Running in Heels by Anna Maxted

Author:Anna Maxted
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

26

ACCORDING TO THE CHINESE CALENDAR, I WAS born in the year of the Rooster. I suppose I got off lightly (Belinda was born in the year of the Dog and I think Tony is a Rat,) but I’ve never liked being a Rooster. I wanted to be a Tiger of course. (I think the only other options are a Goat, Monkey, Horse, or Snake—apparently the Chinese aren’t bothered about giving their children complexes.) But having resented the Chinese calendar all these years for labeling me, I’m now forced to accept that it was close to spot on. I was born in the Year of the Headless Chicken.

“You all right there, love?” says the taxi driver, glancing in his mirror. “Boyfriend trouble, is it?”

I rub my mouth and croak, “No, yes, I’m fine, thank you,” but when I pay the fare he watches my hands shake.

“You wanna watch yourself, love,” he rasps, leaning an elbow out of his window as I hurry up the path. “Can’t be too careful.”

Tell me about it. I jam the key in the lock, fall inside, and stagger to the bathroom. I see myself and shudder. Dried blood round my mouth, I look like a bad-mannered cannibal, and my hair is wild and my eyes, bright in a mad frazzled way, and my face is long and gaunt, is this what I want, ugh, I want to strip off my clothes and scour my skin raw but I can’t bear to see myself, this hollow self, because Babs is right, I’m not fat, I am not fat, I can see it now, but I feel it, what I am is not good, oh god, what have I done, I wash the dirt off my face and clean my teeth and spit spit spit into the sink and I’m trembling so hard I can’t get a grip on anything.

I place the towel back on the rail and it slithers to the floor. I snatch it up and fling it at the rail, whipping it, you bastard towel! whap whap! then hold my breath in case I’ve woken Andy. What would I say if he saw me like this? I had steak for dinner and got carried away?

I smooth my hair, straighten my shirt, glide to the kitchen, and softly lock the door. I want to sleep for a thousand years but I don’t think I could ever sleep again. I know what I’m about to do, and the thrill shivers through me like an ill wind. I open the larder door, step on a chair, and lift down a large tin box from the top shelf. I place it silently on the table.

Open sesame.

The contents of the box shine like paste jewels under the bright ceiling lights.

“You’d feel a lot better if you ate something,” I drone, imitating my mother. (“You’d feel a lot better if you ate something,” is what she’d say if I’d been slashed in the stomach with a carving knife: it’s her answer to everything.

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