Free This Is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon Page A

matter?
    She didn’t need their money. That made it all the harder to put up with them. Her flat was paid for, she had no mortgage on it. And there was still enough of her mum’s money left to keep her going. She lived on practically nothing anyway.
    So when the work dried up Addie didn’t mind. She took all those paint charts out of her portfolio and she pasted them up on the wall above her desk. They were a thing of beauty, when you set them free of their purpose and allowed them to exist all on their own.
    She placed her little jars of ink along the windowsill next to her desk, where they could catch the light. Now, in the early evening, when the sun comes round, they glow like stained glass, each color shocking in its beauty. Hard to know which is her favorite, she can never decide. She sits there and tries to pick one. The Apple Green or the Cobalt Blue. The purple with the drawing of a plum on its label. Sunshine Yellow and Canary Yellow and Scarlet and Burnt Sienna. Some of them she loves for their names. The Carmine and the Viridian and the Vermilion. Others she loves for their labels. The long-legged spider on the front of the Black Indian ink and the frog on the Brilliant Green. She loves those inks. She only has to look at them and she’s happy.
    She enjoys sorting out her pencils, grouping the blues and the greens and the purples together in one jam jar. The sunny colors in another jar, the yellows and the reds and the oranges all bunched together in a gorgeous jumble.
    She knows it’s a silly way to spend your time, but it gives her pleasure and it doesn’t do anyone any harm. Harmless pleasures, that’s what she tells herself. I’m finally discovering the joy of harmless pleasures.
    Sometimes Della wonders, is Addie just a little bit autistic? Mild end of the spectrum, something that was never diagnosed. The way she lines her mugs up on the shelf, upside down, their handles all turned the same way. The way she laughs when the kids mess up her pencils, you just know she’s going to spend the evening rearranging them.
    “I love the way you use the word mild,” says Hugh with a snort.
    Della teases her about it. “Monica,” she says, “you’re being Monica again.” And Addie will laugh and pretend to be offended. But actually Addie doesn’t mind being Monica. She’s a tidy person, she always has been. Now it’s verging on a pathology. Harmless pleasures, she tells herself, as she tucks shoehorns into all her shoes and lines them up on a rack at the bottom of her wardrobe.
    Sometimes she feels like she’s putting her affairs in order for some kind of a departure. She imagines her life is winding down. She’s just filling time.
     
    YOU KNOW WHEN YOU’RE at a wedding, or a dinner dance, and you’re longing for it to be over so you can go home?
    The champagne reception was enjoyable, the food was good. But now the meal is over and the tables have been cleared back to make space for the dancing. You’re still nursing that last glass of wine. You were talking to someone during the meal but now they’ve gone outside to smoke and you’ve been left alone. It’s too early to leave, it would be rude to leave now. But once the band gets started, once people are up on the dance floor, you’ll be able to slip away. You can whisper good-bye to the hosts. Or maybe you’ll just get up to go to the bathroom and then keep on going, sure nobody will notice anyway.
    The band is playing a Beach Boys medley and the men are throwing their jackets away, the women kicking off their shoes so they can dance in their stocking feet.
    You’re standing at the door, your coat draped over your arm, and you’re scanning the room to check if there’s anyone you need to say good-bye to. But nobody seems to have even noticed you’re leaving.
    You’re just about to slip off. But just at that moment, the band starts playing your favorite song. Not just a song you’re fond of but your favorite song ever, the one that