Click for podcast (eighth story)
Read by Claire Lacey
CDs and DVDs go into the pink charity sack along with a single Blu-ray disc. Where Eagles Dare. Never watched it. Never plan to. The bag is put on the front doorstep and I slam the door.
I donate Terry’s clothes to PDSA and smile sweetly at the woman in the shop as I dump the bulging bin liners on the counter. It feels like the right thing to do. He hated animals.
I take all the plates from the kitchen dresser and place them with great care in a box. Authentic bone china. A gift from Terry’s dear old Auntie Mabel when he moved her into that care home near King’s Lynn. God rest her soul, she didn’t last long after that.
They’d belonged to her mother before her. Family heirlooms, you could say. Precious.
What to do with them.
Car boot? Ebay? Too much hassle. I could give them away, perhaps to one of the full-time mummies who sell cake stands in the market. They’d find a use for them.
Maybe.
In the end, I smash them with the last hammer from Terry’s toolkit and chuck them in a skip two streets over. The hammer follows, rust-red on the white shards.
The books are burned in a bonfire in the middle of the back lawn and I tell Mr. Gibbs to fuck right off when he pokes his scroty little head over the fence to complain. Ludlum, Deighton, Patterson all up in smoke, even the Follett doorstoppers that need a bit of lighter fluid before the flames take. A very masculine reader, our Terry, liked his heroes anti and his women disposable.
And the house slowly empties, like a colon dumping its last meal, until only one part of my old life remains. I sit in the stripped bedroom – bed and wardrobe fly-tipped in a layby on the A10 – looking at that solitary, sad remnant and wondering exactly what the hell I can do with Terry.
(c) Susan Smith, 2018
Susan Smith was born in Scotland and is a recent convert to writing following many years working in the pharmaceutical industry. An MA graduate in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University, she is working on her first novel, The Brazen Calyx. Susan lives in Macclesfield.
Claire Lacey is a former member of the BBC English Repertory Company. Stage includes Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, Helen in dark comedy Come Die With Me (The Vaults) and Gratiana in The Revenger’s Tragedy. Screenwork includes feature The Hippopotamus, Brief Encounters (ITV), and sci-fi feature Game Day opposite Stephen McGann; She’s also an experienced voice-over artist.
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