THE MOON CIRCLE
‘Did you just say f**k?’ Tammy looks astonished. Her dark eyes scan my face. Women like me don’t swear. Her astonishment goes with the ‘What are you doing here?’ looks I’ve been getting since I arrived. Women like me don’t belong in a shelter; middle-class women with mortgages, their mothers with spare bedrooms.
She won’t find an answer in the look of me, all haggard, cropped copper hair unkempt from last night’s restless sleep. Or in my jeans, size eight and loose, or in the baggy woollen jumper I knitted last winter to blot out the tension, the sharp words, his eyes piercing under hooded lids. Clickety-click went my knitting needles, clickety-click went my mind.
‘I did say fuck.’
Tammy observes me with genuine regard, full lips stretching in a closed-mouth smile, curl
