Chapter One

Slow Winter
By Daniel Guest

Chapter One

The sun didn't appear to be moving, but every time Sophia looked, it
had slipped a little further down towards the horizon like a drip of
glossy pink paint running down a freshly painted wall. In its wake, the
sun left a trail of glistening silvery-red streaks which sliced across
bluish-grey clouds.
She looked again, and the sun had disappeared, nestling in a coppice
of trees on the horizon. How far away was the sun if it lay in those
trees? A few miles, she guessed, but knew it was nonsense.
Beneath her there were sounds of crockery and cutlery being manhandled
into, or out of, the dishwasher. Ben was a good man; she knew that. Too
good.
"Leave it," Sophia called out. "I'll clear up the kitchen when I come
down." He didn't hear, or pretended not to. She began to shout down at
him, louder so that he would hear, but stopped herself at the first
syllable. Let him fuss if he wanted; it at least afforded her some time
alone. If he wasn't busy doing her cleaning or laundry - even reading
the reports she brought home from work to skim over at the weekend - he
would only lay on the bed with her, fawning like a magpie over its
plunder of shiny objects.
Shiny objects. Sophia wanted to be a shiny object. If you were shiny
and sparkly and glittering people noticed you; they looked and stared
and thought, 'how pretty!' She deserved that. She did, didn't she? She
deserved to be pretty for a day.
Of course Sophia was pretty. She had smooth silky hair falling down
the back of her head and splashing down across her shoulders, coming to
rest in a pool somewhere in the middle of her back. Her eyes were dark
polished hazelnuts, gleaming deep in their sockets - true windows to
the soul. She took care of herself; manicured nails and expensive
clothes. Of course she was beautiful. She knew it too - could see it
clearly enough in the mirror - but couldn't quite admit it to herself,
as if acknowledging beauty somehow mysteriously destroyed it.
The crashing from the kitchen stopped. She tried to trace Ben's
footsteps into the hall and up the stairs, as she had done at home when
she was a little child. Listening to her father's footsteps, trying to
guess where he was going and what he was doing in each room. Sophia
wanted to be a little girl again; little girls were always beautiful,
and never ashamed of it.
"What did you say, love?" Ben asked. His figure filled the doorframe
and didn't fill it. He was tall but not tall. He wasn't a slim build,
but he wasn't fat, or even defined. He was something yet nothing, and
his pale skin and fair hair seemed to accentuate how lifeless he
looked. He was a mannequin; all-seeing, but never noticed.
"Forget it," Sophia replied. "It was nothing."
"No tell me&;#8230; I hate it when you don't tell me things."
"Ben, it doesn't matter. It's gone."
"Tell me!" Sophia hated these exchanges; he liked to know everything
but sometimes she wanted to keep things to herself, however trivial
they seemed. It was the very principle that bothered her.
"Ben it doesn't matter!" She spat at him, surprising herself with her
bitter tone. She got up from the bed and pushed past him through the
doorway, stealing one last glance at the horizon, where even the
telltale incisions of pink on the clouds had disappeared, almost as if
the sun had never existed. She walked downstairs and pulled on some
shoes; tight leather ankle boots that made a gloriously self-indulgent
'tap tap tap' sound as she walked. Pulling a warm jacket from the
cupboard as Ben came slowly down the stairs, apologising and whining in
a tone that guaranteed annoyance, she stepped out of the front
door.
She walked briskly away from the house, stopping to pull her jacket
around herself as some sort of protection against the chill late
afternoon air. A sense of release rose in her body and she quickened
her pace with renewed energy, until she was almost jogging.
She walked down to the river, along the stony footpath and across the
old bridge. Traffic whizzed past on the new bridge a way downstream -
or upstream, she wasn't sure - and the creamy white lights of the cars
comforted her in the falling darkness. She looked away from the road,
the other way down the river, at the purplish-brown tinted grey of the
sky. The colours were muted, dampened and muddy, but to Sophia they
shone with the brilliance of precious jewels. She had always thought
the sky to be blue, but it wasn't. This realisation struck her and
Sophia was stunned for a moment. How could the sky not be blue? She
felt the coldness of the evening closing around her, and turned around,
striding quickly home.

By the time she got back to the house it was truly dark, and Sophia
could see her breath as she exhaled, as if she was smoking. Having no
key she knocked on the door, preferring the solid feel of the wooden
door on her knuckles to the toneless 'ding dong' of the doorbell. As
Ben opened the door a smell of cooking food struck her and she was
immediately hungry.
"I'm sorry, honey." Ben put his arms around Sophia and hugged her. She
shrugged noiselessly from his embrace and took off her shoes and
jacket.
"Don't apologise," were the only words she could muster. "What have
you been up to?"
"I made some dinner." Ben said, looking pitifully at Sophia as if she
was convalescing, or a child in need of motherly sympathy. She pulled a
bottle of red wine from the wine rack in the kitchen and took out the
corkscrew.
"There's a bottle open," Ben said, getting her a glass from the
cupboard.
"But I want this one."
"Well, it's a bit of a waste. Do you think I should put some in the
casserole?"
"Do whatever, Ben." Sophia said, realising nonchalantly that she
didn't care any more. One of them was changing, or maybe she had
subconsciously stopped trying. Ben certainly hadn't. He was dipping a
teaspoon into his casserole and taking a taste. He muttered something
about pepper to her but she took her wine upstairs and lay on her bed,
door closed, lights off, curtains open. The darkness fell from outside,
through the windows and deep into Sophia's consciousness, diluted only
by a slim frame of light around the doorframe.
Ben's footsteps on the stair. Coming up to see if she was all right,
she knew. She took a sip of the wine, savouring the spicy warmth of it
as it slid over her tongue. It seemed to catch at the very bottom of
her throat; a fire somewhere inside her that calmed and reassured her.
It was like a hug from her father, which gradually wore off, until she
took another sip of the crimson liquid.
He knocked and opened the door, the light annoying Sophia so that she
screwed her eyes up tight.
"Sophia&;#8230;" Ben began, then paused, not knowing how to go on;
even whether to go on at all. He knew she didn't listen to him. "Sophia
you're not yourself. Are you ok?"
She was fine. She was fine, just tired. It was a delicate time of the
month, she told him; that scared most men off. She used to get out of
games lessons at school by muttering those four words to the teacher
who would then let her sit and watch the other girls playing hockey in
the freezing cold, their knuckles always red raw by the time the hour
long lesson was over.
"Well, call me when you want dinner." Ben told her. "I'll bring it
up."
Sophia didn't want dinner brought up to her. She didn't want dinner at
all; she didn't want to be here, but Sophia felt she had no choice, so
she petted and soothed Ben until he was satisfied and went away to
leave her in peace, closing the bedroom door and turning off the
landing light at her request. She lay in the darkness and felt the warm
feeling in her throat, listening to the sound of her breath as it grew
slower and slower, steadied to a rhythmic in&;#8230; and out.