Helen McAllister

Marnie

It was a grey day in Yorkshire, and, wonderful though Yorkshire is, it knows how to do grey days. Marnie woke in her grey room in her grey house in the grey light, had porridge and weak tea for breakfast, trudged through the fog to the local supermarket to sell grey food in grey packaging to her grey neighbours, and then went home to a meal of meatballs and potatoes. As she came into her dark hallway, she noticed that her reflection looked tired and grey; even her clothes looked like a pile of dishcloths. She couldn’t face looking at the credit card statement on the doormat; she knew that situation was rapidly spinning out of control. There was a message of her Answerphone, purporting to be from a distant solicitor’s office, and she was invited to call them back if she was Marnie Smith, niece of Annie Brown, now deceased. Marnie hadn’t often thought about Auntie Annie since the Big Row Annie had had with her mother, but she made a mental note to ring the solicitors the next day.