Not Working by Lisa Owens

Author:Lisa Owens [Owens, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781509806577
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Sick

In the night, I wake and two things are wrong: I’m alone in the bed and need very much to be sick. I grope for the light switch, and when I find it – certain I won’t make it to the bathroom on time – I kneel over and retch into the bin by the door, leaking tears of strain and self-pity. When I’m done, I take a grim inventory of my output: one glistening serving of chicken chow mein. The sight provokes a few more fruitless heaves, until weak with relief and clammy with sweat, I curl up on the carpet to recover.

The bin, I see now, is actually more of an ornamental tin bucket, featuring an illustration of cats dressed as Victorian humans. One in a top hat reads a newspaper, perched on a fireside armchair. Another – the wife? – in a pink dress is brandishing a lorgnette in its paw (I summon ‘lorgnette’ with surprising ease from the mists of childhood books featuring stern schoolmarms and Alpine boarding schools), and looking down on me through it with such haughtiness that I find myself nearly glad I was sick, if only to have answered this creation with the contempt it deserves.

In the bathroom, I clean the bin with toilet bleach, and on the way out exchange a woeful look with myself in the mirror, impressed by how pale and wretched I look. In the guest room, softly groaning, I crawl back under the covers, and as I fall asleep, my mother appears to me, holding my hair away from my face and rubbing my back, saying, ‘Poor pet, poor love.’

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