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Authors: Raphael Selbourne
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it. She let the phone fall to the floor, propped herself up against the pillows and scrunched her dark, shoulder-length hair.
The bed felt empty.
Was another woman in his?
She’d stopped it from happening once before. Who was to prevent him from doing it again?
But Kate didn’t think he would. Peter was sexually inactive. In the six months before he’d left he’d not come near her once. She was still attractive, had good boobs and hadn’t put on much weight around her bum since her early twenties. Even her GP agreed that she was suffering from the sense of rejection and her uncertain relationship with him. Worse was the damage he’d done to her self-esteem.
Kate picked up the hand mirror and tweezers from thebedside table, started to pluck her eyebrows and wondered whether Peter might be gay.
By half seven he still hadn’t phoned. She’d have to take some St John’s Wort and a cup of herbal tea to stay awake. She got out of bed, put on a heavy towelling dressing gown and, clutching it around her, shuffled to the door. The flat was
so
cold.
Halfway down the corridor she was struck by dizziness, and literally had to drag herself along the wall to the kitchen. She made it to the kettle without blacking out completely, then pulled herself along the worksurfaces to a chair. She sat down, wincing. The stabbing pains in her legs and back were coming on again. Actually she’d been feeling a lot worse recently, and was positive she was coming down with something. She shouldn’t let Peter make her feel like this. Her low self-esteem was deepening her depression, making her more prone to whatever illness was going around.
‘I’m an attractive and nice person,’ her therapist had urged her to say aloud.
Perhaps she should take the initiative and confront Peter: demand to know if he still loved her and whether he was seeing someone else. Time was passing her by. How long could she afford to wait?
Peter paced between his reflection in the kitchen window and the mirror at the bottom of the stairs. He ruffled his short, fair hair to bring out the widow’s peak of the maturing male and admired his straight nose and hazel eyes. He still felt very good-looking.
He picked up his phone from the coffee table and slumped onto the sofa. Should he call her? He’d have to. He had to be stronger and make a clean break. This was supposed to be his prime, when attractive women inpencil skirts and white blouses offered him their phone numbers. It was Kate’s presence in his life, even if only at the end of the phone, which still held him back. And look where he’d ended up to escape her hooks and chains.
He pulled up her number and let his thumb hover above the call key. He’d tried to leave her before, but both times she’d had herself referred to a clinic by her counsellor – ‘therapist’, she liked to call him. He knew he should have left her then, but he’d felt sorry for her and guilty for a fling he’d tried to have with another woman. When she’d sobbed from the hospital bed that she loved him, what could he do?
Kate was still the attractive and sometimes interesting woman he’d met five years ago; still more or less rational for three weeks in a month. He’d tried to talk to her about PMS when the GP had prescribed antidepressants, but she’d hurled a book at his head. The pills had made her ‘mood swings’ worse; that much psychobabble he could accept. He soon noticed that she dropped the names of the drugs into conversation at the art gallery openings and shows for which she lived, as she did the names of famous people, familiarity with which rendered her acceptable to the self-obsessed in-crowd, sipping from glasses of bad white wine.
Peter put the phone down, sat back and shut his eyes. He’d wanted to leave without telling her the truth, without having to watch those unnerving scenes and sobbing fits which had weakened his resolve last time. This time he’d lied his way out. He was depressed,
The bed felt empty.
Was another woman in his?
She’d stopped it from happening once before. Who was to prevent him from doing it again?
But Kate didn’t think he would. Peter was sexually inactive. In the six months before he’d left he’d not come near her once. She was still attractive, had good boobs and hadn’t put on much weight around her bum since her early twenties. Even her GP agreed that she was suffering from the sense of rejection and her uncertain relationship with him. Worse was the damage he’d done to her self-esteem.
Kate picked up the hand mirror and tweezers from thebedside table, started to pluck her eyebrows and wondered whether Peter might be gay.
By half seven he still hadn’t phoned. She’d have to take some St John’s Wort and a cup of herbal tea to stay awake. She got out of bed, put on a heavy towelling dressing gown and, clutching it around her, shuffled to the door. The flat was
so
cold.
Halfway down the corridor she was struck by dizziness, and literally had to drag herself along the wall to the kitchen. She made it to the kettle without blacking out completely, then pulled herself along the worksurfaces to a chair. She sat down, wincing. The stabbing pains in her legs and back were coming on again. Actually she’d been feeling a lot worse recently, and was positive she was coming down with something. She shouldn’t let Peter make her feel like this. Her low self-esteem was deepening her depression, making her more prone to whatever illness was going around.
‘I’m an attractive and nice person,’ her therapist had urged her to say aloud.
Perhaps she should take the initiative and confront Peter: demand to know if he still loved her and whether he was seeing someone else. Time was passing her by. How long could she afford to wait?
Peter paced between his reflection in the kitchen window and the mirror at the bottom of the stairs. He ruffled his short, fair hair to bring out the widow’s peak of the maturing male and admired his straight nose and hazel eyes. He still felt very good-looking.
He picked up his phone from the coffee table and slumped onto the sofa. Should he call her? He’d have to. He had to be stronger and make a clean break. This was supposed to be his prime, when attractive women inpencil skirts and white blouses offered him their phone numbers. It was Kate’s presence in his life, even if only at the end of the phone, which still held him back. And look where he’d ended up to escape her hooks and chains.
He pulled up her number and let his thumb hover above the call key. He’d tried to leave her before, but both times she’d had herself referred to a clinic by her counsellor – ‘therapist’, she liked to call him. He knew he should have left her then, but he’d felt sorry for her and guilty for a fling he’d tried to have with another woman. When she’d sobbed from the hospital bed that she loved him, what could he do?
Kate was still the attractive and sometimes interesting woman he’d met five years ago; still more or less rational for three weeks in a month. He’d tried to talk to her about PMS when the GP had prescribed antidepressants, but she’d hurled a book at his head. The pills had made her ‘mood swings’ worse; that much psychobabble he could accept. He soon noticed that she dropped the names of the drugs into conversation at the art gallery openings and shows for which she lived, as she did the names of famous people, familiarity with which rendered her acceptable to the self-obsessed in-crowd, sipping from glasses of bad white wine.
Peter put the phone down, sat back and shut his eyes. He’d wanted to leave without telling her the truth, without having to watch those unnerving scenes and sobbing fits which had weakened his resolve last time. This time he’d lied his way out. He was depressed,
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