The Last Visit

The invitation was so insistent that it felt like a demand. The flurry of texts, the urgency… “I really want to see you today, before I go. I have a gift for you.” Curiousity is a powerful magnet and eraser of common sense and so she found herself at a large wooden table seated at a right angle to the texter. The gift was of no real interest to her, in fact thoughts of gifts filled her with dread and waves of angst… What if it’s something she  doesn’t  like? What if her face drops and she can’t convincingly act out the necessary social white lies? The texter knew her well enough to know her aversion to receiving face to face and had sent messages saying “Don’t Panic! You will like this surprise!” She doubted it very much but she was intrigued by this rush of interest from someone who’d ghosted her for the last several years…

Sitting in the room she cast her eye around… It wasn’t how she remembered the room, even though she couldn’t clearly recall how it had looked in the past, she knew it wasn’t like this, yet there was something over archingly familiar that she couldn’t quite put her finger on… Conversation felt faintly forced and filled with faux joviality… Should she address the elephant in the room? She cast her eye again around the room… What was it that gnawed silently… She took the gift and either she’d perfected the art of appearing delighted or her terrible acting skills were failing to be detected or maybe even wilfully ignored… “I knew you’d love it! It suits your personality SO well!”. She wry smiled and replied thanks, whilst trying not to laugh overly loud at what very much felt to be a back handed compliment. She gathered her keys, bag and gift… Standing up to leave she cast a final look around the room, eyes coming to rest on a painting. She followed the lines of the strokes and recalled them being made by her hand almost a decade ago… Memories stirred as she looked around the room again and saw the mark of her hand in many places and paused her thoughts until the only thought left in her mind was her observation of how easily she’d given all her gifts away…