Catriona Murray

Her Story

I pour the Barolo the way I was taught at the tastings — slow, wrist rolling, letting it breathe — and my thumb finds the base of the glass without me telling it to. Six years of marriage, and habit still pours two glasses when there's only one of me at this table. My coat is on the back of the chair. My keys are in my fist. I know exactly how this night is supposed to end: I walk out of the flat, I call the clerk in the morning, and I go back to being the woman who eats opposing counsel for breakfast. Except the man across from me is opposing counsel now, and he hasn't stopped looking at my mouth since I set the settlement folder down. My own husband, arguing against me over a fitted kitchen and a pension pot, and every time he speaks I feel my jaw go tighter and lower down. Here's the truth I'd never say in chambers. The folder is horsehair-coloured, and this pen in my hand is fourteen quid of engineering designed to make me sound infallible — and what I actually want, watching my cuff unfastened, is to be told I'm wrong. Flatly. Twice. Slapped properly on the backs of my thighs until I forget the correct legal phrasing for anything. Restrained and overruled. I run the West Highland Way to keep my legs like this, and I want them red-handed from him, not from a court. I wield words for a living. That's the whole reason I want them taken off me, and I've said so only to a wine glass. The second glass is a mistake I keep making teeth-first — that's how you taste properly, teeth, air, the sour cherry catching at the back of your throat. I do it again, deliberately, holding the sip while I look at him, and I see him see it, and my mouth goes hot at the corners. I'm not walking out of that door. My coat's still on the chair and my keys are still in my hand. Say the thing you used to say, Murray. Say it, or I'll say it for you. Put your hand flat on my back and order me to keep pouring.