A letter C

The little piece of newspaper, crisp and dark with age, flutters out of the gritty space between the fridge and the cabinet. I am cleaning the house while my wife is at school and at first I don’t understand. It is small, less than an inch wide. I lean down and turn it over. A letter C, carefully cut from a headline. Lots of swear words have C’s in. I’ve seen most of them in the letters which have dropped into the house over the last two years.

Time slides around, like one of those irritating little plastic puzzles in which squares must move within a frame with only one slot missing and the piece containing the eye always ends up near the ankle. My cheeks flush. I fill the kettle but abandon it on the draining board. I turn helplessly about and about.

It is the effort of the letters which hurt me more than the horrible words. I am hated so specifically that whoever did this collected newspapers, takeaway menus, greetings cards to slice up and remake into messages of loathing. A nasty text on social media only takes a second. These letters must have taken time.

Which letter was this single C meant for? One of the ones which made me cry? One of the ones my wife persuaded me not to take to the police? Perhaps it was the one which made me too frightened to leave the house, because the writer knew I’d nearly killed a dog on the bend near Tappet’s Farm.

They came at all hours of the night and day, despite our camera doorbell. Once I drew back the curtains in the bedroom to find a word beginning with C sellotaped to the glass outside. And now I realise how easy it had been for her. All she had to do was stand around with the letter in her hand and wait for me. I would insist on reading it. Then she let me see her hastily stuffing a letter in the bin. She watched me check the rubbish every day, yellow gloved and crazed, shoving through handfuls of chicken bones and tissues. There’s nothing in there, she would say. Sometimes it was a lie. Sometimes it wasn’t.

I remember the first letter, the swift scorch of shame and nausea as I read it. It arrived the day after my ex came back from America, breezing into our living room, glowing with cocoa butter, her strong brown hand waving a whisky glass as she made me laugh till I got the hiccups. I cannot picture my wife’s expression, nor remember a single thing she said that night. While I slept she must have been prowling through the paper in the house, clipping out letters, arranging them, smearing glue over the backs, pressing them down.

I begin searching. I move through each room, examining backs of cupboards, under beds, tipping out waste paper baskets. Knowing how organised my wife is, I suspect she has a system, letters clipped together in alphabetical order. That one small C must have drifted away from her unnoticed. It doesn’t mean anything when drawers are empty and cupboards contain only towels. I imagine my wife staying behind in her brightly coloured primary school classroom, among the tiny desks and chairs, crafting obscenities with plastic handled scissors and Pritt sticks.

Be gentle with yourself, she’d said. What is happening to you is horrible. Don’t worry if you don’t feel able to go to town … hold down your job … do the shopping … leave the house. Even now, as my hands yank down the suitcase from the top of the spare room wardrobe, the thought of venturing past our gate adds to the violent pounding of my heart. But the suitcase is full and I crunch over the gravel to my car, the zippy little Mini which hasn’t left the drive in months. I’ve left a note on the table. K, U and O come from a council pamphlet. Y, from the title of her favourite book. F and the other U from her framed degree certificate hanging on the wall of the study.  And that dirty little C from under the fridge.

Jo Bardsley is a queer teacher and writer. Born in Wales, they grew up in the Outback of Western Australia, with no TV. Their mother banned science fiction and made them read the classics to try to stop them staying up all night reading. Their creative work has been published in Mslexia and Swamp Writing and often explores marginalised experiences. They teach young adults with profound learning difficulties, they have taught literature in West Africa, Italy and the States. Currently they live in Walthamstow with their wife and children. They love swimming and traction engines. They are on Bluesky @jobardsley.bsky.social