Love Always by Harriet Evans

ignores her; if this were a different situation I would love how much my mother and her cousin loathe each other, really so much that sometimes it’s a wonder they don’t simply take their shoes off and wrestle on the floor. Mum turns to me again. ‘Really, darling. I mean, he’s your husband.’
    There is a rushing sound in my head again. I look up to the ceiling.
    ‘He’s not any more,’ I hear myself say. ‘What?’ she says. ‘What?’
    The rushing is louder and louder. ‘I’ve left him. Or rather he’s left me. That’s why he’s not here.’
    They all turn to me. I feel myself going red, like a child caught doing something they shouldn’t. It’s weird. They look at me, Mum’s jaw drops open and the silence stretches out till it is overwhelming, until Mary Beth helpfully drops a glass on the floor. It shatters, which at least gives us all something to do.
    Mum flattens herself against the wall, away from the path of glass which has splintered closest to her, and pushes shards towards the centre of the room with one velvet toecap. ‘Oh, my gosh,’ says poor Mary Beth, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘Darn it.’ She crouches on the ground and Louisa flies in with a dustpan and brush screeching, ‘Don’t touch the glass! Careful!’
    There’s a brief moment’s silence. I watch them, watch the splinters and the stem of the glass, rolling slowly around the lino on its side.
    ‘Nat?’ Jay is still behind me, I hadn’t seen him. ‘You’ve left Oli? What? Why?’
    ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I say, and then helpfully, the floor feels liquid beneath my feet and is rising up to meet me. I step back, away from the glass, and shapes and colours swim before my eyes and it is almost a relief when gradually, everything goes black, and I sink to the ground in a dead faint.

Chapter Six
    When I awake, I’m not sure where I am, or what’s going on. It’s dark. I sit up and look around me, blinking in confusion, and slowly, it all comes back to me.
    The first thing I notice is that I’m in my old bedroom. The curtains are half drawn. They took me up here, Jay and the Bowler Hat lugging me up the wide staircase, and I fell into bed and fell fast asleep – a sort of narcolepsy, I could barely keep my eyes open.
    I look at my watch; it is a quarter to five but I don’t know how long I’ve been up here. I stretch and yawn, running my hands through my hair. I have a throbbing feeling, as if I don’t have a headache but am about to get one. I run my fingers slowly, experimentally, over my skin. There is a plaster on my forehead, and underneath a swollen lump forming, hot to the touch. Perfect. A massive bruise should be there by tomorrow. Just in time.
    Oh dear, I think again. I fainted like a lunatic. My elbow is very sore, from where I must have hit it on the way down. As is my thigh. I feel dreadful, as though I’m hungover and I’ve been beaten up, but more than that I am embarrassed, mortified, even.
    I didn’t want to tell my mother my marriage was over, not like that. She didn’t deserve that – none of them did. At Granny’s funeral too – I wince; it’s awful.
    There’s a soft tap at the oak door. ‘Come in,’ I say.
    The door opens slowly, and Jay’s handsome face appears around it. ‘How are you?’ he says.
    ‘You want the truth? Pretty rotten,’ I tell him. I crane my head, to see him better. ‘And sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you to find out like that.’
    ‘What the hell, Nat? What’s going on with you?’ he says, advancing into the room. He sits down heavily on the bed next to mine and switches on the bedside lamp, his body casting a huge shadow on the opposite wall. ‘You’ve left Oli? But you guys were – he was your life!’
    He is looking at me as if I’ve just killed his pet rabbit.
    ‘Yeah?’ I say. ‘Right.’
    ‘Yeah!’ Jay says, almost angrily. ‘What’s up with you?’
    ‘It’s not me,’ I say. I laugh. ‘Well, perhaps it is. He –