheffield,

which she has now completed. She’s

currently unemployed but trying to

avoid going back to teaching.

Jeanette Lowe