Mark Rothko
She returned home and found her rucksack waiting in ambush by the door just as she’d left it, but she didn’t have the energy for that now. Neither could she sleep. At her kitchen table, she scanned the last few pages of her copy-editing to check that she’d not rushed things, then wrote the covering email for the editor. Yes, it was a spicy read as promised and she’d enjoyed it and hoped this would help. Was there anything else she could look at? She was available. Invoice attached.
She would send this in the morning but now here was a new email, ‘From Neil’ the subject. She held her breath and opened it. In its entirety, it read –
Fair enough. Sorry it’s late. Will this be okay?
– and below this a screengrab of a standing order for five hundred pounds, monthly for the next two and a half years. It was the first time that a message from her ex-husband had brought any kind of satisfaction and she replied with a simple ‘Thank you’ and closed the laptop, just as she heard the sound of a text arriving.
She lifted the lid once again.
It was from Michael, the first she’d ever received, an abstract vertical image, horizontal bands of industrial grey and black. She clicked on it so that it filled the screen and stared at the monolith, waiting for some further explanation. Time passed. Nothing seemed to come. She ought to go to bed now.
Marnie waited.