The Witching Hour by David Micklem

My skin looks terrible. In the bathroom mirror it’s like the ceiling of a pub from the days when you could smoke inside. My breastbone is mottled and my chest feels tight, swollen. When I was young my dad caught me sucking on a coin and my mouth tastes like that now.

My head is buzzing like a wasps’ nest. A jumble of dates. Marks on a calendar. My last period.

I grabbed one of the bathrobes from the back of the bedroom door and it’s Sally’s, my girlfriend’s. Her name is embroidered onto the breast pocket in gold thread. They’d been a gift from the spa we stayed at after her mum died. Mine says Hattie, which isn’t my name, but we thought it was fun at the time, the misspelling, and we kept it and sometimes, if she’s angry or scared, she calls me that now. Hattie. But I’m Matilda. Mattie, mostly.

Our house is upside down. The sitting room is on the first floor, above the kitchen diner and the spare bedroom. It has tall windows that look out over the street at an identical row of houses. I leave the light off and stand at the glass. Directly opposite is their house, almost close enough to reach out and touch. Parked cars line the street, and I can see right into their sitting room, a sidelight on. The sofa, a baby blanket draped over the arm, and an armchair with its back to the window. I wonder whether Clive is sat there, unable to sleep, like me.

I can imagine him studying a glass of rum in a tumbler. Like he’s searching for some long-lost wisdom in the liquid, like there’s something profound in it. He has this habit of looking confused when he’s thinking, of frowning at you, which I found unnerving, at first. I remember when they moved in, Sally and I went over with an orchid and I wasn’t sure whether he didn’t like it, or didn’t know how to be with a couple of girls. But later, after we’d met a few times, I realised it was because he liked to consider things carefully. To study something, to really know what it was.

I see how people find him difficult to read. There’s a brooding intensity that I’ve observed, like he’s bottling stuff up. I know Sally doesn’t trust him. She told me she thinks there’s something dodgy about him, that he’s hard to warm to, to get to know. She gets on well with Maira and I wonder what they’ve talked about. What she knows about Clive that I don’t.

It must be the very middle of the night, but my body and my mind are wide awake. It’s that hour in the summer when it’s properly dark, that sliver of time between the dusk and the dawn, each stretched, eking out the very last minutes of the day, the heat.

A light goes on downstairs across the street and then a minute later Maira is upstairs in the sitting room, the baby clutched to her chest. I step back from the window, involuntarily, but I know she can’t see me. I know because Sally said she was waving the night of the party when all of the neighbours had descended on their place. She’d gone back because she was tired from work, and said she’d seen me and the others standing in Clive and Maira’s window, dancing. She’d waved frantically, to get my attention, to blow me a kiss, she’d said, but I couldn’t see a thing.

That was at Christmas, when Maira had announced that they were expecting. We didn’t know them well, but we could see that they were delighted, and I said that we’d be available to babysit, if they needed a break. I liked the idea of doing something like that. Looking after a baby for an evening. One that wasn’t mine, that I could give back. Being a good neighbour. Feeling needed.

Sally teases me that I have a funny effect on men. ‘You don’t know what you do to them,’ she says. It’s just a joke really, although I wonder if there’s something in it. Jealousy, perhaps. It’s not like she doesn’t trust me. But she does know that I’d been with a couple of guys, when I was younger.

Hamish was this lovely gentle creature I knew from school and we went out a few times when I came home from Uni to stay with my parents. He told me how he’d always been in love with me and I really liked him too. He was kind and sensitive and clever and I slept with him because I thought it would show him how I really felt, how much I cared. But I already knew that I was gay and sleeping with him just made everything so much worse. I can picture his face when I told him. It was like everything was melting, all at once. Like his pain was something physical.

And there was Tom too. He was out and gay, long before anyone else. The campest, rudest, most fun-loving man I’d ever met. We got along like a house on fire, very close, and then he got weird saying how he wanted to experiment with his sexuality. That he wanted to try it with a girl, and I ended up saying yes and he really enjoyed it and for me it was the beginning of the end of our friendship.

He got in touch last year on Facebook. Said he was sorry. That he’d been seeing a therapist. That things with Michael were really good. That they were thinking about adopting. I didn’t get back to him. Didn’t see the point after all this time.

Maira has the baby over her shoulder and she’s jiggling it up and down. It’s silent in the darkness of our sitting room but when she turns around, I can see the baby is shrieking. She kisses it on the side of its head, and I can imagine Clive doing the same.

Sally says she thinks Maira might be depressed but I think she’s just tired. The baby is only a few weeks’ old and I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like. Sally saw her in the park a few days ago and said that she’d been crying, that the baby wouldn’t sleep. I told her I didn’t think it was something to be worried about, that babies never sleep, that it was their choice to have a family. Sally said I was being unnecessarily harsh, that it wasn’t like me, and I’d left it there, keen not to start something.

We celebrate our anniversary on Sally’s birthday. The day we met. ‘That way I get to give you something too,’ Sally says. This year was number six, iron, and Sally had got me a beautiful pair of earrings made out of forged metal with freshwater pearls. I bought her an expensive pair of binoculars for her birthday as she loves to go birdwatching. And a steam iron for our anniversary which she said was literal, practical, and made her laugh.

I couldn’t wish for a better girlfriend really. I’d been celebrating another friend’s birthday in the same bar the day we met and everything just seemed to fit into place. We clicked straight away and within six months I’d moved in with her. But sometimes I wonder. What if there’s someone else? What if this is just ok and I spend the rest of my life feeling like this. Comfortable and contented and growing old and leaky together. Just the two of us. There’s really nothing wrong with Sally, no fault I can put my finger on when I lie awake beside her. We are good together. I just wonder, I suppose.

Clive has come into the room and taken the baby. Maira has gone and because I was watching him, I didn’t see her expression when she left. He looks worn out.

We went round the day after the birth. Clive was downstairs on the phone and had his back to us when we came in with flowers. We’d gone up to their sitting room and Maira passed me the baby and I held it gingerly. It smelled funny and I was worried I might drop it. Maira told us the name, it was a girl, but neither Sally nor I could remember what it was when we got home. I think we both misheard, and I’d been concentrating so hard on just holding it. Everything so tiny. So precious.

A week before, Maira had gone to visit her parents. Clive had told us that he didn’t get on with them and she’d gone on her own in the car. They’re only twenty minutes away, he said. I’d been stood at the window and seen her struggling to get behind the wheel, her bump huge. I was amazed she was ok to drive and as she pulled away I wondered what she’d do if the baby came, suddenly.

I’d gone over there straight away. Something about parking permits. It was a Saturday before lunch and my heart was thumping.

He let me in and we stood in the living room and he told me that Maira was out, which I already knew. I made him sit down on the sofa and I’m pretty sure he knew the parking permit thing was just a ruse. I stopped talking and leaned back on the sofa with my hands behind my head until the silence became uncomfortable. He did the frowning thing, like he was trying to work out the rules to some elaborate game, and then I kissed him and I didn’t stop until he kissed me back. And then I undid his shirt and I had this clear sense that he’d been thinking about this for ages. I was buzzed on how wrong it all felt and how easy it was to get him to do it. I hadn’t expected I’d get this rush, this sense of power. It was like a spell that I didn’t know I knew.

He was gentle and kept asking if I was ok and I said yes which I was because I was enjoying how fucked up it all was. I don’t know what he thought was going on and I don’t care. I enjoyed seeing the hunger in his eyes and a thrill that I hadn’t felt before. It was good to make him want me. I felt desired, I guess.

I don’t find him attractive. I don’t find guys physically attractive generally. But there was something about the way he touched me, needed me. Broad daylight, my skirt bunched up round my waist, my knickers stuffed between the cushions. It was thrilling.

Afterwards I stayed for a while, had a shower at his place, drank a coffee with him. We chatted and everything was fine. I knew Sally was out and I was in no hurry to get home. Maira wasn’t due back for hours. I can’t say I felt much really. It all seemed so ordinary; Clive sat there asking me what I thought about names for the baby.

Before I left, I stood at his window and looked over at our place. It looked dark and unoccupied, like nobody had lived there for a while. I remember Clive had come up behind me and put his hand inside my sweatshirt and I’d recoiled, like I’d been woken from a dream.

‘No Clive,’ I said. Firm but kind, like Sally does when she calls me Hattie.

He’s standing there now, the baby on its belly resting along his arm, asleep. He can’t see me, I know, a few steps back from the glass, but he’s looking this way like he can.

I slip my hand inside the robe and feel my breast. It’s hot and swollen. My mind is racing, my heart too. I feel sick.

“Mattie? You there?”

“Yes sweetheart. Can’t sleep.”

I wrap the robe and tie the belt tight. The sky is grey and pink. Clive has frozen, the baby cradled on his arm. I too am unable to move, to do anything.

………………..

David Micklem is a writer and theatre producer. His first novel, The Winter Son, is currently on submission through his agent Robert Caskie. His short story The Broken Heart was published in January 2021 in STORGY Magazine and Crows was shortlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize 2021. He lives in Brixton in South London.

Twitter: @davidmicklem