Page 71 of Pyg

Fran tilted her head. “You didn’t let me finish.”

“No. I meant what I said.”

“Just because you got a little scratch and your coat got ripped. I’ll buy you a new one, a better one. Don’t you think you’re being a bit petty?”

Alice breathed out a laugh. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

Fran released Alice’s hands and held up her own.

Alice searched Fran’s face for any sign of self-awareness, any hint of remorse.Nothing.

“You’re a husk, Fran. You’re incapable of love.” She turned, opened the door, and stepped through it. Such a simple and obvious thing to do, but in the two years she’d been intimate with Fran, she’d never walked away from her before. Throughout their affair, she’d been enthralled by the woman. Yes, she could be cold and haughty, but never had she been so cruel, and in that moment, Alice realised that was who she really was. It hurt like hell, but the spell had been broken.

With her heart thundering in her chest, Alice paced out of the hotel, her little suitcase clattering behind her. She made it to her car before the tears fell. Ugly tears, as she turned the key in the ignition. Anguished tears, when the Fiesta didn’t start the first time. She stroked the dashboard.

“Come on, old girl. Not now, not now.”

Relieved tears, when the Fiesta coughed and spluttered into life. Imagining Fran charging into the road after her, Alice pulled out of the space and sped off, her one functioning headlamp lighting the way. She really needed to get that fixed. She really needed to replace the Fiesta, full stop. But first, she needed to pay off her ridiculous credit card balance and sort her fucking life out.

She really needed to stop thinking for just a minute. She twisted the knob on the stereo. Of all the billions of songs in the world, that insipid track about being in love and giving it your all sang out of the tinny little speakers. The tears came hard. Alice sniffed and wiped her nose on her torn coat sleeve, Fran’s look of wounded confusion in the front of her mind.

Was I too hard on her? Fran had tried to apologise and make amends, hadn’t she?

“Fuck off, John Legend,” she screamed and pushed a tape into the deck, which clicked and whirred until an angry, wronged-woman song filled the car.

That’s better. She turned up the volume, singing along through her snot bubbles.

A jarring mechanical clunk sounded from the deck, then the song distorted as the tape snagged and crinkled into the machine’s inner workings.

“No, no, no.” Alice glanced down and rapidly punched the eject button with her finger. “You ate Madonna already. Don’t take Alanis from me too.”

The tape deck ignored her pleas and devoured the cassette, crunching until it whined a high-pitched scream of mechanical distress and the reels pulled the mangled tape through. Alice flicked her eyes down and pumped the eject button again.Fucking jammed.A truck horn honked like an angry goose.

“Shit!” She swerved back onto her side of the road, slowing to a near stop as she clasped the steering wheel with both hands. The truck’s taillights shone like demonic eyes in the rear-view mirror, thankfully shrinking into the distance.

After a couple of calming breaths — in through her nose, out through her mouth — Alice accelerated again and took the next left off the highway and onto a back road, her favoured shortcut. Her mind whirred in the absence of any musical distraction. The buzz of her mobile phone sounded from her pocket. After the near-miss she’d just had, she resisted the urge to fish it out and glance at the screen, but she didn’t have to look to know it was Fran. Would it be Jekyll or Hyde at the other end of the line? Perhaps both? The buzzing stopped, and seconds later came thedingof a voicemail.

Curiosity gnawed at her, but Alice drove on into the inky night. Her headlight illuminated something in the road. A large, dark lump. She leaned towards the windscreen as she drew closer to the obstruction. She glanced in the rear-view; no sign of any other vehicles, so she came to a stop.

Alice climbed out of her car and peered into the darkness.

What is that? A cow?

13

GASLIGHT GODDESS

Alice stirred, squeezing her eyes shut and opening them again, trying to adjust to the low light. The curtains were still open, but daylight had faded to dusk. She tried to sit up, but was immediately reacquainted with pain; a sharp stabbing in her wrist that radiated up her arm, and a dull throb in her knee. Alice slowly attempted to flare her fingers and recoiled with the pain of it. With her left arm, she flicked on the bedside lamp to look for bruising and turned to see the indentation of where someone had been lying next to her.Fran?

So strange that Alice had, until recently, yearned for the woman to occupy her space. She’d imagined a life where they’d wake up and fall asleep alongside one another as part of a normal routine. But this — this felt like an invasion. She’d asked her to leave, hadn’t she?

Alice glanced at the closed door and noticed the strip of light underneath. She got to her feet and, with her pain-free hand, pulled her robe around her as best she could. Her hair would be a frizzy fright, but she wasn’t trying to impress anyone. With a steadying breath, Alice hobbled into the hall and followed the light to the lounge. Fran smiled up at her from the couch, where she was sitting with a glass of wine in one hand, her phone in the other.

“Hello, sleepyhead. You’ve had a good couple of hours. Feeling any better?”

Alice shook her head. “No, not really. My wrist, it’s?—”

“Let me see.” Fran placed her glass on the coffee table —no bloody coaster —and stood. She took Alice’s arm and glanced at it for a moment, before peering into her face. “You do look a bit of a fright, you poor thing. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you makeup-free.”

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