Matilda drew the bath water that Saturday evening after dinner. She’d made herself two chicken thighs, white rice, and green peas. It had been quite tasty, really, and she’d enjoyed eating the meal while watching the news on the BBC. There’d been a fight in Belfast and a riot in Dublin, but it was quiet here in Manchester, and the Queen was in Scotland. In America, Senator Kennedy had been shot, and that was only two months after Martin Luther King. But there was little to worry about in England, so Matilda ate her meal in peace.
After starting the bath water and setting the temperature hot, hot, hot – she treated herself to a really hot bath on Saturday evenings after the news, her one regular indulgence every week. It had been that way for nearly twenty years since Susan had died. After her bath, she’d get the photo album out and look at all the memories she and Susan had – day trips to Wales, weekends in Cornwall, their momentous trip to Paris in those years before the war. Matilda could remember walking with Susan in the Loeuvre, spending a whole day there taking in every painting, every sculpture.
She took off her robe and, somehow by instinct, looked out the bathroom door. As if anyone were there to look – or had been there, these twenty years. Matilda laughed at her own modesty. She edged herself carefully into the tub, closed her eyes as she descended into the water, and purred. There was no better way to spend a Saturday evening than taking a long, hot bath with her memories of Susan.
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