Wallflower Girl

Chapter 23

Anne opened her eyes to a brightly decorated living room. She was sitting on a boxy, dark-green sofa with large decorative pillows that matched the colour and sported big white circles. Across the room a small, fat television sat on stocky wooden legs. It was the round-screen, box type with a dial for a channel selector and levers for volume, brightness and contrast. There was a copper coiled antenna on top. Above it, a silver and brown clock that resembled a many-pointed compass showed that it was quarter past five. A zephyr of chicken and onions wafted into the room; the aroma of a baked dinner. There was a sizzling sound coming from her left. It took a moment to rationalise it as the sound of water boiling over on a stove.

She jumped up to see to it as if she had been waiting and listening for it. She felt as if she had just dosed off, as if the meal she was preparing was something very important to her, and she didn't want it to spoil. As she hurried from the living room into the kitchen she noticed that the wall above the sofa had been decorated with a long, horizontal canvas in an abstract jumble of green and black flowers.

Anne shifted the pot of boiling beans to the side of the coiled stove element and wound the setting back to simmer. The stove was white, not green, as she suddenly remembered the kitchens of friends she'd never before recalled having. They joked about her plain white stove. But it complimented the bold orange and yellow flower print on the wallpaper.