Extract 1

Amelia lifted her feet from the boiling depths of her bathtub and watched the steam curl ever so slowly off her toes. A smile crept across her glistening face at the colour of her shins. Shiny and red like the crays her dad used to pull from the stainless pot, and wave teasingly at her fleeing back.
She tipped her head back to rest on the edge of the tub, the cool tiles pressing to the nape of her neck. She mused if heaven would be like this, so quiet, and decadent. But she had little doubt that they did not serve her favourite Sangiovese in heaven, and she took another sip, allowing the dark liquidised fruit to roll across her tongue before it cascaded lovingly down her throat.

Amelia reflected on her day. Truly, no different from any other. Late for work, another sleepless night locking her to the quilt much too late in the morning. Straining her shoulder at the gym, a recurring injury that she could not pinpoint as free-weights induced, or stored anxiety. And missing her train home only to have the subsequent train cancelled on her. But in her wait at the station, she had noticed him. He would have been unassuming, perhaps unnoticed altogether, if he had not moved into her path. He would have been this inconspicuous, if Amelia had not noticed the gloom that darkened his haunting face. As she had walked past, arms wrestling with the depths of her satchel for her Ipod, she had dropped her magazine on the concrete platform. Bending to pick it up, the boy had beaten her to it, stooping low and quickly as if to snatch it and run. Instead, he passed it to Amelia, and as she reached out to take it from him, she’d noticed the alarming differences between their hands. She could not have been more than 5 or 6 years older than him, yet his hands were calloused, cracked and dirty, creeping out from beneath a grey jumper that swamped his thin frame. Her hands were fine, soft, sure she chewed her nails incessantly but still, she sported a glossy red acrylic on what remained. As her long fingers moved, her engagement ring twinkled briefly underneath the fluorescent lights.
Amelia stared at his hands until they returned to deep in his pockets, and she had realised very suddenly that she was standing mute in front of this boy with no apparent intention. As a godsend, the train rolled slowly into the station, she had mumbled a thankyou, turned quickly on her patent black heels and shuffled with the crowd, onto the waiting train.

Quickly, Amelia battled her way to one of the few remaining vacant seats, plonking her satchel and gym bags victoriously on her lap. She looked around the train, unable to settle her gaze amongst the passengers, and returned her vision to the platform. Amelia had seen so many junkie kids around the city, general steering a clear path around the vacant forms as they gathered under doorways and on stairwells. So why had she found herself so captivated by this one? He could not have been older than 16, his thin shoulders pitching into his jumper, accentuating the already dwarfing fabric. The alarm sounded and the doors had closed. The boy looked up from the stained concrete from where he sat on his bench seat, and absently scanned the carriages. His eyes fixed on her briefly then moved on. But Amelia could not stop watching him. She had realised that in the moment their eyes met, that she had looked into the eyes of an old old man. His eyes were grey like his jumper, devoid of any true definition of colour, and vacant of any spark, dark clouds of sleeplessness jostled across his face. And in that brief second across metres of platform, she had heard him say “I know what you see”. He had looked at Amelia, and then back through her to himself, and she had witnessed it all from the sidelines.

Amelia opened her eyes in an attempt to clear the image of his face from her head. The foamy bubbles crackled around her ears. She felt overwhelmed with sadness. Of all the addicted and impoverished that had ever crossed her path this boy – this kid, this addled child – had told her, without words, of his inherent awareness of his own destitution. Across metres of platform, he spoke to her of a youthful world lost to an adult desire. In those steel grey eyes.

Anthony came in the door as Amelia padded down the timber corridor in her cotton socks. She gave a little squeal of delight as they met halfway, and she threw herself into his embrace. Even as a statuesque woman, Tony had the capacity to make her feel very small, one of the many reasons why she loved him. And as he squeezed her, planting faint kisses quickly on her forehead, the image of the boy on the platform dissolved from her mind.