49-50 Years Old

The kitchen, finished, is perfect. More than six months gone and now the builder has moved in. He cooks for her, whistling music while she waits in the other room, listening, smelling, avoiding the kitchen that belongs to him now; not her at all.

He says he’s going to start work on her bedroom soon. Their bedroom. The bedroom he calls it, as if there has only ever been one. He works hard, always at night. Moving like an artist who has learned to hate light. Busting experimental holes in the corner where she used to toss her clothes when this place belonged to her, and the draughts in it were hers alone, and were of her temperature.

He talks of the future, an extension, somewhere for her son if he wants to come home. A place to keep his collection. She doesn’t ask, has never wanted to know, what exactly it is that he collects. It’s in storage at the moment, his collection.

‘Not nearly enough room here yet.’

Not yet. Her home is still exploding. She tries to find a tune in his whistling, but there’s nothing there, light constant noise. Wet air snagged, hollowed out by flakes on his lips. She taps her foot, rhythmless.

The idea of her son, wanting to come home makes her smile. The last time they were all together was to celebrate Fronde’s engagement to a girl called Egglamentia. She had not been introduced to his fiancé before the dinner, and was not surprised when Egglamentia didn’t arrive.

‘Ha! Don’t worry Mum. She’s just new in town. Gets lost easily, that’s all.’

Outside shaking his head calling Egglamentia a bitch to the dead answer phone and night air before coming in to the comfort of his father.

'Don’t worry son. It’s going to be OK.’

She had left them together, drinking, without ‘Goodbye’.

‘Dinner’s ready.’

It's served at the dining table in the perfect kitchen. The whistling doesn’t stop, even when he’s got food in his mouth, scratched torn paper edges cultivated by smiles over the steam of the impossibly hot food.

‘’swrong?’

‘Nothing! Just waiting while it cools down.’

For six months she hasn’t been hungry.