Free Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes

the corners of the yard. The wind blew the top branches; if I could hear them from here, it would have been a rattling sigh. The kettle roared away in the stillness, my eyes back to feeling dry and sore as if they’d never be able to cry again. It looked cold outside. I yawned.
    I took my tea into the bedroom, opening the curtains fully so that I could see the tops of the trees moving in the wind when I lay down on my bed.
    I watched the branches swaying, dancing, the gray clouds behind them scudding along at a merry pace. The tops of the branches waving at me, lying wretched and scrubbed to pieces on top of the duvet.
    All I have to do is stay alive.

Tuesday 18 November 2003
    The next morning he was dressed and gone before the alarm clock woke me at seven.
    The shower was usually the only thing that really woke me up, and I moved from a state of blissful, dreamy warmth into a kind of queasy discomfort, as though I’d been a bit on the drunk side of tipsy and had somehow misbehaved. I hadn’t, of course, I hadn’t drunk anything at all last night—I could remember every delicious detail of the sex that had taken up much of the dark hours. But even so, in the cleansing warmth of the shower, the familiar scent of my shampoo and soap somehow grounding me back into normal life, I couldn’t escape from the earlier part of the evening. What the fuck was that all about?
    I took myself off to work and plowed through a few jobs that had been hanging over my head for a while, trying to clear my head of the tiredness that comes from not much sleep and lots of sex. Just when I’d managed to forget about him, my phone buzzed on my desk with a text.
     
    Sorry about last night. Was not v good impression. Forgive me?
    I left the phone on the desk for a while and pondered my reply. If I closed my eyes for a second I could see his face on the pillow next to me, the light from the bedside lamp, his blond hair shining at the edges, those blue eyes dark and regarding me with something I couldn’t fathom. And the dark red bruise around his eye, swelling under his eyebrow, the cut skin. And the fact that despite it all he was smiling.
     
    It’s fine.
    I looked at my reply for minutes, thinking about what else I wanted to say. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it, feel free to turn up in whatever state takes your fancy?” “It’s fine, thanks for coming?” “It’s fine, at least the sex part was, not sure about the rest of it?”
    In the end I hit the back button, deleted my reply, and left his text unanswered. As my English teacher used to tell me, if you can’t think of the right thing to say, say nothing at all.

Monday 26 November 2007
    I went back to work on Monday the way I always did, one foot in front of the other, so tired I almost couldn’t remember which routes I’d taken last week. The bus stop I wanted was a mile away and I was already late. I tried to hurry but my feet were sluggish. I hadn’t seen or heard Stuart since Saturday night. For all I knew he was still inside his flat and hadn’t been out at all on Sunday. Sometimes I heard noises from upstairs, a soft footfall, a cabinet door, the noise of bathwater draining away. But more often there was no noise at all.
    Caroline came to find me at eleven.
    “You coming down for a coffee?” she asked chirpily.
    I wondered how much sleep she’d had this weekend. “Maybe later, I just want to finish this.”
    “Christ, you look like death. I didn’t think you’d drunk that much.”
    She made me laugh in spite of myself. “Don’t hold back—tell me what you really think.”
    “Are you all right, Cathy? One minute you were there on Saturday and then you’d gone. Robin said something about you wanting to have an early night.”
    “Yes—I just didn’t feel—I mean . . . I don’t know. I’m not really the going-out type.”
    She smiled. “They are a bit loud, aren’t they? The girls, I mean. You’ve got no excuse though. You’re younger than me. How