by Jude Higgins

HE SAYS IT’S NOT SMART to balance her glass on the arm of the sofa where it’s bound to fall off and smash. She agrees, moves it somewhere safer. Later, she scorches her thumb getting the biscuits he’s baked for her, as a treat, out of the oven.

‘It smarts,’ she says, trying to make a joke of it. Then she tucks her thumb under her fingers so he won’t see how she’s picked off the skin in the corner of the nail again. If he notices, he’ll dangle anxious questions in front of her…

‘Are you feeling low today?’ Have you remembered to take your tablets? Did you go for a walk? He’s readying himself to speak now. Probably to ask why she’s gone quiet.

‘It’s as if I’m one of those words with silent letters in the middle,’ she says, before he can open his mouth. ‘Like ‘night’ or ‘fright.’ He enjoys it when she says things about herself without being prompted, especially if it indicates her brain can still function in its old sharp way.

‘Oh, I see,’ he says, managing a smile. ‘You’ve been through so much.’ Your cough’s going but it’s still there enough to put you in the slough of despond.’

She smiles back. He’s good at joining in her games.

‘My psyche’s shot to pieces,’ she says. ‘But give me a psalter and we’ll sing to the same hymn sheet.’

‘I’ll make you a mnemonic,’ he says, cheerful now.

He spends a long time on it—just the one word. She remembers it all evening but in the small hours, all she can recall is the word Alfie, the name of her first pet. Was that it? Whatever did the letters stand for? Always be kind to yourself? Let the good times roll? Fear not?  Imbibe love? Enjoy each moment? Her husband might have come up with these. He knows about her adored childhood dog. Alfie, she calls softly into the darkness and, in a vivid memory, the dog rushes up the garden path of the house where she grew up, ecstatic to see her. How wonderful that was.

Alfie, she repeats. She writes the name down in the journal and on a whim, changes the letters around. A life. Astonishing what one small change can do. A life, her life, all those decades. She takes a tour of them, memories flooding in. People she’s loved, places she’s visited all over the world, books she’s read, movies she’s seen—like “Alfie” when was that? The 60s? Where that philandering man, so opposite from her current husband, ruined women’s lives before questioning his own self-centered existence. Has she been that selfish?

The movie’s theme song wanders into her head, takes her back to the last memory of her little dog—sitting on the kitchen hearth rug, head drooping, stomach swollen with cancer. She goes to pick at her sore thumb. No, she mustn’t. She really mustn’t. It will only hurt more.

oOo

Jude Higgins writes flash fiction and organises writing events. Her stories have been published widely in magazines and anthologies and have won prizes and been placed or shortlisted in many short fiction contests. She founded Bath Flash Fiction Award in 2015 and directs the Flash Fiction Festivals UK and the short short fiction press Ad Hoc Fiction. Judehiggins.com @judehwriter.