In Hong Kong there exists such a thing as a ‘coffin apartment’. Relative poverty and a live-to-work ethos have resulted in people existing in 18ft-squared apartments with plywood walls and shared bathroom facilities. One imagines flickering strip lighting, warped walls, and the sound of muffled sobs during the long nights.
Frank’s bedsit is nowhere near this bad, but neither is it much better. The square footage is bigger but there is, Frank imagines, the same sense of claustrophobia, the same feeling of a life built on foundations too flimsy.
Frank puts down his briefcase and his samples and empties his carrier bag onto the formica sideboard. A sweaty ready meal, a dog-eared Metro, and a £4.99 bottle of white wine.
He feels around for his mobile phone and places it on the worktop. No messages, no voicemails, no missed calls. The screen stares blankly back at him, as does the microwave clock and the light on the television. All on standby.
Frank is dog-tired, his suit wrinkled from hours spent in his car, his clutch foot aching. Frank knows that he should call, that the kids’ bedtimes are fast approaching and that Christine won’t answer the phone to him after eight o clock. He knows he should call.
Something stops him, though. It is the same thing that makes him pause every night. Frank looks forward to the calls, he really does, but he can’t help but feel that within those conversations – in Jack’s recounting of spelling test glory and in Penny’s eaten-all-up dinner – there is a fading, a distancing. Frank can’t help but feel that each call reinforces his not being there, that each conversation is imperceptibly more forced, more stilted.
It has grown gloomy in the kitchenette as evening draws in, but Frank’s tired eyes are tugged by crows’ feet and his mouth curves suddenly as the phone buzzes to life and the walls of the apartment melt away.
*Thanks for reading, folks. Image courtesy of pxhere. My recent short stories include ‘The Young Man from Number Twenty-Seven‘ and ‘Sense of Community‘.
Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, and Shooter magazine. He is a doctoral student at the University of Dundee, a lucky husband, and a proud father. He blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.
Matthew Richardson 