Hestia / Dionysus

by Rachel Curzon

When she gets back from big Tesco, all the lights are on and he’s standing at the front door peering at his car keys. Going out, he manages to say, and slides a leer towards the bags for life she’s put down as a kind of barricade on the step. You’re not, she says. You’re absolutely not, like that. It’s a quiet street, and look, he’s made a disco of it, cranking up the sound and pounding out The Clash, for chrissakes. Suddenly, she’s as furious as she’s meant to be, and making for the stereo, skidding round the doorframe, all elbows. One kind of clamour gives way to another, and she thinks This is no life, and It will last forever. There’s no point getting into how she feels, or why she stays. She puts his keys in the toe of her shoe and goes about her home putting lights off, room by room, while he sits on the bonnet of the Astra, shouting dithyrambs into the voice recorder of his phone.

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