Epitaph by Shaun Hutson

again.

15
     
    Gina Hacket groaned loudly as the mug hit the kitchen floor, slipping from her hand as she dried it.
    It shattered immediately, pieces of the decorated ceramic spraying around like shrapnel.
    Gina crouched down and hurriedly began to gather the pieces. Maybe there was some way she could salvage the mug, glue it back together, perhaps. However, as she collected the shards she saw that was a vain hope. It had broken into five distinct pieces but there were also dozens of much smaller fragments scattered across the tiles around her.
    She held up the largest piece of the mug, gripping it by its still intact handle.
    It should have read To Mum and Dad. The piece she was holding bore the legend
    TO MUM AN
    Laura had decorated it herself during an art class at school earlier in the year and Gina felt an inordinately deep sense of loss at breaking the mug. She tried to tell herself that it was, after all, onlya mug but the fact that her daughter had painted those words on the ceramic seemed to make the loss infinitely more keen. For one ridiculous second, Gina thought she was going to burst into tears. She remained crouching on the floor for a moment longer then slowly straightened up, set the five pieces of broken mug on the nearest worktop and retrieved the dustpan and brush from a cupboard nearby. Wearily she set about collecting the smaller fragments.
    Why, she asked herself, did it have to be that particular mug? Why not the one with the football crest on it (although her husband would have complained if that had fallen victim to her carelessness) or the chipped one with the picture of a bulldog on it? Any one but the one that had been broken.
    No good crying over spilt milk, she told herself. Or broken mugs for that matter. The joke didn’t seem so amusing as she dumped the tiny fragments into the pedal bin and returned the dustpan and brush to their cupboard.
    She checked the oven, ensuring that the casserole she’d prepared earlier wasn’t cooking too quickly. She and Laura would have their dinner at five-thirty, as they always did. She’d keep some of the food warm for Frank for when he got home. Whenever that might be. As she inspected the casserole, Gina caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass of the oven door.
    She ran a hand through her hair and noticed that her mascara was smudged. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed that particu lar fact in the hotel.
    The hotel.
    Her thoughts drifted back to earlier in the day. She experienced that same peculiar and disconcerting mixture of feelings. Guilt mingled with exhilaration. Shame combined with pleasure. It was always the same. After every snatched meeting she ran the same gamut of emotions. Before the event she was like a childthe day before her birthday. Almost breathless with excitement and longing and then, when it was all over again, the darkness descended upon her in the form of self-loathing and doubt.
    Her affair had been going on for ten months, although Gina wasn’t sure if affair was the appropriate word to describe her liaisons. She met with a man periodically and fucked him. That was a more apt description of her current status. The word affair tended to imply candlelit dinners in expensive and intimate restaur ants followed by passionate lovemaking in fine hotels on crisply laundered sheets, not hurried fondling in a car followed by sweaty shagging in a Travelodge.
    It was the second time they’d embarked on such a clandestine relationship (although the word relationship elevated it to something that it really wasn’t). She’d known him, worked for him, nine years earlier, when she’d been in her early twenties. Their first encounter had lasted for six torrid months before she’d become pregnant with Laura although, Gina reminded herself, there was never any question of the child being anyone’s other than her husband’s. By mutual consent they’d finished the first affair and Gina had left work to concentrate on her