Anticipation

She slammed in through the front door and threw her bag across the
hall. There were letters on the mat, she stooped to pick them up and
flicked through them, junk, bank, junk.

She knew that there was no one in, the house felt cool, quiet. She
retrieved her bag, hung her jacket on the bannister and went into the
kitchen, switched on the heating, tossed the letters onto the table.
She needed a shower, but knew that the water would be cold, the house
had been empty all day.

So she made herself a cup of tea and read through her bank statement,
listening to the heating boiler hiss and crackle. The house began to
feel warmer, she eased her shoes off under the table and arched her
feet, they felt tired. Walking up the stairs, she swiftly glanced, as
she always did at the view from the landing window. Dusk was settling
in across the London skyline, but the lights across the city and as far
as Docklands had begun to sparkle, she could still make out the cranes
and scaffolding around the new twin towers rearing up to challenge the
mass of Canary Wharf.

She grabbed a towel from the radiator, punched buttons on her CD
player, and gradually music filled the corners of the house, turning it
from empty into a house that she was sharing with a full orchestra, the
room possessed by a piano, the stairs crammed with violins. She began
to undo her blouse as she walked into the bathroom and looked at her
face, neck, shoulders in the small mirror over the handbasin. She
investigated with a tiny jolt of joy the small red mark which had
appeared on her neck, smiling as she remembered the kiss that had been
the cause of this blemish.

There was no separate shower, only an attachment on the taps within
the bath, and a shower curtain to stop the water from soaking the
carpet. She allowed her blouse to fall to the floor, stepped out of her
jeans.She threw her underwear into the laundry basket, she would wear
clean stuff tonight.

The water was hot, its caress powerful, flattening her hair, closing
her eyes, causing her to hold her breath as she shampooed, conditioned.
She stood under the water, looking down at her wet,clean body,
wondering if he would see it in the same way that she did. Whether he
would notice the small marks that showed now slightly pink on both
sides of her hips, where she had gained and then lost weight that last
year at University, whether he would realise that one breast was an
almost imperceptibly a different shape to the other. But surely all
women are like that, she thought. And whether he would see the faint
scar on her thigh from the time she fell out of a tree when she was
eight, the pale birthmark on her buttock, that she could only see by
twisting, squirming to one side.

And she wondered as she stepped out of the now tepid water and into
the warmth of the towel, what surprises his body would have for
her.

She rubbed herself roughly with the towel and went to dress.