by H.S. Lyon
It’s one of those days. One of those don’t-even-want-to-open-your-eyes-when-you-wake-up days. You drag yourself out of bed and make yourself tea, tell yourself you’ll feel better after a cuppa. Then you find there’s no milk left, that someone put the carton back in the fridge, empty. And you turn around and realise the cat’s been sick on the floor, and no-one’s cleaned it up.
Except, of course, there is no-one else to clean up, just you, and it must’ve been you that put the empty carton back in the fridge because who else could it be? And then you’re back in the fog. One of those days.
You still have to go to work. They’ve been kind. Understanding.
‘But rules are rules,’ Mrs Tyler said. ‘You can take unpaid leave, but I can’t give you any more time on company money. My hands are tied.’
She sounded relieved, as if the rules had saved her from responsibility, and she was just the uncomfortable messenger. She wouldn’t look you in the eye as she said it, blaming you for making her feel awkward. Nobody likes giving bad news. Nobody likes hearing it much, either. You’ve noticed this awkwardness many times. At first, people gave platitudes.
‘I’m so sorry,’ they said. ‘I can’t imagine how you must feel.’
Or
‘It’s so sad. It’s not the natural order of things.’
Or
‘Do let me know if there is anything I can do.’
The only thing you wanted was something they could neither do nor give. After a while, they stopped. It was a relief for everyone. You don’t want to talk about things – or rather, you don’t want to talk about anything else, and you can’t talk about what you want to talk about because you’ve seen their eyes glaze when you did, seen the uncomfortable shift of their bodies. They didn’t know what to say.
Some said it was time to move on but you’re still lost in the fog. Sometimes it clears and everything is too loud, too bright, hyper-focused outlines and colours harsh as midsummer, midday sun. Then you long for the fog, to remove yourself, to turn down the intensity.
A friend makes food (unasked for, unwanted) and leaves it on the doorstep. You find it there when you get back from work. A lamb casserole, cold, the fat from the meat solidified and floating, glaucous white lumps in the brown gravy. There is a note tucked beneath it that reads: “Something hearty to cheer you up and warm your cockles”. Your stomach turns. You have no appetite for rich, warm things. The effort of swallowing is overwhelming, although cold wine slips down easily enough. You take the casserole inside and feed it to the cat.
You wake in the night, sweating, after dreams of lumps.
Work gave you two weeks afterwards. Two weeks for a life. For a life that was your life. It was generous of them, Mrs Tyler said. Normally it would just be five working days.
Documents were completed, rites performed. You signed, and signed, and paid bills. The phone rang for days, until it didn’t anymore. You were glad when it stopped. You closed a door. You went back to work. There and not there.
Days turned to weeks turned to months. And now it’s today, not yesterday. You make your way through work in measured minutes, waiting for the hands on the clock to say you’ve managed enough.
It’s dark and raining when you get to your car. The traffic lights next to the office fracture across your windscreen in shining, blood-red droplets, and you’re reluctant to turn on the wipers to clear them away. As you near home, you remember you need milk and pull into the petrol station. But because it’s dark (and because you’re remembering, distracted by the raindrops on the windscreen now coloured green and yellow by the garage sign), as you park up, you misjudge the angle and reverse into the car in the next space with a metallic crunch.
Shit.
You straighten up, park properly, and get out into the rain to inspect the damage. Even in the neon half-light, the damage is unmistakable. You don’t have anything to write a message with, so you go into the shop to get the milk and ask for a pen. They’ll only sell you one, not lend, but then why would they lend? They’ve only seen the collision.
Heading back out into the rain, you see people standing by your car, looking at the damage. They turn towards you. A mother and her teenage daughter. Of course. Instead of dread, or apology, all the rage of the last months washes cold down your back and you feel like screaming and hitting them, all of them, especially Mrs Tyler, for not knowing, for being them, not you, and you want to stab the pen you’ve just bought, for the note you were coming back to leave, into their accusing eyes.
But of course, you don’t. Only a madwoman would do that.
And it’s not the girl’s fault she’s alive.
‘I’m sorry,’ you say. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Because you are. Sorry for the damage, sorry for their discomfort, sorry for causing trouble. Their faces, wet with rainwater, don’t change expression. You’re still in the dock; they’re judge and jury. You wonder if this will ever end, whether the fog will ever lift.
‘I’ve just lost,’ you start, but then stop.
You have lost. But they don’t know you, didn’t know her. They won’t see, and they don’t care. You’re on the same forecourt, but they feel a world away.
They look at their crumpled plastic bumper. It’s done its job; their car’s body is intact. Your car is the damaged one, was the one that made the metallic crunch.
‘I went into the shop to get a pen. I’ll give you my details for the insurance,’ you say. In case they find something hidden, in better light.
Fumbling the milk carton and your keys, you write your number and email address on the back of the limp, wet receipt. Details exchanged, you get into your car. The fury has passed and there’s just the blackness again, the shaky hit of down after the adrenaline. You lean back against the headrest, hands on the steering wheel for something solid to hold on to. Its dimpled texture slides under your damp palms. You think about what you could have done, should have done. Things you could have, should have, said.
Inside the car, you are spotlit in flashes by the headlights of more cars coming into the garage forecourt.
Light, dark,
light/dark,
lightdark.
The house is in shadow when you get home but there’s enough light coming through the windows from the streetlamps to make your way to the kitchen. The cat mewls and wraps herself around your legs as you hang up your coat, push your hair back from your face. Your trousers are still wet where they weren’t covered by your coat but the cat needs to be fed. You take a pouch from the cupboard, cut it open and watch as she devours her meal. Crouched over the food bowl, her fragile-looking shoulder blades come together, making small mounds under her silky fur like wing buds.
You turn to the fridge. Lit by its open door, you put in the milk you bought at the garage, take out a bottle of wine. There is comfort in the cold, solid weight of the bottle, in the knowledge that the wine will take care of not remembering the days you spend so many of your wakeful hours trying not to think about. You pour the first glass and drink it straight down, the fridge-chill sliding down your throat towards your heart. You pour another and go upstairs, glass in one hand, bottle in the other. In the bathroom, you take off your wet trousers and leave them pooled on the tiled floor. They’ll dry there overnight and there’s no-one to complain, after all. You walk past the closed door in your underwear to your own bedroom to find sweatpants.
The glass is empty and you pour a third one. You don’t remember drinking the second. This happens a lot now. Conversations half-made, sentences unfinished, moments of blankness. From your bedroom, the closed door feels like Pandora’s casket.
Maybe because of the mother and daughter at the garage, it’s suddenly unbearable that the door should still be closed, hiding the room and the lost girl and her things that were there (but aren’t there now).. You take the bottle and glass of wine in one hand, turn on the landing light and push the door open. The light falls in a diagonal slash across the neatly-made bed.
A spare room now, all traces of her removed. Like she’s been excised, although for you, she is still everywhere, always. The room hasn’t been touched since another friend cleared it while you were signing papers and paying bills, or saying good-bye to people, or working, or trying to live. The toys were donated to the hospital, her clothes to charity for other mothers who needed them. You can’t remember when. You can’t remember when you last saw that friend, although you remember why you asked her to take them all away. You couldn’t do it yourself, or keep them. You saw her in every garment, the ways she’d worn them, how she’d touched them, the days when it was just you and her and sunshine. Before the tests and the doctor with the grave face.
You sit on the now-spare bed, set the glass on the bedside table, and pour in more wine from the bottle before placing it carefully, so carefully, beside the glass. You feel raw and fleshy, the way the gaps in your mouth felt when you lost your milk teeth, your tongue returning compulsively to poke at the red edges of the wound where the tooth used to be, hoping to find the growing beginning of a new, adult tooth.
You sit in the dark, unmoving. In the light from the landing, the condensation from the cold wine pearls on the outside of the glass and bottle on the bedside table and you think of the rain on your windscreen earlier. Your head feels fuzzy now, sharp edges blurred. You’re drifting. Drifting down, down onto the clean, white pillow. You think you can still smell a faint scent of shampoo, but it must just be the detergent, or wishfulness. As you fall asleep, the cat comes through the open door, jumps onto the bed and curls herself into a hollow on the duvet beside you.
You don’t dream.
Or maybe you do. You dream and not-dream.
You don’t dream of lumps.
You’re woken, disoriented, by sunlight. Beyond the windowpane, last night’s rain has left a polished sheen on the waxy leaves of the ivy growing up the wall. You’re stiff and cold, as if you’ve lain in the same position on top of the duvet all night. You sit up and put your feet to the floor, head bowed. The cat stretches luxuriantly in a patch of sun on the carpet.
You don’t look around the room again. Your mouth is stale and dry, and you want tea. The cat needs to be fed. You must wash, get dressed, go to work.
You take the nearly-empty bottle and the glass and head down to the kitchen, where you pour away the remains of the wine, rinse the bottle and put it into the recycling bin, and the glass into the dishwasher. Open another pouch, retch slightly at the smell of the wet cat food. Switch the kettle on. You’ll feel better after a cuppa.
Upstairs, the door into the room is still open.
H.S. LYON recently returned to university, following a Social Psychology degree with a Creative Writing MFA. Sophie’s writing explores themes of family and mental health, informed by her NHS work. Lighthouse is publishing her short piece, Present Progressive Tense, in 2025 and she’s working on a novel, Skeleton. She lives in London with her family and several Labradors.
