The Thin Blue Line

It was early March and raining. The clouds were relieving themselves with a ferocity akin to a drunk urinating after fourteen pints.I looked through the frosted glass, imagining the impact the downpour would have on my whites blowing wildly in the accompanying gale. Then back to the floor, immediately noticing the slight yellowing in the grouting around the toilet.

Men, I thought.How hard is it to aim for the loo? I briefly contemplated how it was that my boyfriend could manage to clear a pool table with pinpoint accuracy, park a car in a space the size of a stamp and yet when it came to pointing his mickey in the direction of a large bowl, he had the judgment of a drunken schoolboy. The edge of the bath felt cold under my skirt.

Three minutes.

Three minutes can be a long time. I wondered would it feel so long if I were defusing a bomb. I started to count the seconds but quickly lost interest. The mirror needed cleaning.I'd do it tomorrow.I absentmindedly played with the stick in my hand until I remembered that I'd just peed on it.I put it down. I brushed invisible fluff from my skirt, this being a habit I had picked up from my father although obviously he was not a skirt wearer. It was our response to nerves. Some people wring their hands; my dad and I clean our clothes.

The first time I really noticed our shared trait was when my brother, age seventeen, announced that, instead of becoming the doctor my parents had dreamed of, he was going to become a priest. My mother, mortified by the thought that she would lose her son to an absent God, spent an entire evening screaming shrilly before breaking down and taking to her bed for four days. My dad sat silently cleaning his suit