Virgo

Before we flew to Corfu in 1999, I ironed and packed six pairs of black silk knickers. I tried on every outfit and I tucked a hand-written label into each outfit so that I’d know exactly which outfit was for exactly which day. 

I dieted for a fortnight, had my upper lip waxed, hair bleached, and my nails manicured cherry red. I packed brand-new makeup, face creams, a curling iron, gold jewellery, an indigo lace bra (push-up) and left enough room for a large bottle of perfume from duty-free.

Ted—in addition to the clothes he was wearing for the four-hour flight— packed one black t-shirt, one pair of swimming trunks, two pairs of holey underwear and a toothbrush with its bristles curling outwards like spider legs.  

The night before we flew to Corfu in 1999, I was in bed by half past nine, having had a hot bubble bath at half past eight. Ted was watching a documentary on the television about Roswell until two in the morning and he didn’t come to bed until past three.

He left two empty salami packets on the living room coffee table, and the next morning I tossed them into the bin as I wheeled my suitcase out of the front door.

I double-checked the lock on the front door and I double-checked the lock on my suitcase and the taxi cab pulled up outside.

Ted did not double-check the lock on the front door and Ted did not double-check the lock on his suitcase because Ted did not have a suitcase. He had a small blue backpack with a broken zip and, at some point in our journey to the airport, his spider-leg toothbrush and a can of deodorant without its lid tumbled out of his small blue backpack and onto the taxi cab floor. 

We spent our first hour in Corfu in 1999 searching for a place to buy him a new one. And when we found him a new one, Ted complained that it wasn’t the same colour as his old one. 

  I am, of course, a virgo. And I am, of course, a woman.

  Don’t ask Ted for his star sign. He wouldn’t know what that is. 

 Rachel Makinson is a UK-based writer and editor, with a BA in English Literature with Creative Writing from Newcastle University. Her work has been featured by several magazines and journals, including Otherwise Engaged Literature and Arts Journal, Marrow Magazine, Bright Flash Literary Review, Tabula Rasa Review, and the London Independent Story Prize.