The Other Side of the Screen - part 7
The weekend leaves no visible marks, which is almost worse than if it had. There is nothing to point to. No argument, not even a surgical suggestion delivered across the kitchen table. Don was simply... absent, in the particular way that requires no effort and leaves no evidence. Saturday he had watched television. Not with any malice. Just the settled, unthinking absorption of a man in his own habitat, the remote control an extension of his hand, the sofa shaped to him. She had sat at the other end of it for a while, then made tea, then tidied things that didn't need tidying, then sat again. He hadn't asked her to leave and hadn't asked her to stay and the not-asking was its own kind of answer to a question she was tired of asking. Saturday evening they had gone to the pub to meet friends — Jamie and Caro, who Lizzie genuinely liked, who she'd been looking forward to, had done her hair for, had worn the green dress for, the one that made her feel like a person with ...