Ruth Underwood

The Grey Pages (Extract)

Your eyes look enchanting tonight, dear. I think there may even be a dash of remorse in them. You are quite something. Even at your most beautiful, you appal me, because I know you for what you are. Your bleak, little soul cowers behind your veil of loveliness. Your face a mask, complete with your perpetual, plaster of Paris smile.

You must have thought I was a fool. To think I wouldn’t notice as you took apart everything that I was and then demanded more, as if disappointed with what little you had found, like a spoilt child playing with a Russian doll.

Remember the room above the garage? You pretended to think it was my haven, you let me go there while you made time for your own amusement. But all you were doing was leaving me alone with the knowledge that this was the life I had to sustain for you. It was your living I had to earn, and for what? A glimpse at the rotten truth of what it actually is: silver-plate elegance and nothing more.

I locked myself in that room for weeks on end, until it was done, until I had earned enough for the next spell you might spend with me. But you can’t have thought I was just working, all that time. You must have known I was dissolving parts of myself as well.

My words parade before me in a ghastly display. They mock me. And these are what I leave behind, a distorted reflection of me, betraying me for what I am not. I never defined myself by it all. Why did you? I didn’t create, I simply manufactured. I gave them all what they wanted. And now, there’s nothing left.

Another drink is what’s called for. I’ll drink to you because there’s no one else to drink to. Here’s to you in your frame.

Perhaps it was after you were gone that I found I had nothing left. Perhaps it is your absence that I can’t live with.

I could see the gaps in your thoughts, though the places you drifted away to were far beyond me. I saw the magic unravel. It’s strange that I never blamed myself for that, strange that I have ignored that possibility for so long.

What mistake did you make, living in your own way, exactly as you would have done, regardless of me? It was I who aspired to the wrong life, not you who forced it upon me. Without me, you would have been content, ignorant of the decay beneath the veneer.

Perhaps the blame is mine.

Perhaps we have driven each other to our separate despair.