‘But he’s got a broken arm,’ said Amy.
‘It’s actually my wrist that’s broken.’ Both women ignored him.
‘He can have my seat,’ said the man in the floral shirt. He made to get up.
‘She should stand up,’ insisted Amy.
‘Make me,’ said the woman, a latent threat lacing her voice. Amy stepped back, alarmed by the escalation.
‘Calm down, love,’ said a suited man sitting by the window, glancing up from his paper. Amy looked at him, and to her surprise he was looking back at her. He was telling her to calm down, after that woman had clearly threatened her.
‘I’m not the one who needs to calm down,’ she said, realising her voice was starting to crescendo. ‘That woman stole a seat from a man who needed it and now she’s threatening me. You all heard her.’ She looked around the train carriage. A silence took hold, as if people had suddenly remembered that no one was meant to speak to strangers in the city. Certainly not on public transport. ‘Didn’t you?’ she asked. Her voice sounded too loud, even in her own head.
‘I’m fine to stand,’ said the injured man, looking embarrassed for his part in the drama.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ the seat thief asked Amy.
As if complicit with the commuters, the train jolted. Amy was thrown forwards. She clutched a pole and regained her balance, but her bag swung from her shoulder and the empty wine bottle fell out. It hit the floor of the carriage with a thump and rolled under a seat.
‘She’s drunk,’ declared the seat thief, as if that justified her own actions.
‘I am not drunk,’ said Amy. ‘I just . . . ’ She saw everyone staring at her.
It was none of their business why she had that bottle. It was none of anyone’s business.
Amy bent down to escape their gaze and retrieve the bottle. It rolled further away from her and Amy found herself on her hands and knees on the sticky floor, surrounded by shoes. She saw a blue M&M, an empty Coke can and a half-eaten burger under the seats. It smelt of pickle. The bottle had gone, rolled out of sight as if it were embarrassed by her too.
It was too much.
The train came to a halt, the doors opened, and Amy felt fresh air rush into the carriage. It was three stops early but Amy knew she had to get into that air. Away from these people. Away from the bottle that had abandoned her.
Maybe it didn’t deserve to be rescued after all.
She stood up, pushed her way off the train and stepped out into the July evening.
It had taken three full trains to go by before Amy was finally ready to reboard. A ten-minute walk from the station later and here she was.
Home.
Amy felt better just seeing her front garden. Her beautiful pots guarded the house faithfully. She held her key ring tightly in her hand as she finally slid her key into the lock. Amy went in and closed the door behind her, ready to forget that the evening had ever happened.
She stepped forwards into her hallway and tripped. Damn. One of her giant stacks of newspapers had fallen over. Again. Newspapers were mingling with unopened mail and dried petals. The debris lined the floor like autumn leaves. She shuffled through; she couldn’t face clearing up the mess. Not this evening. Some of the other towers of newspapers looked precarious too, reaching floor to ceiling like Doric columns. Her hallway reminded her of the Acropolis.
The Acropolis after a party, she thought, stumbling over an empty wine bottle. She used to store her collection of green bottles in the kitchen, but she’d had to move some so she could get into the fridge. Ten or twenty privileged bottles sat neatly on her hallway shelves; a couple had even been transformed into vases with stems of honeysuckle. But that had been some time ago, and the flowers had dehydrated into crunchy brown husks.
Many of the bottles lounged empty on the floor, still waiting for a purpose.
A second chance.
Most of Amy’s clothes were in a wardrobe that she could no longer access. Tim’s clothes would be in there too. He hadn’t taken any of them. After it happened, Amy had used the base of the wardrobe for extra storage, then a few things had accumulated in front of it. Mirrors, bottles, a couple of indoor pots. She’d tried to get an outfit out one morning a few years ago, and realised it wasn’t worth the effort. She didn’t really want to wear bright colours now, in any case, so she’d just left their old clothes in the wardrobe and replaced them with an assortment of grey and black essentials; some smart for work, others comfy for home. She kept her ‘active wardrobe’, as she called it, spread on top of one of her boxes, and made sure that she could always still get to the washing machine and the iron. She didn’t want to waste more money on clothes than she had to, not when there were so many beautiful things that she wanted to buy.
It was Saturday morning, so Amy picked up her jeans and a black T-shirt. She made a special effort not to catch a glimpse of herself as she dressed. It was a challenge, as many mirrors lined the room. She knew that mirrors were meant to make a room feel spacious, but today it felt as if they were making the room smaller. Piles of boxes were reflected back at her, towering up and reaching for the ceiling. But even so, many things could not fit in a box and instead littered the room. Vases, unopened bottles of hand lotion, stacks of ashtrays. And the mirrors themselves, of course, mocking her with infinite reflections.
Amy swore under her breath as a shot of pain flew up through her foot. She looked down; she’d just trodden on a cigarette lighter. Good. Nothing damaged. She sat down
