Issue Two

Their first joint purchase was a cafetiere. Back then there were long mornings, lazy sex and coffee, followed by urgent sex and newspapers, lying in the striped sun falling through the blinds. Back then they both made the coffee, washed dishes, mopped the linoleum, googled new ways to remove old stains from the toilet. Jean’s fears – that Avery would drown in the bathtub, that Jean would suffocate by moth’s wings, that each day the two of them rode the bus was a countdown to a crash – faded in the radiant glow of Avery’s optimism. All could be conquered. All was possible.

Their biggest purchase was the house. Terraced. Victorian. Hallway too narrow to get around Avery’s bicycle without snagging a loose jumper or handbag, but in the perfect neighbourhood and five minutes from the train. Subsidence a distinct possibility but then wasn’t everything subsiding these days? Passion. Income after their hefty mortgage payments. Boobs and bum. Her energy levels after the accident. Not a bus, as it turned out, but a drunk driver mounting their curb as she took out the rubbish. Jean the only one noting rubbish collections by then, bottles clinking as she heaved the recycling into the bin.