The Porcelain Girls

He likes girls that look like they’re made of porcelain.

They appear before her, illuminated on the screen as she kneels on the playroom floor, one shaking hand tentatively scrolling as the other scoops discarded toys into a wooden chest.

A stuffed bear. A car with a broken wheel. A doll without a shoe.

Natasha. Ashleigh. Kate.

Taunting faces, so bright, so wondrous. Full-lipped smiles, skin so line-free, untouched by the vanquishing filter of age.

On Tuesday, her friend Erin had appeared at the door, holding out a bottle of wine as she gave a cautious glace into the house, into the long kitchen. “Is he home?” she whispered. He was not.

“I saw him,” Erin said later, the room silent besides their fervent chatter, the clink of glasses, the soft noise of the TV from upstairs. Erin lived across the street, in the house with the big bay windows, with curtains that were never drawn, where, if you were passing, you’d often see Erin in her underwear, dancing, laughing as though the world didn’t exist behind the glass. Erin’s visits were infrequent. He didn’t like her.

“I don’t trust her,” he would say, as he’d glance at Erin’s make-up, her vivid clothes, her unbridled confidence.

Now, in the playroom, she deposits more toys. A ball. Something pink and plastic. She recalls the words that fell from Erin’s glossy lips that night. “He was out. With a woman.”

She felt her limbs freeze, threaten to give in. It wasn’t an unusual feeling; it wasn’t the first time her world had ended.

“Shall we go out?” Erin had asked eagerly. “A girls’ night. Me and you.”

She shook her head. He wouldn’t like it. Plus, she had things to do. The house needed cleaning. The garden was becoming overgrown; she was scared she’d lose the children in it. No, she should stay. Wake up early, go outside, chase the children with the garden hose, make them squeal with laughter, make a picture of wholesome family fun for those who passed, make people think I want that, make people think aren’t they perfect, make them ask isn’t she lucky?

She was lucky, she knew that. Lucky.

She stares at the phone now. Her husband’s words burn through the screen and through her heart. ‘So sexy xxx’ she reads, beneath Ashleigh’s perfect face.

Erin’s text interrupts with a welcome ping. ‘Are you sure? We should go out. Let me take you.’

She knows he doesn’t like Erin, but he is also out, undoubtedly looking at Natasha or Ashleigh or Kate, so she takes a deep breath. Her heart pounds as the decision slips from her tongue and into the empty room, and out onto the screen, to the world of almost forbidden hope beyond.

‘Yes’.

Her heart still pounds as the children wave from her mother’s window. It thuds as she digs out an old red dress, swipes on old mascara. For so long she’d felt immovable, wooden. Now she feels…daring.

Scared. 

Daring.

Erin waits outside the venue, a nightclub that conjures memories of friends, laughter, sticky floors, before the big house with the bigger garden and even bigger wall. Inside there’s thumping music and dancing, and Erin takes her hand, swirling her round and around amongst the happy throng of people, and the drinks flow and the music pulsates and she is gliding, gliding on happiness, letting it consume her. She walks on clouds and her smile is big, wide, remembered.

Until she sees her.

Ashleigh.

Gathered in a corner with friends, beneath dim lights. A shelf of dolls. So young. So lucky.

Numb again, she watches Ashleigh rise from her seat, head towards the bathroom. She squeezes through the crowd, following, wondering what to do, what to ask, what to say. How to contain anger so powerful.

But her footsteps halt on the tiles. She hears crying. Soft sobs, words struggling to emerge. ‘...he’s married…but he’s so perfect and I…’

She doesn’t wait for the inevitable finish; words which once rolled off her own tongue so easily. Behind Ashleigh, in the mirror, she sees herself. Her own face, once doll-like and eager, yet still so beautiful.

She sees love, not lust. Remembers love so pure, naïve and wonderful. She recalls it in her own expression in mirrors past. She thinks of fairytales with bad endings, of danger, of faith, of yearning.

I was a porcelain girl, she thinks. Before the cracks began to show.

And now, it’s time to be free.