The Blind

A dark short story based on a true one

“It’s an awkward fit, just leave it”

He’d said.

We’d just moved in.

The staircase had been relocated, so it was hard to reach that one landing window, see.

To fit a blind.

Felt strange all the other windows having blinds and that one being all exposed, but we’d get used to it.

“Fancy redesigning a house with a window you can’t bloody reach!”

He’d said.

“But we would be able to if we had a ladder!”

I’d said.

“But we DON’T have a ladder, Debbie!”

He was right.

He was always right.

Anyway, think of all the extra light!

I always try and look on the bright side, I do.

.

I’m lucky to have him.

I mean, we’re lucky to have each other.

Andrew and I.

Have our ups and downs like any couple.

After all, is any relationship ‘love’s young dream’ when you get to our age?

I turned 40 this year.

Still fancies me like mad!

Loves me dressing up for him. Insists on it!

Tells me I need to lose a few pounds.

He’s right……

But it’s like I tell him, I’m never gonna look the same as those young girls on the internet he likes, now, am I?

They’re not even real!

Fillers here and filters there.

I used to work in beauty, so I know what real women look like!

“Oh do shut up!”

He says.

Proper little chatterbox me, see.

And he hates it.

When I’m at work, everyone comments on it.

“Are you ever quiet, Debbie?”

They say.

Those motherly types in our office.

Joking…….I think.

But I do shut up.

If they knew how quiet I had to be sometimes, maybe they’d know why I talk so much at work.

I spoil his concentration, see.

“Love the sound of your own voice!”

He says.

Can be cruel, bit of a mean streak, I know.

But you have to understand, his job is stressful, so he’s bound to lash out a bit…..

I think a lot of men do……

I’m his ‘safe space’.

And I’m no angel, believe me.

I’m a bit shit, really.

What was it Jerry Hall once said?

“A maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom.”

That’s what you have to be apparently, if you want to keep hold of a man. And I’m guessing Mick Jagger took a lot of holding on to.

Well…..let me tell you, I’m none of those things.

Get none of it right.

Don’t know why he’s still with me.

Good looking guy.

Decent job.

Not really a ‘people person’ but I could do far worse.

When I think of some of my exes!

Right scruffy buggers they were!

Crusties!

I mean, lovely ‘salt of the earth’ fellas.

Just……different to him.

Andrew’s a good catch!

Twenty years ago, you’d have found me in a festival tent, smoking wacky baccy and feeling about for someone’s heart chakra.

Oh……I had fun back then!

But you grow up, don’t you?

Can’t live that way forever.

Have to give it up. Be responsible.

My sister, she’s responsible.

Respectable even.

Our Gwen’s a teacher!

Not a classroom assistant but an actual teacher who went to university, got a degree.

I’d have loved to have been that clever.

‘Gifted’ my mum calls her.

Not sure what my gift is.

The gab maybe!

Gift of the gab!

The thing with me is……

I’ve never had that likeability factor.

I have it superficially, people warm to me at first but once they get to know me, they suss me.

See my core.

And it’s rotten, rotten.

It stinks like sulphur and I know they know.

I infect people with my bad.

Make them do bad things.

My stepdad used to say it.

He was a nice person.

He was.

People liked him, said nice things about him.

They did!

Good people.

And if he’d been horrible, they wouldn’t have would they?

And he’d have been horrible to my sister too, wouldn’t he?

But he wasn’t.

Because Gwen was no trouble.

Only I, was trouble.

“Trouble follows you around”

He’d say.

But trouble didn’t follow me around until he did.

But no-one seems to remember that…..

.

Got a dog not so long ago, me and Andrew.

Bought it me for my birthday, he did.

Precious little fluff ball.

Border Collie.

Freddie, I called him.

When he brought it home, oh how happy I was!

This gorgeous warm bodied little creature for my very own.

We can’t have kids.

His issue.

When they did the tests.

Not that I minded.

Not like I’d had a great childhood myself!

And when it’s been that way for you, it makes you cautious about that sort of thing.

Maybe it’s for the best, I told him.

Didn’t like that.

Anyway,  poor little thing - this pup - kept peeing whenever Andrew raised his voice.

Was never going to be a good fit really when I think about it.

’im and a dog…..

“You’re too highly strung!”

I told him.

Didn’t like it when it barked, you see.

“But dogs bark, don’t they? Obviously Andrew!”

I said.

Started hitting it.

Rubbing its nose in its own pee.

“It has to learn!”

He said.

It.

“Start as you mean to go on! You’re a soft touch, Debbie!”

He said.

“A pathetic doormat!”

But it just seemed wrong.

Couldn’t have it.

I just couldn’t.

So I found another home for it.

Him.

Freddie.

Broke my heart parting with him, little sweetheart.

“I don’t know why you’re getting rid”

He said to me.

“Just needs training, has to learn!”

“But he WON’T ever learn!”

I said.

I knew that, because I hadn’t.

I hadn’t learned how to make his tea right.

Hadn’t learned how to please him in bed.

Hadn’t learned how to clean to his standard.

Some of us, are slow learners.

.

His dear little face that day when I said goodbye to him!

Poor little mite.

Couldn’t understand what he’d done wrong.

He just couldn’t.

“Mate, I get it!”

I said to him.

“’Cause I never get what the problem is either!”

Or I hadn’t.

Til tonight.

After all these years.

Tonight, I finally got it.

.

Works night out, it was.

I normally say ‘no’.

“Come on it’s the Christmas do, Debbie!”

Debbie had said.

There are two of us you see.

Debbies.

In our office.

Common name.

So, I goes out on this Christmas do, tonight.

Andrew didn’t want me to, naturally.

He’s never liked my workmates.

“You know you’ll just feel awkward”

He tells me. But for once, I ignore him.

And I didn’t.

Feel awkward.

Had the best time.

I mean, the best. The sort of night out when you’re accidentally spitting as you speak but it doesn’t matter cause you’re all wrecked.

I know you shouldn’t get pissed with your workmates, end up saying stuff you regret, don’t you?

Well, by the end of the night, I was trollied!

And it just all came out, didn’t it?

Said stuff that maybe I shouldn’t.

Because a marriage is private, between a man and a woman, right?

But you have to understand, I was low.

After all what had happened with the pup.

“You have to leave him Debbie!”

Debbie says.

“It’s not right how he treats you!”

And after an hour of em all basically telling me what a twat my husband is, I start to believe em.

So I puffs myself up like a peacock. Shoulders back, tits out.

Full of swagger I am.

Goes home, ready to tell him exactly what I think.

To tell him I’m leaving.

Can’t get my bloody key in the door, can I? Why’s the bastard locked it?

It’s scraping and I’m there in my heels in the pissing rain. I’m sure the neighbours must be thinking;

“Oh aye….what’s she doing? She never goes out. We never see ’er go out!”

Because the curtains are twitching. I can see ’em. And it must be me they’re looking at.

Must be.

And then it all goes funny.

Sky flickering like a shaken Etch a Sketch.

Slow motion.

Grey and black.

Lead.

There’s an ambulance pulling on to our cul de sac.  I’m tipsy you understand, so my mind is doing that thing when one object becomes another. It’s turning it into an ice cream van. One of those old fashioned ones that plays;

“Oh oh Antonio!”

Old music hall tune. Florrie Forde.

I get on his nerves knowing stuff like that.

“You know some fucking stupid shit!”

He says.

“Can’t hoover up or make a fucking brew yet you know useless shit like that.”

But it’s not stupid to me, see.

I like music hall songs.

Same way I like tongue piercings, blue nail polish, Echo and The Bunnymen, Reiki, the shipping forecast, vintage make up tutorials and trashy daytime telly.

And sometimes, like tonight, I remember who I am.

I remember that girl.

That beautiful fucking girl.

And I remember that people like her.

She’s alright, you know.

“I’m fucking alright!”

I want to scream as I’m clawing at that bloody door, just gagging to get this bleedin’ bra off.

Which house is it they’ve come to, then?

This ice cream van/ambulance?

Not that I know any of them properly.

My neighbours.

We’ve got nicknames for them…..or should I say, he has.

Stuck up bitch at no 5.

Then there’s the one he calls ‘Vinegar Tits’ cause she looks like ’er that used to be in Cell Block H.

Or maybe it’s ‘Grandad’. That one’s my nickname. Wouldn’t hurt a soul, bless. Just sits there with his budgie looking out at the lawn.

Harmless.

Proper harmless, he is…..

No.

It’s none of them.

I start to look where the others are looking. Where they’re pointing.

It’s my landing window upstairs.

The one that hasn’t got a blind.

That space that’s always been difficult to reach.

Exposed.

One day I’d have gotten round to making it nice.

But you just make do, don’t you?

And months went by and I’d gotten used to it.

Years went by.

Severity becoming less severe.

You stop noticing, caring.

But now, everyone has noticed.

Everyone.

The light’s on.

They see inside.

And what they see!

Oh! What they see!

Our life, there in that window.

That frame.

His cameo.

Hanging.

Hanging.

.

There are flashing blue sirens and they jump from his outline like plasma balls finding heat.

But I know he’s cold.

Dead cold.

The neighbours can see him.

Hanging.

Hanging.

Our sham is hanging.

This grisly copy of a real I never had.

And I suddenly get it.

All those attacks on me, the pup, were actually attacks on himself.

He didn’t hate me.

Didn’t hate the dog.

No, truth was, he hated himself.

“An awkward fit.”

I can hear him saying.

“Leave it”

About the blind.

But he was wrong.

Letting light in, sometimes isn’t enough.