She looked down at her knees and sighed and cried and wished she were thin and that the birds outside would stop their whining. The leaves hung limp from the branches like discarded clothes. She tried to force a smile but her cheeks burned with misery and she could not remember how to turn the muscles of her mouth upwards.

His footsteps still sullied the hallway leading out. Always out. Never in to where she sat waiting. Her fingers fumbled the jewels around her neck, cracked and useless like broken glass crunched beneath boot soles that slammed in her face.

His lip prints smudged on the mug he drank from the day he left that sat next to the sink, unwashed, untouched. His words came back to her in a flurry of noise that now meant nothing.

He turned before he left and smiled as if he were pleased to be standing on her heart and wiping his feet before going out into the street.

She dropped the teabag into the saucer and watched the brown liquid ooze through its paper, staining the white china. Her cup was cold and the milk left an oily film on the surface of the drink. She licked her fingertip and looked out of the window vacantly, waiting as she had done every day since he had left two years before.