Salt Slow

by Julia Armfield

‘You stand out, you know. You’re not like other girls.’ I don’t know what to say to this as it is incontestably true, yet doesn’t feel at all like a compliment.

I had found that people seemed to speak more freely in the night-time – a strange release of inhibitions that came with talking in the dark.

Someone had once told Miriam that she looked like Princess Anne and this throwaway comment had come, over time, to form the basis of her whole personality. She wore green velvet loafers year-round, pinned her hair in the shape of a pumpkin, spoke like her molars were made of glass.

‘There is a level of insult I cannot overlook,’ Miriam announced, ‘in the way that men behave towards women.’

We talked about men unkindly and too often, our aggravation with the topic at large belied by the frequency with which we returned to it.

‘I’m ordering now – what does everyone want?’ ‘Cheese and Tomato, please. Or Margherita if they have it.’ ‘Cheese and Tomato is Margherita. What about you?’ ‘I don’t know. What are you having?’ ‘Ham and Pineapple.’ ‘That’s no help.’ ‘Well, what toppings do you feel like?’ ‘The flesh of righteous men.’ ‘I’ll get you a Meat Feast.’

Mornings have been the hardest things to adapt to; company after three decades of waking up alone. She has always considered herself the kind of person seen to best effect at four p.m., once the day has burnt away and softened up her difficulties. Having someone with her from the outset gives her no rehearsal space, no time to sink down into some more pliable version of the creature she is to begin with.

Occasionally, I convinced myself I had made it all up – love, attraction, all of it – that I had made it up with everyone I’d ever met.

Ultimately, of course, she had only been pregnant a grand total of three months and seven days, that first time around. Even so, the memory of that morning had persisted well beyond the bleeding. A very slender sort of betrayal, the deliberate absence from a room.