Indelible Ink Read Free Page A

I’m not sure about the colour.’
    A man in beige chinos sat on the other icy lump, hands flat either side. He moved around, smiling at the woman standing over him, urging her to join him. She had a fringe that dipped in a
melancholy curve below her brow. ‘I still prefer the one on eBay,’ she said, pouting.
    ‘But you can’t sit on your eBay couch, sweetheart.’ He patted the cushion beside him. ‘It could be Sag City and you won’t know till you get it. Come on. Try
this out.’
    She sat next to him, expressionless, staring straight ahead.
    ‘You might change your mind, but the best things will go,’ Susan said into Marie’s ear. ‘Everybody thinks there’s an endless supply just because it’s
furniture. But you wait, they will go!’
    Marie looked at the colour chart. Navy and slate would be too dark. Coral reminded her of the 1970s. ‘Is there any jade in stock?’ she asked the assistant.
    ‘I’ll go and check.’
    ‘Don’t you think jade looks drab?’ said Susan. ‘It always ends up looking grey.’
    Jade. Chinese. Marie’s mind wandered as Susan answered her mobile. She couldn’t remember Ross’s Chinese vases. What shocked her after he had left with his things wasn’t
so much the loss as how quickly her mind papered it over. Where is this? What happened to that? her children would say. Marie would have no idea what they were talking about. Oh, Dad , they
would answer themselves . She worried about the holes beneath this paper, the day it would give way and she would fall through into the dark abyss of reality. No such thing as a free lunch,
Marie thought, in her fug, on the glacial lounge suite. Around her wheeled the endless cycle of acquisition and rejection, the costly stink of yesterday’s garbage. She slid through it like a
stain.
    Susan was braying into her phone, ‘Hal-lo! No, I’m out. Yes, you must!’
    Marie straightened her spine, thought of her wallet and felt a power enter her. It seemed to come from her posture and her credit. These things emanated into the room, alchemised, then returned
as this strange and thrilling power. Susan was snapping her phone shut with a clatter of bracelets, filing it into her jacket pocket. Marie turned to her, shoulders thrust back. ‘What’s
his new house like?’
    ‘You can imagine.’ Susan rolled her eyes. ‘Full of clutter. He’s gone completely Chinese, which is why I warned you off those vases. He doesn’t have very good
taste, you know.’ She drew in her chin and looked Marie in the eye.
    ‘Do you and Jonesy go there very often?’
    ‘No.’
    The man in beige chinos and his partner moved over to the dining section.
    Marie looked straight ahead, confused. So the vases were new. So much for her amnesia. Or were they there already? She pulled the tag around to look at the price of the lounge suite. Nine
thousand dollars. She could have got a rainwater tank for that.
    ‘Why do you have to torture yourself, Marie? You should be treating yourself.’
    ‘What’s she like? She’s young, isn’t she?’ Marie could hear the belligerence in her tone. She didn’t like the sound of herself after a few glasses of wine.
Her voice emerged louder than she intended, with the exaggerated enunciation of a person for whom clear speech was difficult: a stroke victim, a deaf mute. A drunk.
    Susan’s irritation was evident. She stood and straightened her skirt. ‘Okay, she’s plump and plain. An interior designer. Not that you’d know it, looking at all that clutter . She fusses over him.’
    A little bark of amusement from Marie. ‘Short and blonde? Big tits?’
    ‘There’s nothing I can say when you’re like this. Listen, why don’t I buy you a lamp. Let’s go and get a lamp to go with the lounge suite.’
    ‘He’s got himself another me. I suppose I should be flattered!’
    ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
    Susan moved away; Marie followed her. They ebbed towards an uninhabited corner of the shop, bright with scores