A Bird in Winter by Louise Doughty

Author:Louise Doughty [Doughty, Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

16

The city-centre flat I had moved into was the diametric opposite to the dream house: an antiseptic new build no more than ten minutes from the office and resembling an office in some ways – white walls, echoey, a small stainless-steel galley kitchen. It came with minimal furniture and built-in cupboards and white goods. I brought nothing with me but my clothes and personal effects in the full knowledge that, for the time being at least, I was going to live a purely functional life. At times it felt as though I had moved into Alaska. It was exactly what I needed.

I developed an obsession with tiny things – I bought a small toiletry bag and resolved that all my toiletries should henceforth fit into it, including a foldable travel toothbrush. I started wearing sports underwear – I threw out the white lacy bra and all the other underwear like it, the thongs, the translucent slips I had bought for myself back in the days when I wanted to impress a one-night stand or have a drink and masturbate to myself in the mirror on a Friday night when there was nothing on the telly. Instead, I bought plain black knickers, the seamless sort, made of fabric so fine it was like wearing a slippery layer of extra skin and, crucially, they would pack down so neatly that ten of them laid flat took up no more space in a bag than an envelope.

I didn’t buy any plants or hang any pictures or mirrors on the walls – anything decorative disappeared from my life. It was all about utility. I bought a small glass teapot and a glass cup and started drinking jasmine tea with no milk, admiring the translucence of my beverage at the same time as I admired the transparency of the receptacles I used to serve it to myself. I browsed fancy design web-sites in an effort to persuade myself this was a style choice but in my heart of hearts, I knew something else was going on, something I didn’t yet understand.

My house was gone. Flavia was dead. It was as if I was losing all my previous selves like a lizard sloughing off skins. I had even shed my own competence.

At times, I wondered if I was becoming ill.

After the Cheltenham conference, Kieron and I carried on as normal at work, and I assumed, with relief, that he was just one of those men who lost interest as soon as he had slept with you. Then came the evening when we were both leaving the building at the same time and he said, as we emerged from the revolving doors onto the concrete piazza, ‘Fancy a drink?’

I really, really did not want me and Kieron to become a thing, but I knew I had to be careful how I turned him down. ‘Oh God, I’d love one,’ I said, making myself sound as regretful as possible, ‘but I’ve promised to go over to a friend’s house.

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