Read Online A Habit of Dying by D J Wiseman - Free Book Online Page B

tomorrow’s [] [], just words jumbled and mixed and their tiny [nuances] pored over and pokedand examined and [user trialled] and they are still just words. Once I must have cared, must have been able to put them together how people liked them put together. Put them in just the right order with just the right amount of this and not too much of that so people would rush out and [cover themselves] in the cream or the lotion. But probably that was someone else completely. And if they were to fire me that would be excellent in a way, it would change things as I cannot change them, the whole set up would be different, we would need to speak of things, many things like [walruses] and sealing wax most likely. There’s a [cabbage] and a king in there somewhere too. Would we speak? Maybe, maybe the loss of income would force her to speak, if I were to tell her. How would I do that when I can tell her nothing at all. Tell her that there is no money, no job, no sleep all for thinking of how it was or how it might once have been or how I dreamed it once was.
    16 th entry
    S is away. Brighton or Bournemouth or somewhere. A conference. It is easier when she is not here. She is not right there where I see her at every turn, doing the things that she does, solitary, [undemanding], single in every respect bar my presence. [Supremely] self-contained, an ocean liner ploughing serenely onward looking neither to left nor right, unaware and uninterested in the drowning man thrashing in the swell. In the empty space I can float on the waves, breath air a little longer, until Friday when she will return.
    Conferences are meant to be made for affairs, breathless tumbles and [blushing] mornings. Does she have that in her any more, did she ever? At 31 you’d think so, but how would I know, how could I judge. There is nothing there, nothing I recognize any more. There is a great big space where the spark and fire and interest used to be. Or else it is a face turned away from me, but I don’t think it looks upon anyone else. And all this in a body that seems much as it has always done, you can still see that she was very pretty once, still see that she has a figure, still goes in and out at roughly the right places, still takes some care over her hair, even though it becomes ever shorter. You can still see it through her clothes but not otherwise she was never one to prance about the house naked, and now there is neither prance nor nakedness. I remember dimly a picture with a caption ‘when did you last see your father?’ I could paint one that said ‘when did you last see your wife?’
    17 th entry
    Just a few days back from Brighton S announced that she is going away again in a couple of weeks, this time to [Harrogate], a training thing she signed up for a last minute place, something important to her promotion prospects or some such. It is almost certainly true, she is almost certainly going to [Harrogate] and will almost certainly be trained. Just for a millisecond of hesitation it could have been a lie. Or it could be both true and a lie. Maybe the lie is in what is not being said. Did she give me too much information, did she speak too quickly, what caught my attention. I [feigned] disinterest. Or I didn’t [feign] it at all. I am disinterested, I am completely and utterly without interest. Does this mean I am dead, drowned already? Maybe part drowned. I will have a few more days to float and breathe in a calm sea.
    18 th entry
    While she was not looking I checked her suitcase. Don’t know what I was looking for, but I had to see if she was taking anything that she might not usually take. Whatever that might be. I was looking for something, something out of place, something extra or something missing. There was no book. And she scuttled out of the house, couldn’t wait to be gone. I would imagine the scene but I see nothing at all, a completely blank space. If she is with someone else, it is just as if she were dead, I cannot feel how it