Fallen Woman

1. I sit on the sofa, listening to Ella Fitzgerald, listening to the rain, drinking wine for warmth. I must keep all my money, like my wits, about me. My dad always told me to keep my wits about me but instead I let them float away like dandelion seeds, languorous and dreamy, and now I am alone. Who will look after me when everything collapses? Where is my Louis Armstrong? My wine is blood, my blood is wine. Pinot noir, my sexy little nectar. Sometimes I think everything would be bearable if I was always a little bit drunk. I could work myself into a dust without anguish if only I could have a glass of red wine every couple of hours. I would do nothing but work and drink. I would be like the fairy godmother from Cinderella, spinning around lightly with her wand, accomplishing things with joy whilst singing Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo. My debt would shrivel into nonexistence and my savings would ripen like succulent little grapes upon the withering vine of my life. But have faith, darling girl, have faith.

2. So I am in Piccadilly Gardens, waiting for the man to arrive. Above there are twinkling lights in the trees and below, everywhere, puddles which reflect nothing. Somewhere, a man retches. Elsewhere, a glass bottle is smashed. In an attempt to appear less nervous than I am, I trudge a path around the benches and the trees. When it is raining, which feels like all the time now, I walk deliberately through puddles, because in these old workman boots I can. My feet are leaden with the weight of them, but there is something freeing about being so heavy footed. In less than ten minutes, all being well, I will be on the bus home and I will never have to see the man again. In less than an hour, I will be lying in bed, man socks on, a serial killer documentary lulling me to sleep. As I walk I think of Jean Rhys tramping around Paris and wonder whether she would have done this. Yes, I think, but with fewer delusions. When I see the man I detach from myself and approach him. How shameful to be the first to arrive, but remember this is subversive, this is transcendental. When he sees me he smiles benevolently and  hands me a bag. I smile meekly and walk away a piteous creature with wet hair, but then within a few steps I am triumphant, swinging my little paper bag of spoils. At the bus stop I look inside: a prosciutto baguette, an avocado and black bean wrap, three cheese sandwiches, a grapefruit juice and, down at the bottom, a little packet of cocoa dusted almonds. When I get on the bus the bus driver smiles at me and I smile magnanimously back.

 3. In the morning I wake up at six, wash my hair in freezing water for shine, and voila! C’est tout. I step out into the February morning, pigeons cooing above, hair drip drying in the wind, red scarf ravelled around my neck. I wear a baggy cashmere jumper from the charity shop, with a little hole in the shoulder for character. I wait at the bus stop for long enough that my skin becomes red raw with wind, but I find that to focus on the cold with enough intent turns it alchemically into heat. I am extravagantly frugal, wanton in my renunciation of all things, living once again in the light of revelation.

4. At work, I drink litres and litres of tap water and imagine my skin clearing with each cool drop. I think of it coursing blue from the Lake District and all the way to my mouth. For lunch I gorge on my homemade borlotti bean stew and think of the goodness swirling around my body. My body, which marvels at having received both a banana and borlotti beans already today. Fortunate little thing. Later, on the bus home, I listen to the Marsellaise on repeat. Liberté, liberté chérie! I get off and my hair flies back in the wind, my long skirt swishes. I am a poignant faced revolutionary. I am a French peasant who has had enough. When I get in I stand in the kitchen making daal for the rest of my lunches this week, watching the mustard seeds pop, listening to Nina Simone. Her voice makes me want to have a glass of red wine and sink weeping to the floor, so instead I put on a bhangra playlist which refuses to be complicit in any sort of emotional indulgence.

5. One morning I ask myself: why is there a vase of dead flowers on the windowsill by the sink, given to me by a man I would rather not be reminded of as I do the washing up each day? I do not know what they are. Hydrangeas? Violets? Once soft and purple, now dead past pungency. I take them to work with me and wait for the late afternoon when everyone else has gone before I slip the crisp petals between laminating sheets and put them through the machine, guilloting them into bookmarks.

 6. When the rain finally stops and the sky is a lovely golden pink, I walk to the supermarket thinking of reduced roses that are still fresh and bananas that are the perfect brown to make ice cream with. I am a magpie, gliding through the aisles, casting my eyes over the vast expanse so that I might glimpse a yellow sticker. No roses and only green bananas, but I do find beef bourguignon, deli counter olives. Good god almighty, four jam doughnuts in a paper bag - what a lark! What a plunge! But then a woman comes and hovers beside me and her presence makes me feel shifty. I resist snatching everything up and instead assume a contemplative nonchalance, turning a reduced nectarine pensively in my hand before placing it lightly in my basket.

 7. During my lunch break I walk down Market Street. I like to go into shops just to steel myself against false desire. Like a moth to a flame I am drawn today to a black blouse. Wear with tailored trousers for work, or tucked into jeans for stylish weekend dressing. Tempting, tempting, except when I imagine myself with this on I have the hair of somebody else, not hair that is long and straggly and split. I think of stooped women in Bangladesh paid a pittance, and heaps of rotting fabric pecked at by seagulls, filling the air with stench. The moth is killed by the flame because it mistakenly thinks it is the moon.

8. After the office, there is the pub. When I arrive the manager suggests in the way he looks at me that I should be wearing makeup but no, I will no longer pay to slather chemicals across my face. He stands and frowns at me, a blobfish in ugly leather loafers. The other girl who works here has however bowed to the pressure and now wears thicks foundation which accentuates her acne scars and fools no one though she is beloved of the manager for trying. Whatever, whatever, they can both fuck themselves. I am the woman at the bar at the Folies-Bergère. Every couple of hours I do toilet checks, though I never know what it is I am checking for. Shit smeared up the wall, I assume, though lime disinfectant is the only stench I am ever assailed by down here. On my break I go into the staff toilet and make hideous faces at myself in the mirror, which feels very freeing. I go back out to the bar, which is cacophonous, but I tell myself that these braying men are dying and this lager is the only elixir that will save them, that this is urgent work.

9. When I get off the bus in the morning and pass the coffee shop I have an unhinged moment because in my big black boots I clomp inside and pick up an acai bowl and think about the taste of a coconut flat white. But the queue is long and standing in it I realise I have taken leave of my senses. Drinking coffee is what pathetic people do. Look at them all, lining up like they are going to communion. All of them addicts, ruining the ocean with their plastic, doing nothing to ameliorate the darkness under their eyes. I put my earphones in and my disdain for coffee shops and my resolve to be frugal are strengthened by the evocations of uilleann pipes. But how terrifying it is to be so impulsive against all wishes and intentions; to be so possessed one moment and so scattered the next, to fall so readily back into the arms of temptation.

10. Premenstrual, I lie on the floor and weep. My face is like an ancient Greek theatre mask. My hips are being crushed, my back is a bamboo cane about to be snapped. I have so much emotion, I feel that it is dripping from me like battery acid onto the carpet. Finally I think, fuck this. I walk to the shop to buy a bottle of Prosecco and burst into tears again at the sight of all the cherry blossom. When I return I pour myself a fizzy little pint and lay back down on the rug. I listen with eyes closed to pigeons making their early evening sounds. Dissolve, dissolve. Dark, migraine inducing sun streams through the blinds. Life is limitless, I say aloud. I have been reading so many self help books and sometimes I am just struck with the possibility of them. Oh, I am so very drunk. I am lying on the floor with no bra on in a silk top that had belonged to my mother. My breasts sag with languorous indifference and my nipples, prominent despite the sluggish warmth, peer back up at me. Such lonely, lonely little things, my nipples. I feel suddenly indifferent to the whole sorry shitshow and order myself a pizza, then lie there in drunken, drifting, pathetic wait. The doorbell rings and there stands Saint Sebastien himself, holding my pizza aloft, staring at me with uncertainty, with bewilderment. But I am too hungry for lust and I can only smile back at him in a bovine sort of way and close the door in his face. The pizza is not sliced but I cannot wait. I pick the whole thing up and shovel it into my mouth so that oil and oregna dribble down my chin and my belly rumbles in grateful surprise. Afterwards I feel sick with myself for having spent so much money on a pizza and there is no delusion whatsoever that can save me from the truth of my mistake. I run into the kitchen and eat a plum from the fridge. There is a whole broccoli head in there too, out of date and wistful. I break it up into florets and boil them all. When they are soft enough I eat them, one after the other, moving my jaw like a horse eating hay, thinking of my iron levels, thinking of my hair. But the money I have spent still weighs heavy on me, and I do not even have the satisfaction of purging myself of my mistake. Spending money on food is not like eating it, it simply cannot be undone. I go back into the front room and think of the man who delivered my pizza. Beautiful, divine creature. I have a confirmation email with his name and phone number. Maybe something good could come from this mistake, if I send him a little message. After all, I will never order a pizza again so rejection is of no consequence. Rejection will, in fact, ensure my good behaviour. I compose a text. I try to sound light, carefree, tinkling, casual, as though he has not already seen my pallid, nauesating little figure in the doorway, breasts drooping in hideous abandon, face like a sick gardenia. Hey, this is very out of the blue, I type. You just delivered my pizza. I wondered if you wanted to come back to have a drink with me when you have finished work?

This is an anonymous submission.

Louise Evans is a graphic designer and illustrator living in Bristol. She is interested in socio- linguistic history and the physicality of books. She does design for The Grapevine.