Asylum Road

It made my skin prick – something about the inevitability of the tracks, taking me as far as they could before land fell into sea

could have switched – there were empty forward-facing seats – but I hated doing this. I couldn’t stand the tension when the train arrived at each station and new passengers got on, their eyes boring into me as they moved along the aisle. And I couldn’t bear the shame of being told to move if I’d taken a place that did not belong to me

sky turned a pink

I found myself wishing to be like her. Bedford. Hedonistic. Denying my own hunger for security

Every place, person and meal she described sounded like a secret language of sophistication. I

From survivable it became tolerable. And from tolerable, gradually, something else

He would greet me with a bemused expression, to remind me I did not own him.

I told myself this was not a sign of anything. I was reading into things again. This was simply absence. Absence with an absence of meaning

My eyes rested on a title about survival. I drew it out. On closer inspection, a survival A–Z. The novelty kind with illustrations. I’d owned something like it as a child, or perhaps even the same one. Dangers were illustrated in a way that felt calming, like the sedate line drawings of airline safety manuals. I’d remembered one instruction, in particular, that if you fell down a waterfall you were supposed to close your legs to prevent internal rupturing

Our arguments were mostly silent, or silent on his side. Often in the dark, lying in bed so neither face could see the other. Not an argument then, but a pressure. A malignant quiet that sank into the mattress until I couldn’t bear to lie there. I would get up in a dramatic fashion, go down to the sofa, then crawl back in a few hours later when he was sound asleep