Strangers. Rosie Thomas

saucepan in the house dirty.

      They had been happy … There was a lot of laughter printed on those confetti fragments. Lying numbly in her tiny space with Steve’s hand her only warmth, Annie wished that she could breathe life into them again.

      At the end of that time Martin had gone to work in Milan. Here, Annie saw herself with him at the airport, her face crushed against the leather shoulder of his coat as he hugged her. For two years they had separated, because they had grown out of play-acting married life.

      Annie remembered the flat that she had taken. It was close to here, above the creaking weight that pinned her like a butterfly to a board. She followed the turns of the streets that would take her there, and up the stairs into her rooms. She saw the colour of the walls – had she really painted them aubergine? – and the fringed Biba lampshades. The flicker under the skin of her face might have been a smile.

      At the end of two years Martin had come home from Italy. They had found each other’s company all over again, as comfortably fitting as a winter coat left on a peg all through the summer, and then gratefully put on with the coming of cold weather. Within a year they were engaged. Their parents met and approved, exchanging drinks in their similar houses, pleased that their children had found the way at last. And a year after that, with Matthew’s still face watching from inside her head, Annie was married.