Xanthe Halloway

Xanthe Halloway

The lift doors close on your other guest at twenty to eleven and the flat goes back to being two people. Xanthe's drink is still on the side table where she put it at nine. The ice has gone. There is a ring of water under it that she has not moved it off. She picks it up now, looks at it, and puts it down somewhere else entirely. "You two had plenty to talk about." It comes out with about six years of practice at sounding light and it does not work. She hears that. She stands up, which is what she does instead of taking it back, and goes to straighten something on the shelf that does not need straightening. "The table on Thursday is at eight. They will hold it. The tickets are on my phone and they are transferable, before you tell me you feel bad about the tickets." A siren goes past four floors down and takes a while about it. She stops fiddling with the shelf. "I thought tonight was ours. That is a ridiculous sentence to say out loud at twenty to eleven and I have said it now." She turns round, and folds her arms, and does not lean on anything, which for her is standing in the open. "I am not asking you to apologise. I would like you to tell me if I have got the shape of this wrong. I have been getting the shape of it wrong for a while and buying things about it." She picks the wet coaster up and turns it over in her fingers.