Dot (Araminta Hall)

mouths moving in conversation, saw them laughing and wondered how many of them would be going home together that night. He knew the mind-cleansing pleasure of a warm body you could forget in the morning and a great longing welled up in him that felt like a sadness, but he pushed it down and stared at his new wife, who was easily the prettiest person there.
    They were home by eleven and in bed, across the hallway from Clarice. Alice rolled into him and he knew it would be wrong for them not to have sex on their wedding night. But it took an act of concentration on his part, not because he didn’t find Alice attractive – you’d have to be blind for that to be true – but because he felt so strange it was as if he was removed from himself. Their love-making was silent as he supposed it would have to be until they had enough money to move out, which in his estimation would be in at least five years. Afterwards Alice cried and said she had never been happier and Tony put his hand on her stomach and imagined the part of him already in there, swimming in its own dreams. The thought was magical and surprising and made him smile like a fool in the dark.

6 … Consumption
    Mavis didn’t know how Dot had managed to persuade her to go shopping for a dress she didn’t want to wear to a party she wished she didn’t have to go to. But maybe it would be a good opportunity to say sorry for how she’d been behaving, perhaps even to explain. She longed for her friend’s advice in a way she’d never felt before and yet she’d never felt further away from asking for it.
    They met at the bus stop, aiming to catch the 11.06 into Cartertown. Dot was late and Mavis stood in the cold, stamping her feet and slapping her arms around herself. She looked at the timetable for something to do and thought how only a town planner who drove a four-by-four and talked too loudly on his BlackBerry would devise a route which turned the bus the wrong way down the Cartertown Road in order to take in three other villages before heading towards the mecca of the town.
    Mavis sometimes wondered what people a hundred years ago would think of their cities. Had they stood on the cusp of the modern world and thrown their minds forward into a future of shiny chrome and marble and structures which reached into a sparkling sky? She wondered why, despite all the evidence, they now in turn imagined their own future filled with alien domes and cars that whizzed through the air. In reality nothing changed and it was maybe time to accept that.
    Dot arrived just as the bus was drawing up and they silently made their way to the top deck as they always had done, although Mavis felt heavier now, less like pulling herself up the stairs.
    ‘I think we should start in Topshop,’ Dot said, pulling out a copy of Grazia in which she’d marked a page depicting an impossibly beautiful girl wearing a dress that their Topshop would never stock. Mavis groaned.
    ‘Any other ideas then?’ Dot asked, turning to her friend.
    Mavis shook her head. ‘I’m not buying anything so it’s your call.’
    ‘Seriously?’
    ‘Seriously.’
    The bus puttered onwards or backwards, depending on how you looked at it. Cows and horses were eating grass, birds were flying in the sky, cars were overtaking them; Mavis had to swallow back her tears.
    ‘You are still coming though, right?’ asked Dot and Mavis hated the whine in her voice. She had to pinch the inside of her hand to stop herself from screaming.
    ‘I said I would, didn’t I?’
    ‘I don’t want to force you.’
    ‘For fuck’s sake, Dot, I’m coming, don’t ask me to be happy about it as well.’
    ‘Mave, what’s wrong?’ Dot’s tone was tender and concerned, so that without planning it, Mavis turned to her friend to tell her. This was the perfect moment, this was the point that could make it all better. Dot might even have a solution.
    But the words slipped and slid around her head; saying them out loud would make it real and she didn’t know if she was ready for that yet – ever. She chickened out. ‘What colour’s the sky?’
    ‘What?’
    Mavis knew she was starting to piss Dot off and who could blame her. ‘What colour’s the sky?’
    ‘Blue? Are you on something?’
    ‘Ha! Why d’you say blue?’
    ‘Mave, you’re scaring me.’
    ‘Because the sky’s always blue, right? Because that’s what all the fairy stories tell you, because you painted it blue with your mum.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Look, just