jml297

Living in suburbia has a varied kind of soundscape. The slam of the neighbours’ car doors, the high-pierced shrieks of children at play, an occasional shouted exchange over a fence. In the distance, the throaty rumble of low-flying airplanes or the pulsing flight of a chopper surveying snarls of traffic. But, in this moment, it was the sound of a siren drawing ever closer to the house that held Simon’s attention.

He stood at the front window, immobile. Behind him, chaos crashed and echoed. Dana was shouting from the kitchen, her words hard to hear over crockery shattering on the Italian marble tiles. Ricochetting shards of glass added an almost musical effect as his eyes shifted to the corner where the police car would turn into their usually sedate street.

He should have seen the signs. Dana’s behaviour had altered; he could see that now. But at the time it was subtle. A false note in her conversation, a pause that went on just a little too long. She’d always been a private kind of person, not secretive, but there was a wariness about her. At some point, it became harder to read her. Dana’s eyes were keen to look elsewhere.

Metallic sounds reverberated – she must have started throwing those ridiculous copper pans that formed an intermittent obstacle course along the island bench for anyone taller than Dana. Should he have realised back then, when they were planning the perfect kitchen which was to be the beating heart of their home, that her unwillingness to compromise was more than a personality quirk?

She was shouting louder now, words appearing at intervals between percussive thumps and crashes. Part of Simon’s mind filed the words away: weak, boring, gullible. He shrugged his shoulders, letting the words vaporise. There would be time to make sense of it all: the deception, her betrayal, this secret other life that Dana had created.

In that quiet place, deep inside, that kernel of space where Dana was unable to reach, he knew that what was unfolding here was not the end. The people that Dana had betrayed, her fraudulent activities, had enmeshed his life too.

There was no siren now to cut through the wall of sound behind him, but he relaxed, just a little, as the police car pulled up outside their house.

This was written to a prompt at my local writing group.

Photo: Old copper pans above stove in Elizabeth Farm, Harris Park