From that day on, I didn’t return to the jetty. It had become his space, and with each day it became more completely his.
He sat there in my place and I watched him from the house. I didn’t take my eyes off him. I saw how he stared over at them as they stared into the water. Then I, too, looked at them. Every day, every night, always, until now.
Two Ways of Leaving
She didn’t go the usual way. She walked more calmly and slowly than she normally did on her way home from work. He followed her. She went in and out of shops. She browsed and asked the shop assistants to show her a dress. Or she took one herself from the rail, held it up in front of a mirror, and disappeared into a changing room or behind a curtain.
In a café, she smoked a cigarette, then another, and sat musing for a while, not paying any attention to the other customers. She searched in her handbag and took out a letter that she placed on the table in front of her. She glanced over it, then read it again and again from the beginning. She put it back in her bag, stood up and left the café. She strolled on from one shop window to the next, a jeweller’s, then a bookshop. She entered the bookshop and left it with one more carrier bag. She paused in front of a café, then walked on. In a children’s clothing shop, she fingered the fabric of a little shirt and of a jacket and trousers. She moved on, then came back, only to turn again and continue on her way.
In the market she walked past the stalls and stands, trying the fruit. She greeted others and was greeted in return, picking up one apple after another or an orange, sniffing it, and putting it back. She bought vegetables and flowers and chatted with the stall-holders.
In the neighbouring park, she sat on a bench under one of the trees and watched the chess players, the couples lying on the grass, the children feeding the ducks and the elderly people from the home nearby. She held the letter in her lap, wrote something, then crossed it out and ripped the letter up with a smile.