No one came to the front door that night. There were no voices, no steps, only the whistle of a breeze down the tree lined street. The driveway was empty, and behind the front door Thomas sat on the carpet, his back to the radiator. The gas pipes rattled, and he warmed his back for a few minutes more. Lifting the thick mug of whiskey to his lips, he filled his cheeks before swallowing back the liquid. Allowing that warm feeling to work down through his chest, he then pulled himself up by the front door handle and looked out through the peephole.
‘Where are you Francine?’ he said, turning his back to the door.
Beside the staircase sat two suitcases and several boxes, just as she had left them two days ago. Thomas picked the tape off one of the boxes. Inside was a collection of gift cards scattered amongst her books and magazines. Standing in the hallway he read through each Birthday message and remembered her smile, her laugh. Thomas closed his eyes and imagined her arms around him, his lips feeling the warmth of her neck.
Returning the cards and sealing the box, Thomas walked back to the kitchen. A shiver crawled up his spine as his bare feet stuck to the cold linoleum and the cat flap in the back door rattled. The last light of the day had sucked the colour from the room, and everything was quiet except the sound of the house settling for the night. At the sink, Thomas splashed his face with water and diluted his drink some more.
Out the window, the setting sun had turned the sky a deep red and his eyes were drawn to the dark mass at the bottom of the garden. No one had been out there since the summer, when he had worked the lawn mower while Francine cut back the bushes and the beech tree. Once they finished they collected all the branches and weeds together for their next bonfire. The dead waste had remained there since, any sign of life drained to black.
Thomas found a box of matches in the drawer under the draining board, and with his mug and the bottle of whiskey in hand, he slipped on his shoes and went out the back door. Against the sunset, the back garden consisted of a murky silhouette. Thomas stood for a moment feeling the cold air against his cheeks. Beneath him the patio tiles were covered in moss, and he kicked at the weeds that had worked up through the cracks. In the summer the patio caught the afternoon sun and they would sit out there drinking and Francine would lean back in the deck chair and look up at the blue sky. Thomas remembered how her freckles would come up when she had been out all day and they would share a bath to cool themselves off. Walking across the overgrown lawn he came to the bare patch of earth at the end of the garden, and nestled the bottle and mug under the beech tree.
Looking back, the house seemed a long way off, the only light coming through the kitchen from the hallway ceiling. A bedroom light filtered through the closed curtains from the neighbouring home. An elderly couple lived there who kept the spare key and had fed the cat and watered the garden while they were away. Thomas remembered the musty smell of the house and how the post was always neatly stacked up in an elastic band when they would return. Francine would go over with a gift of wine and biscuits while he took their suitcases up to the bedroom, where the duvet would be cold and spider webs had spread in the corners of the room. He would leave the cases on the floor and wait for her on the bed.
The house on the other side had been empty for years. Thomas looked through the windows at the old furniture and wondered who had lived there and where they were now. If they had found what they were looking for.
Thomas rolled up his sleeves exposing his pale skin to the cold air. Crouching down he took the box of matches from his trouser pocket and struck one against the side of the box. Holding his hand up to protect the flame he reached out to the dried up leaves and noticed something move. Leaning in closer the dark mass seemed alive, wriggling and squirming, in an effort to escape. The match went out and Thomas lit another and a couple of thin branches sparked for a second but did not take. He sat back and took a sip from the mug, looking up at the partly obscured moon, the dark clouds gliding over, smothering the street in darkness.
Leaving his mug by the tree, Thomas returned to the kitchen to search through the cupboard drawers for anything flammable. He pulled out handfuls of coupons, takeaway menus, newspaper cut outs and receipts that Francine had saved but never used. Thomas thought of her carefully filling up the drawer in preparation for their future, imagining their lives together.
‘You never know when we’ll need more weed killer,’ Francine had said, cutting a coupon from the local paper.
‘By the time I get to it there’s nothing left,’ Thomas replied, tearing the newspaper from her hand. ‘Why do you have to collect so much rubbish?’
‘We’ll need it at some point,’ she said, tucking the coupon away with the others. She continued to fill the drawer by habit. Everyday cutting and collecting until the day she left. Thomas grabbed it all up and took it out to the bonfire.
In the garage Thomas emptied out a few boxes of paper and old stationary and carried them out and dropped them beside the pile. Flattening one of the boxes into a torch he lit one end and held it under the paper. The undergrowth lit up for a moment and the insects and the bugs shrunk away as the air was filled with the warm fizz of fire. The branches began to turn a deep orange as the paper disappeared to ash and Thomas tore up another box and threw it on the growing fire piece by piece.
Most of the garden waste remained untouched, so Thomas walked back up to house and through the kitchen to the living room to search for more to burn. On top of the chest of drawers were the photographs from their wedding over two years ago. Thomas removed them from the gilded frames and held them up in the light. In one their close family stood together, the two of them in the middle smiling. In another Francine was stood outside the church in her dress, her light blonde hair a mess from the blustery wind, with an awkward smile on her face. Thomas looked closer into her eyes searching for a clue. In the other the two of them were together outside the thick church doors, their hands gripped together. The day seemed like a decade ago, he no longer recognised himself in the photos. He pushed them to the back of a drawer, leaving the frames empty.
From the chest of drawers he picked through the dusty discarded items. There was a bill for the washing machine they had bought together on a wet Sunday last spring and he remembered the salesman telling them it would last a life time. They had returned it only ten months later. He fingered through a bulldog clip of old losing lottery tickets with the numbers all scribbled out; off licence receipts for wine and whiskey and bags of cashews that he would buy on the way home from work; plane tickets to New York last summer for Francine‘s Birthday; a warranty for the television; a photo of her parents in the back garden over the summer, Thomas tending to the BBQ in the background.
A little deeper Thomas found Francine’s Valentine’s card, which he opened and read aloud. ‘Dear Francine. You take my breath away...today and every day. Happy Valentine‘s Day. With all my love.’ The message was accompanied with a huddle of kisses and a scribbled heart and Thomas remembered how real it had been at the time. Tearing the card in half he threw it down with the other items to burn and gathered them up in his arms and went outside.
A few embers still glowed as Thomas threw down his haul and added them slowly, letting each piece take light before the next. Soon enough the fire built and Thomas sat back against the beech tree, a full mug in his hands and watched the flames, feeling the heat on his eyes. The thick branches and dense bush cuttings crackled and the fire set in for the night, reducing to a deep glimmer, a slow pulse of heat that gradually ate through the waste turning it to black.
By morning Thomas was in bed, snoring loudly, his hand clutching the empty bottle by his side. There was nothing left of the fire but dust and ash and as the sun shone through the windows a key gently turned in the front door and it opened slowly.