Daddy pushes her higher and higher and as she soars back and forth she has to quell the urge to leap off towards mummy who is standing on the tanbark with a camcorder. Hold on tight, daddy warns, or you’ll have a great fall. Like Humpty Dumpty? That’s right, all cracked and all that. And runny? And runny. But it would be nice to go gooey in mummy’s arms. Nothing would be nicer than that. Other kids’ daddies are pushing them even higher, except now she stops pointing her legs out at each push. Tucks them in tight because she is a smart girl and knows that by tucking them in she will get lower and lower until it is only a safe little jump onto the tanbark, not a great fall, and then she can run right over to mummy. She is the fastest in her grade- faster than any of the boys. The sun is behind a big woolly sheep but not completely behind it. Purple spots still flash if she looks at it too long, and reddish ones too. Maybe mummy will play the guessing game with her; when she runs over there is no need to ask because mummy says let’s play the guessing game now Suzy-love.
She had recently taken a job at a call centre asking people are you satisfied with your current energy provider, but broke for lunch at one and could sign the papers then provided it was quick, and provided it wasn’t some sort of sham. Because what was a woman she hadn’t seen in ten years who had six children of her own doing giving her a farm she had never visited; anyway she would break for lunch at one and go. Did that fucker have any clue what he’d made her do. It was just after nine and her shift started at ten; if she skipped breakfast and wore the outfit she liked best and saved for the indecisive days there was at least half an hour left to devote to her fringe. Opening the blinds on the only window in her apartment, she saw an overcast morning and a woman exactly opposite from her, on the same floor of the neighbouring apartment block, sitting at a flimsy-looking table setting on her balcony spreading wax on her legs. They caught eyes and held the gaze an unusual length of time. Then the other woman went back to her legs. Just as a sheet was being torn off she lowered the blinds to half-closed, so you could only see the train lines if you looked through them at an angle you would never adopt when looking through blinds. While drawing the string she saw right through her pallid hands, like the extremities of dying woman, laden with thick blue veins bulging from the skin. The nail polish was black but cracked; pink specks had begun to show.
To void her bowels she had not only to lock the toilet door but the door of the bathroom housing it and the door to her apartment. As another privacy measure she would flush as many times as the filling cistern would allow so as to coincide with the sound of her own body. She never looked at her thighs and kept the light dim. The radio was on in the kitchen. One hand on the flush, ready to hit it as soon as the hiss of water quieted, she picked up an ornamental china dolphin from among the rolls of paper stacked on a small chrome shelf. It was lacquered smooth and turned over easily in her fingers. She flushed. It turned over and over in her fingers with only the slightest coaxing, as if it were a real dolphin barrel rolling at play. Her cold knee jerked and her heart hurt- she flushed.
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