In the gaps between the words he understood that she was dying.

Versace, cooed one. Prada, squealed another. What’s yours? Eyes swivelled, bright, salacious. Brands, she muttered, are for cattle. She was never invited back.

**Originally commissioned by Cartwheel Arts

That sick feeling? It’s Cupid, stupid.

Exasperated, she told the cold caller Mrs Waverley was dead.  That seemed to stop them.  But the next time she tried to buy online her credit card was no longer valid.

Day after day he sat in the car, crawling to work, nose to tail.  Spent eight hours on the phone arranging car loans.  Weekends he tried to exercise.  Tried running but it made his asthma worse.

Can’t get email back.  Can’t hover by the pillar box waiting with a sickly smile for the man with his bunch of keys.  Two clicks of a mouse and it’s gone. Strafing through the ether.  You knew you should have tidied up your address book, if only you’d paused after that first tap, registered the question about which recipient you meant.  But no, tap, tap and zip it went.  Sizzling its way into Auntie June’s Inbox: <jstephens@btinternet.co.uk> instead of your mate Steph’s: <steph@demon.co.uk>.  All the graphic details of the night spent with your new man.  And you couldn’t wait could you?

*Originally published by www.the-phone-book.com (now archived)

They said they thought you’d be happier in another position, somewhere else.  Like flat out, six feet under, maybe?

*Originally published by www.the-phone-book.com (now archived)

Not just irritable, flaming furious. Swallow enough anger and there comes a point when you just can’t stomach it anymore.

*Originally published by www.the-phone-book.com (now archived)

There was a frog, dirty big frog.  They laughed and the city wasn’t so bad anymore.

*Originally published by www.the-phone-book.com (now archived)

 

She’d never learnt to drive. Women didn’t back then. When he died she was marooned. He’d taken the whole world with him.