Me on the Floor, Bleeding by Jenny Jagerfeld

Author:Jenny Jagerfeld
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Stockholm Text
Published: 2013-06-15T21:00:00+00:00

There was an unexpected ring on the door, an intrusive, grating sound. I don’t remember ever hearing it before. We didn’t get too many visitors. It made me drop the spoon into the bowl and the milk sprayed onto my nightdress. I was paralysed. I looked at the drops that hadn’t been absorbed by the silk fabric, but lay like a string of pearls across my chest.

Perhaps it was the police? Perhaps it was the police who had something to tell me.

It rang again.

I stopped breathing and went freezing cold and then burning hot within the space of a few seconds. There is only one thing the police inform people on the doorstep. In my mind I saw images, silent images: raising my hand to my mouth, staring into their sympathetic eyes, collapsing in a helpless heap on the floor, being lifted up by strong police arms.

I regained my ability to move, stood up, and ran through the kitchen and into the hall to open up, but stopped myself and stood motionless in front of the door for a few seconds.

Mum, let it be you.

Let it not be the police.

I opened.

It wasn’t the police. And it wasn’t Mum.

It was stupid of me to think it would be the police because I wasn’t living in an American TV series. And it was stupid of me to think it was Mum, because she would never have rung her own front door. But that’s what I’m like. Stupid.

It was Justin. It was him standing there with his shiny copper-coloured stubble and his eyes full of self-reproach.

‘Hello’ he said.

He sounded worn out.

‘Hello,’ I said, unconsciously putting my bandaged left arm over my heart.

‘Well, here I am,’ he said, and he grinned and flung out his hands in the best sing-along style.

‘Yes, so you are …’ I replied hesitantly.

‘I thought of something,’ he said, looking down at his shoes.

I stood in silence.

‘Well …’

A cold wind took hold of my hair and blew it to one side, revealing to him my entire unmade-up face, and that made me feel more naked than my naked body underneath my nightdress.

‘Well,’ he tried again.

I let go of the handle. It sprung back with a metallic sound.

‘I was thinking, perhaps I … perhaps I didn’t take it too seriously, you know, what you told me yesterday. About your mum. I don’t know, maybe I was … She hasn’t come home?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. Well, I thought … I thought perhaps you ought to phone the police after all.’

‘Yes.’

‘I got a bit of a … guilty conscience.’

I wondered if that was really true. Or was it because of his cold hand between my legs?

He stepped into the hall and because I didn’t move he walked right into me and he opened his mouth and I opened my mouth and we kissed, standing there, and he kissed me and he kissed me and he was so tall I had to stand on tiptoe, and he fumbled about behind him and pushed the door closed with

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