The sky is the colour of the dirty water Danny used to leave in the sink after he’d finished washing up but forgotten to take the plug out. I can still remember the irrational surge of anger every time I came into the kitchen and saw those few inches of greasy, filthy water. I’d taken it as a swipe at me, a kick in the teeth, two fingers up at my bourgeois houseproudness. Now it occurs to me it was just, as he said at the time, dirty water. Nothing more.
I have allowed myself to be distracted by things that do not matter. I have allowed myself to be defined by what I do not have. I have lost sight of the beauty of this grey sky, of this damp air, of the faces of people gathered around me trying to keep me warm, of the sheer, vast, grubby, breathing, pulsing majesty of it all.
I choose life.
I choose my mother dancing around the kitchen to Beyoncé on a Saturday morning. I choose my sister raising her eyebrows in that arch ‘Really?’ expression that used to drive me mad. I choose my memories of Madge nudging her way under my duvet with her cold, wet nose, and of Danny, back in the days when we were invincible. I choose Becs and Stella and all the friends who raise me up and challenge me and tell me if I have spinach in my teeth or questionable taste in men and stop me falling.
I choose this. I choose life.
All of it.