Narrative
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I call them the good years. I have always called them that. Beaming as though your brightness were my achievement. Perhaps it was. I left too many silences in my wake, so you filled them with pride on my behalf. It was easier that way. D had remarried. She hated me, her eyes narrowed whenever
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I told myself I was trying. That was the word I clung to – trying. A good house, a lovely baby, and a man who worked because he loved us. But each evening I felt the walls move closer, until I was phoning the police because the dark was unbearable. Hospitals too. I wanted someone
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I didn’t expect him to say thank you. But I thought he might see what I was trying to do. I arrived early. Always do. Old habit from court. Always be early, always observe the room before you’re observed. The café was sterile, unmodern, one of those places that pretends to be warm but smells
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I thought I understood love. At least, I had mimicked the posture of it. I’d held hands, spoken vows, walked the straight line of domestic duty. I had smiled in photographs and stood still in kitchens with the weight of a thousand invisible expectations pressing against my chest. But when I met her, I realised
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There is a phenomenon as old as myth itself: the fury of the wronged woman. The Greeks knew it well; the Erinyes, or Furies, primordial goddesses of vengeance, born not of love or justice, but of violated oaths and bloodlines betrayed. They pursued with unrelenting purpose those who had disturbed the sacred order – particularly
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~ A mother’s perspective. “He was never very good with ordinary women. Too intense, too dazzling. Women like that – girls, really, don’t know what to do with men who shine too brightly. They want safety, not blaze. Stability, not confrontation. And he…he was never built for mediocrity. I saw it in him early. The
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I thought your birth might fix me. You arrived with the smell of lemons still in my mouth, and something broken already in my chest. I told people you saved my life (and you did) but I never told them I was terrified I might ruin yours. Dennis was gone most weeks, and the walls
Reade Saunders 