The Letter

Havermouth, Present Time

Daylight was glaring. The beginning of the end, she thought as she showered and dressed. She ate in the kitchen, looking out onto the uncompromising dessert of the back garden, and remembering how it had looked when she had last stood in the same position.

Her mother had always had a penchant to greenery. There had always been some new exotic plant being coaxed into reluctant life under a palace of plastic-wrap and wire, watered precisely on the hour, to a measure – no more and no less.

If Tiffany had paid as much attention to her marriage or her daughter, Aislen thought, and then pushed it aside, identifying it as internalized misogyny. Tiffany’s marriage breakdown was in equal measure the responsibility, if not more so, of Patrick, who had been the carbon copy of his era…

“I have never…” His glower bore down on Aislen. He had been wearing the shirt that Aislen had zip locked in her suitcase. “Never been as ashamed to show my face around town, as I am in this