Summerwater

by Sarah Moss

Women’s magazines always say that, a long scented bath, as if everything from baby weight to infidelity will dissolve in enough hot water, as if you can spend enough on bath salts to cover the smell of self-loathing and repressed rage. Baths,

They won’t always love her this much, she thinks, holding her son, no one else, not even her children’s future selves, will ever be so pleased to see her coming as they are today.

There’s no reason, really, why high standards in make-up and housework should indicate high standards of morality, after all don’t we all go deeper than mascara and folded towels, but still.

But she is missing her mates, he knows that, or at least missing her phone, missing the chorus of agreement and amusement and outrage that lives in it.

If there is a future; it’s not as if having kids is looking like a kind or clever thing to do these days but you have to act as if there’s hope, don’t you? You can’t plan your life around the end of the world.