Chapter 2-The silence after

Donald did not say a word on the way home.

Not one.

Not when I fell into step beside him as the evening wound down. Not when we collected our coats and walked out into the cool Velmoor night. Not when he opened the car door for me with the quiet efficiency of a man performing a task he stopped thinking about a long time ago.

I got in.

He walked around.

He drove.

The city slid past my window in long streaks of orange and gold. The radio played something low and forgettable and neither of us was listening.

Donald’s silence was never empty. He never needed words to make you feel something. He just needed stillness and enough time and eventually you felt everything he wanted you to feel without him saying a single thing.

We pulled into the driveway.

He turned off the engine.

We sat there for a moment and I waited. For anything. His voice. A question. Even something small and pointless about the weather.

He got out of the car.

I followed.

Inside he went straight upstairs. The shower ran. No questions. No conversation. Just water and then silence and then nothing.

I stood in the kitchen.

I poured a glass of water I did not drink. There was a ring on the counter near the kettle. A brown circle from a mug set down in the same spot too many times. I had been meaning to clean it for weeks.

I looked at it.

I did not wipe it.

Upstairs the shower stopped. His footsteps crossed the bedroom floor. The lamp clicked off.

I stood in the kitchen a little longer than I needed to.

Then I went up.

Donald was already in bed, back turned to my side, lamp off. I changed in the dark and lay down beside him and stared at the ceiling. His breathing was already slow and even.

Nothing chased Donald Hargrove into the night.

Nothing ever did.

I lay there and thought about the terrace.

Not what Kelvin said. The way he said my name. Like it still belonged to him. Like four years and a ring and another man’s house around me had not changed a single thing about that.

And his hand.

I could not stop going back to it. Him reaching out and tucking that strand of hair behind my ear like he had every right. My skin was still warm where his fingers had been and before I could stop myself I pressed the back of my hand to my cheek in the dark.

I stopped myself.

My phone was face down on the nightstand.

I told myself I was not going to look at it. I held that for about four minutes. Then I turned on my side, careful not to disturb Donald’s breathing, and reached for it anyway.

One notification. Unknown number. Sent forty minutes ago.

You still smoke the same brand.

I stared at it until I forgot to breathe.

I knew before I typed back. I knew and I typed anyway.

Me: Who is this.

The reply came in under a minute.

Kelvin: Someone who noticed.

Me: Kelvin.

Kelvin: How did you know it was me.

Me: Because no one else would text me about cigarettes at midnight.

Kelvin: Fair enough. Do you want to get the number question out of the way first.

Me: Where did you get my number.

Kelvin: That stays where it came from.

Me: That is not an answer.

Kelvin: No. It isn’t.

I lay there in the dark with the phone above my face. Donald’s breathing stayed even behind me, like nothing in the world had shifted at all. The room was exactly the same as it had been an hour ago. The same ceiling. The same dark. The same man behind me.

Nothing was the same.

Then the three dots appeared.

He was typing.

Then they stopped.

Then they started again.

My thumb stopped moving before I realised why.

Kelvin: How are you, Anita. Actually. How are you.

I read it once.

I read it again.

I put the phone down and stared at the ceiling and my throat closed in a way I was not ready for.

How are you, Anita. Actually. How are you.

Nobody had asked me that. Not like that. Not with the actually in it, like the performed answer was not what he was after.

Four years of Donald’s silence in the car. The ring on the kettle counter. The sketchbooks in their box. The wrong coffee every morning. Four years of being very fine, very composed, very capable of performing a version of myself that was correct in every way that mattered to everyone except me.

And Kelvin Rae texts me at midnight and asks how I actually am.

I told myself no.

And reached for the phone anyway.

I did not answer the message. I just held it. Lay there on my side with Donald breathing behind me, his breathing steady and unbothered, like nothing in the world had shifted at all.

I closed my eyes.

I did not sleep.

I lay there until the dark outside softened. Black to grey. Grey to the pale white of a morning that does not care what the night before contained.

When my phone lit up I already knew.

Kelvin: Good morning, Anita.

I looked at it for a long time.

I did not answer.

I did not put it down either. Even when I told myself I would.