Portion

Colin Graham, ‘Portion’, The Edinburgh Review, 134 (2012), 97-102

Read ‘Portion’ in full at The Edinburgh Review website here

Extract:

‘So we started to have little parties in the house on Fridays. On this particular night I had a few drinks and went to bed. I left them all downstairs drinking and playing cards. And the next thing it was morning. The sun was lighting up the pattern on the curtains. I opened my eyes, that morning after the party and there was my husband, beside me, and beside him another man. Blondie I always call him. And the two of them, thinking I was asleep, they started touching each other. I feigned sleep. If I’d got out of the bed then Blondie would have seen me in God’s finery.’

‘I didn’t really know what was going on. I knew it was wrong. Wrong for a married man to be doing such things, you understand. After they were finished he gave Blondie money. I just lay there with my eyes closed until they’d gone. That was the last night I ever slept in a bed with my husband.’