Louise stares through the window at the queue outside the chip shop. People are waiting steadfastly in the relentless drizzle. What a stupid name for a chippy, she thinks. As if anyone would want to linger longer here than absolutely necessary.
This Skegness holiday apartment is newly built on the site of the old Miner’s Convalescent Home. Men, old before their time, used to come here to stare at the sea, their lungs fizzing and crackling like batter when it hits hot oil.
Louise is here on her own convalescence; a charity-funded respite from her husband. Terry is in a dementia care home now. She told him it was just for a couple of weeks, but she thinks it will be longer.
Life at home had become an exercise in bearing the unbearable. Terry paced the house night after night, refusing to sleep, endlessly trying and failing to put on his shoes and tie his shoelaces. She had taken to sleeping on the sofa, listening to the endless thump-thump of his shoes as he gave way to frustration, dropping them to the floor in defeat.
But since she arrived here there’s been something strange. Thump-thump. Every night from the room above. Just like Terry. Thump-thump. She’d go up and beg for respite but she knows from bitter experience that it will make no difference. He’s here: in spirit, if not in body. Refusing to let her rest, admonishing her for abandoning him. Thump-thump. And she knows that she will linger on the stairs, listening to that sound, filled with longing and dread. Longing for it to be him. Longing for it not to be him.
Tracey Stanley is a Cardiff-based writer of poetry and short fiction. She writes mainly about loss and memory, childhood, current affairs and the COVID-19 pandemic. Find Tracey at on Twitter at @fragmentsstone and at stonefragments.org.uk.
Photo by Somia Lone on Unsplash
