Halfway House

She came to meet me in the kitchen. “Hi,” she said, smiling bluntly. It was an attempt to give me a friendly smile. “How was your day?”
‘Not too bad,’ I said as vaguely as possible, turning my back on her. She had drunk my milk, leaving a little on the bottom to make sure it didn’t look as though she had drunk it up. In my biscuit box, there were left two pieces on the bottom – they were like two poor orphans.
‘Do you have fifty p? For a call from the phone box,’ she demanded, and the self-confidence in her voice was sinister.
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ I said irritably, heading for the staircase in a firm stride.
On the third or fourth step, the boundlessly demanding voice of hers catches up with me. “So, you don’t have fifty p…”
I shake my head in exasperation, moving up the stair. Then in my room, after having been staring at the ceiling of my room for sufficient time, I start making a draft of the notice. But I fear that the most sensible thing to do is to leave the house as soon as possible. She can put a knife through me just to get a little money in my wallet, or to get hold of my mobile phone. I made a decision of locking myself in my bedroom for nights.

At three in the morning she kept on knocking on my door until she woke me up.
‘Open the door.’
‘Why.’
‘I’ll tell you when you let me in.’
‘I won’t lend you more money.’
‘Open the door.’
‘Go away.’
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Yeah - about the money you want me to lend you.’
I didn’t open the door.

In the morning, before I set off for work, I opened the fridge, perhaps to see how much of my food went missing during the night, and I found out it was suspiciously dark inside.
Did the light bulb go loose? No, it’s warm inside. Is it out of order? Or - I had a glance at the socket – the fridge was unplugged. I will have to throw the ham out, and the kitchen filler as well. That stupid cow switched the fridge off, to save money on electricity.
Fortunately, I am in love. I got hold of a new phone number in my mobile, and the name belonging to this number is Ilona. I have to make a backup of the number, as it’s of an invaluable price, like value of a coronation jewel. I got stricken by the image of me losing my private coronation jewel, and for a couple of seconds I got overwhelmed by the burning anxiety.
Next week I would go to Tesco to buy some new clothes. A then I would ask her out on a date.

It’s so freezing outsider that my mobile is on strike – I can’t write text messages. Pen got frozen as well, and is just carving colourless lines in the paper, and so I can’t even make a note that I need to buy aftershave. The frost is licking my face with his rough tongue, and I feel as though I had an ice cube on the tip of my nose. There is even less people at the bus stops than usuall– the elderly and sick are advised to stay indoors.
Nevertheless, the bus is picking up the clusters of the people from the bus stops until it’s full. As usuall, at the stop Red Yard my eyes are hungry for the familiar black waistcoat, and the proud chest, and the cat-like eyes. No, I didn’t miss her – she’s not here. The excitement which had intoxicated my body, massaging it from the inside, was watered and flushed down with hopelessness. I felt like weeping. Ilona’s class-mates came to me, and I offered them my seat; they refused saying that they would be happy enough if they could put their schoolbags in my lap. I had only a vague idea what their names were, so I was avoiding addressing them. I kept on adding logs into the fire of the conversation, hiding the dusk of my soul in front of them. I draw the attention to the lady at the front, who was communicating in sign language with the man across the aisle. For a while we amused ourselves by guessing which one of them was a deaf-mute. I reckoned it was the bloke, and shorter of the two Ilona’s school-mates claimed that both of them.
Why’s not Ilona on the bus? Is she ill, or was she given a lift from the school? Who could have driven her home? But she gave me the number, the coronation jewel…
When I was getting off the bus, squeezing through along the aisle between the wildly gesticulating woman and the man at the front, I found out they can both talk. Sometimes things are completely different than one thinks. A strong blow of fear played along with me, a fear that my coronation jewel doesn’t contain single milligram of gold, nor there is a single precious stone. I was soaked in the feeling of helplessness.