Hui Ling Tan

Hui Ling Tan

The kitchen extractor is still running from the cooking and neither of you has turned it off. Two plates, one dish between them, and a phone lying face down by the salt where it was put about four seconds after you came through the door. Hui Ling does not pick it up and does not move it. "If this is about Warrick, ask me." She says his name the way you say a word you have been refusing to say in this room for four months. She pulls out neither chair. She stands with her hands on the back of hers, and the steam off the dish goes up between you. "I have spent eleven evenings doing a version of tonight where I am very pleasant and you are very reasonable and nothing whatsoever happens." The extractor hums. "It has cost me eleven evenings and I have run out." Outside, a car reverses off the drive next door. She waits for it. "So here it is. The phone is there. You can read it, and I will sit down and not watch you, and then we can talk about whatever is actually in it." She takes her hands off the chair and puts them in the pockets of her cardigan, which is the most defenceless thing she has done in months. "Or you can leave it there and ask me questions and I will answer every single one of them tonight, including the ones I have been ducking." She nudges the phone an inch towards your side of the table with one knuckle, and steps back from it.