Karaoke

The Karaoke

She is hurrying along because she wants to arrive there. Also because the slick, wet streets are dark, and she has a sense that she isn’t really that safe.

She is worried about the velocity she’s selected because of the puppy. The puppy has already had a long, busy day and she’s anxious, always, on the puppy’s behalf.

She would quite like to cry, here on the street.

She had gone to the pub after work because she didn’t want to miss out, but she also desperately wanted to spend time with him. He had refused to accompany her to the pub, and wounded her slightly by telling her he didn’t mind if she spent all evening there.

What she really wanted was to laugh, in company, with him. To shine for him, to place her arms around his shoulders as she stood behind him and slinkily spill next to him on the pub booth.

She had been conscious of the time, but not conscious enough. He will be grim and silent when she arrives, and he will claim she is a number of minutes late.

The number she has in her head as she types this is 40, but she’s sure it’s closer to 20. He expresses the number of minutes in a pronounced, shocked, quiet voice that he reserves for her to show that he is deeply, righteously, enraged, but also completely in control. Though, according to the voice, and the gravity of the situation, he has every right not to be.

It is doomed from the start, this evening. He accuses her of drinking to excess. He’s frustrated by the giddy exploits of the puppy. He loses his temper as she is texting her friends.

All she wants to do is round off the evening. True, she has left the party, but she wants to say goodbye properly, this is just how she is, she is then ready to spend her evening with him. But he cannot handle the texting, doesn’t understand how she still needs to ‘be there’. He thinks she is choosing them over him.

She’s near to tears. She puts down the takeaway they have ordered. It’s barely touched. She’s unable to properly express herself as she rises and slots the puppy into its harness. It’s cold and dark outside and she has no transport and no real idea of where she’s supposed to go.

But, at this point, she is full of fire and fight and she’s determined that she will not be controlled, not be cowed, not be chiselled down to some lesser statue of herself.

She walks the few miles to the pub. She’s cold when she arrives and she’s worried about the puppy, because really the puppy will want to nap, but she could not return to an empty house and cry in the dark. She paints on her smile, orders drinks, sings karaoke songs with her friends. Tells herself ‘this is me.’ ‘I am strong’. ‘I won’t be treated like that’.

But her heart isn’t there. She’s checking her phone, hoping he will invite her back, hoping he will ask if they are OK, where they are, did they make it somewhere safe, the puppy and her?

But it’s already broken.

They will speak, the next morning and he will be unrelenting. He will ask her what songs she sang. She will only admit to one. She says ‘what’s love got to do with it?’

He will bitterly pronounce ‘how appropriate’.

He wants to know who she sang with.

She is scared to say the name of the art teacher. He has never been anything but a friend who makes her laugh. She is even invited to his wedding. But she has been in trouble because of time spent with Johnny before and she now feels she has done wrong, or at least, done something she cannot confess, by singing multiple songs with Johnny.

He weaponises his words and tells her while he was upset, re-playing the evening, she is off having fun and singing with boys.

She is unable to say ‘But that’s just it, that’s what I wanted to do, I wanted to claim myself back, because you were in the wrong, and you shouted at me, and you were cruel to me, and you made me feel like there was no place for me. Like there was no way for me to stay’.

But her explanation fails her. She cannot righteously defend her actions and instead she searches out friends and asks them to say she only sang one song. She is now a woman who lies to avoid being in trouble.

That night �" the karaoke night -  will come up around the school trip table and she’ll furiously mime to her friend across the table. But he will see it and bring it up later.