Elise hadn’t bought anything new – like, new – for a long time. Months, maybe even a year; certainly not since Christmas. “Every now and then just buy yourself a new lipstick,” advised her neighbour Yvette, who took Thomas for three hours on Wednesday mornings while she worked on her thesis.
But who had time or could be bothered to do that? And Elise had forgotten what colours she liked. Or even what her face looked like, or could look like. Right now though she wanted to break the draught by buying Joel something extravagant; something special for her careful, quiet husband.
On and off for 12 years, they hadn’t been married long and saying or even thinking the word made her feel like she was a character in a play. But it was true: they were married. Cicero.
She wanted to believe it but mostly felt like a horse tied up too tight, kicking at the stable doors. And lately she had started worrying, suffocated by a thickening trawling through and clogging her head. She worried that it all wouldn’t be enough after all, not what they had made and not even what they had imagined it would be.
And that she would ruin it, run amok. Fling things against the wall or accidently let go of the baby somewhere dangerous, go out and not come home. So instead of a little lipstick for herself, she was going to, outrageously, buy Joel a gorgeous Comme des Garcons shirt from Labyrinth on Ponsonby Road.
A shirt to wear in Paris, Madrid, the Amalfi Coast. A shirt to correct their course.