She wants out. Tells him so. He loves her too much. She belongs to him. If she leaves, he’ll track her down. Kill her. Tells her more than once. She believes him. * * * Two years of abuse. A slow ruthless awakening leaves her nights staring at the ceiling listening to his ragged breath
She’s flicking through one of those animal encyclopaedias, the kind you get heavily discounted in the run up to Christmas, and then even cheaper before New Year, the kind nobody is ever going to pay full price for. ‘Do you think I should keep this one, Mum?’ she asks. ‘I mean, it was a present.
It’s hard to be a mother. You don’t really study for it. You can’t tell people: I have BA in mothering with honours. That might be why some mothers feel so inadequate. Or why some others feel the need to get validation from others. Or why some fall apart. No book or NCT course will
Peggy longs to be elsewhere. Today, even Charmaine, her WorkSolutions adviser, seems bored. Or if not bored then fatalistic: she’s picking at her earlobes and examining the flakes of skin on the tip of her finger. They are meeting not at Charmaine’s offices, but at the neutral territory of West Herts College, because the WorkSolutions
Your dear friend is in town, but all you’ve got is deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. She wears a blue dress and brings you ground coffee as a gift. The two of you have a blast, sure, walking down the boulevard, talking about your dreadful boyfriends, laughing, having some charcoal ice cream, but there’s a translation about
On the 29th Day of Christmas Stephen Ground gave to me… The night they brought Billy home, Matt couldn’t sleep. Not unusual – Christmas at work was stressful, and he drank too much coffee – but when Martha woke to feed Billy at two, four, and six, Matt was watching Home Alone on repeat in
On the 22nd Day of Christmas Annie Bien gave to me… From Merriam Webster: I. Immaculate: adjective a) having no stain or blemish : pure, b) having or containing no flaw or error c) a: spotlessly clean b: having no colored spots or marks —used especially in botany and zoology # DK: Observational Note: An
