AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She goes to take a swig from the glass of wine, but her hand is slippery from the cooking and it slips, smashing on the floor.
“Mommy?” she hears Alice shout from the living room.
“It’s okay—just dropped something. Don’t come in here.”
She looks down, scowling, at the spikes of glass on the tiles, the red from the wine flowing slowly outward. One shard is curving from the floor
, the sharp tip pointing toward the ceiling. Her feet are bare, shoes and socks unnecessary with their expensive underfloor heating, and she picks up her right foot, placing it down on the fragment. She slowly transfers her weight across. She hears a crack as the piece splinters, then senses the slight pop as her skin breaks and the glass enters the soft tissue.
It feels good.
She watches a slow trickle of blood ebb away from her foot, the bright red mixing with the lighter hue of the wine.
“Jess! What the hell are you doing?”
She feels Patrick’s hands on her upper arms. He pulls her away from the mess, pushing her toward a chair. She sits down with a thump. He looks at her, his hands on his hips. She can tell he’s angry, but he doesn’t want to shout.
“You know better than this,” he says, bending down and looking at the wound. “Shit,” he mutters under his breath, wincing as he pulls the slice of glass from the fleshy part of her forefoot. “You’re going to need stitches.”
“I’ll sort it,” she says. “I’ll get Nav to come over.”
Patrick stands up and looks at her. He goes to say something, then stops himself. “I’ll get dinner finished,” he says instead.
She pulls her foot around so she can look. The edges of the cut are straight and precise, but they gape apart, blood flooding from the incision. Patrick passes her a roll of paper towels, and she roughly wraps several around her foot, then hobbles off to the bathroom.
Inside, she locks the door and sits on the closed lid of the toilet. She takes the first aid kit out of the cupboard and opens it up, resting it on the edge of the bath. It’s more than your usual household plasters—a collection of bandages, gauzes, tape: everything she might need for situations like this.
She looks at the bottom of her foot again, then sets to work, pushing the sides of the cut together, drying the area around the wound and sticking it as best she can with surgical tape. But it’s still oozing blood. Patrick’s right: it’s going to need stitches, and she picks up her phone, sending a text. A response comes back immediately.
I’m at work, Jess. I’m on nights. Go to the urgent care clinic like a normal person.
She replies: I’m not a normal person, Nav. You know that. It can wait. When’s the earliest you can come round?
Three small dots appear—he’s typing. Then a pause. She knows she pushes their friendship to the limit, but she can’t bear to go to another drop-in center. The same questions, over and over again. The same looks, the same suspicion.
Her phone beeps.
Fine. Tomorrow morning. I finish at the hospital at 8.
Then a follow-up: I can’t keep doing this.
She sighs and puts her phone down, bandaging her foot as best she can. She puts socks on: she needs to hide the injury from Alice.
When she goes back into the kitchen, Patrick and Alice are sitting at the dining table, Patrick starting to serve dinner. She ruffles Alice’s hair as she sits down, and her daughter looks up, beaming at her.
“Everything okay?” Patrick asks.
She gives him the response he wants: a smile and a nod. She wonders, not for the first time, what’s wrong with her.
* * *
They eat dinner, and Alice tells them about her day at school. It’s a ramble of words, an incoherent telling of a story, but they listen, the indulgent parents of a five-year-old only child. Patrick asks her questions at the right points as she babbles away; she doesn’t notice any hostility between her parents.
Jess runs her bath and puts her daughter to bed. She reads her a story. Everything is calm. Alice snuggles down under her duvet, and Jess gives her a kiss and a cuddle. Her daughter smells of shampoo and warmth and innocence, and she feels a swell of love in her chest. She is thankful—for the hundredth time—that her daughter is normal.
Patrick comes in after her and says goodnight, turning off the light. Jess waits in the hallway as he closes the door, but he walks past her without a word, going downstairs. She follows him into the kitchen, hovering in the doorway as he takes a beer from the fridge.
“I’m sorry, Patrick,” she says, and he nods slowly without looking at her.
