Mr Salary

by Sally Rooney

My hair feels physically unclean, I said. Not just unwashed but actively dirty.

The dash lit up in soft Scandinavian colours.

Gradually, as the steam heat in the bathroom dissipated, a fine veil of goosebumps rose up over my skin, and in the mirror my reflection clarified and thinned until I could see my own pores.

It was in my nature to absorb large volumes of information during times of distress, like I could master the distress through intellectual dominance.

He used cutlery like a real adult, not shooting glances at me to check if I was admiring his technique. I always shot glances at him.

We were predictable to each other, like two halves of the same brain.

They hated each other and I mediated their mutual hatred in a way that made me feel successfully feminine.

I found that everyone in some sense looks like everyone else.

I had read that infant animals formed attachments to inappropriate things sometimes,

I held down the lever on the dispenser of disinfectant fluid until my hands were wet. It was cold, it stung.

Death was, of course, the most ordinary thing that could happen, at some level I knew that. Still, I had stood there waiting to see the body in the river, ignoring the real living bodies all around me, as if death was more of a miracle than life was.

In the hallway mirror my hat looked like a dirty water vole that might wake up at any second.