Preface

Every day, she knew it; he knew it. He sat in his chair with his scotch and watched the fire dance, not eating, not sleeping, not appearing to breathe as the flames sank from red to orange to yellow to black. He wasn't the normal kind of newlywed, and nor was he the normal kind of man. He slept in his wife's dressing room rather than grace her bed, and he never welcomed her presence in his study. She leant over him, cooed his name, rubbed his shoulders, but nothing about her would ever be right.

There was a harpoon between his ribs, piercing his heart, its tether stretching to another avenue where there were glass houses at which he'd once thrown stones.

She knelt like an animal and heaved, her stomach empty and yet still seeming to have more to give. She was nothing, a shadow, skin stretched over bones and eyes which found herself in the mirror and were still unsatisfied. One day, she would be something again. One day, she would walk through the glittering shards of her former hopes with her head held high.

But that day was not today. Today, she tried to starve out the secret inside and lose herself in a world of written words.

Das Pop put it best: 'I can't get enough of your love'. That is not to say that I differentiate between those who read silently, read loudly, read secretly or read blatantly, or that I'm back for reviews and favourites. I'm back because I owe them a happy ending, I owe myself a happy ending, and I think that maybe you wouldn't mind one either?