I love the garden at this time of year ablaze with full bloomed violet and purple hydrangea and the heady perfume of lilac cascading from fake Roman urns – if it wasn’t for Jack!
Oh but I mustn’t think like this because if I do I’m lost!
Wriggling into my cream trench coat and fastening the belt loosely I tiptoe into the tiny shared kitchen where I reach for the sharpest knife in the acacia wooden block, wrap it tightly in the thick blue towel and push it down deeply into his cheap black sports bag.
My shaky fingers close tightly around his oyster card as I pull the heavy old oak front door closed behind me.
It’s a lovely late Spring morning the sky is a cloudless azure blue and there are happy week- end people, children and dogs spilling out everywhere. The smells of posh sausages frying, organic coffee and warm flaky croissants waft around but metaphorically speaking I am miles away.
My body goes into automatic as I descend into the dim and dusty station and board the crowded tube. At Belsize Park I alight and follow the signs for the exit.
My teeth are chattering but it’s hot, so very hot;
I feel queasy and dizzy and my tongue seems like it’s glued to the roof of my mouth.
I mustn’t give up though! It has to be today!
The house is a lot bigger than I had imagined, I struggle with the fancy jet black wrought iron gate and virtually fall onto the door bell tripping on a hidden stepping stone.
I notice a shadow behind the stained glass window of the Victorian front door. Ringing the bell again I bend and attempt to peer into the hallway. The shadow turns and disappears.
Oh how I wish I had just walked away here!
Oh how I wish when the door had opened and he stood there looking for all the world like a Greek God that I’d said something clever, witty even pathetic like the person I have learnt to become!
Oh how I wish I’d said that ‘We were over!’ because that’s what I wanted to say – all I wanted , needed to say!
I could, should have walked away purchased a big bottle of Prosecco and a tub of posh chocolate cookie ice-cream and gone home to binge watch my favourite romantic films but I didn’t.
Slowly I unzipped his cheap black sports bag withdrew the sabre sharp knife, released it from the thick blue towel and thrusted it deeply into his sparkling white shirted belly and then and only then did I walk away!
Sobbing I turned back to see him slumped in the doorway attempting to stem the blood gushing out of his body with both of his hands and I said what I wish I had said all those months ago.
‘We’re over!’
But then I saw her the little girl – his little girl dressed in a pale pink frilly dress, blonde plaits hanging down her back crisp white ankle socks – only now they were turning red her socks, her dress, her hands as she cradled him, even her plaits were speckled with bright red blood.
‘Daddy! Daddy Please, Please Wake Up?
’Daddy!’ she cried.
I slumped to the hard cold pavement as a lifetime of repressed memories surfaced before my eyes. One cold grey Winter morning, a hammering at the peeling, padlocked door of our council flat in South London. My Daddy getting up from his well worn flowery patterned armchair to open it and then……A grunt, words I didn’t understand, two men dressed in black and My Daddy on the floor. Blood so much blood on my white socks, my pretty pink dress, even on my chestnut plaits.
Oh how could history repeat itself so savagely?
In the hot and stuffy interview room at the Police Station I sip an insipid milky cup of tea that makes me want to vomit.
The man asks me questions, so many questions but I just stare at the spider spinning it’s glorious web up there high in the corner and repeat my Mother’s words when she came home from work that horrible day all those years ago. The same words that I wish I had said when I first found out that Jack – my beautiful University tutor was married with a family.
‘Its over!’
Tricia Lloyd Waller has always loved story since she first learnt to speak. She has recently had work accepted by The World of Myth and The Orange Rose Lit Mag, she was 2022 winner of The Pen to Print poetry competition.
The Cabinet of Heed 