Separation
It is an autumn afternoon and the light is low and bronze. She stands at the window which is faced by a tall pine - green and thin. The ironing board is to her side. Folded clothes on the bed. Outside, down to the right, a man is burning sticks and leaves in his garden. She watches as he moves around contentedly. In her head a woman’s voice, probably her mother’s, is talking about the days when everybody knew their neighbours and people were just, better. She sighs; soft breath emerges from between the lips that she wishes were fuller. She looks out onto her garden, the bigger houses behind it, and then back down to the little man. He has stopped moving around and is now simply standing with hands on hips looking at his fire in the way that men do, as though they have just invented it. Her expression is hard to read, it falls somewhere between admiration and derision. The house is silent aside from the faraway squeal of the tumble dryer downstairs. She turns back to the ironing board and as she does, the man in his garden looks up to her window with a hand raised to shield his eyes from the sun. He sees only the back of her head and the elbow of the arm that pushes the iron, move back and forth, back and forth. He looks away and then back at his own house where his wife is standing at the kitchen window looking out at him, hands on hips, with an expression that falls somewhere between admiration and derision.
