Sarah sighed as she looked at the mess drowning the sitting room. She just could not be bothered.
That was the problem with long projects and unchanging days, apathy came to visit and refused to leave.
She nudged a discarded jumper out of her way with one foot.
Ennui would be so much more satisfying. It came with that underlying feeling of existential angst only the French could conjure. Ennui came with drifting scarves and non-rhyming poems about the futility of life. And wine, lots of wine.
Apathy, on the other hand, arrived with a grey fog of blah and not much else.
It would be nice to stand at the window and gaze soulfully at the view, but that only really worked when the view was of misty moors, or empty fields, or a looming forest. When you looked out at the bottom end of the village High Street and Mabel Jervis’s petunias, you didn’t look tragic or conflicted, you looked like a nosy neighbour.
Would it be too dreadful to just go back to bed? She was pretty sure there was a good romance or two she could download and spend the day lost in.
Her rosy vision was wrecked by a wail from the kitchen. “Muuuum, Jeremy’s put jam in my hair.”
“What did you put in his?”
There was a calculating silence, then a similar-sounding wail from Jeremy.
Was it good parenting? Hell no. But really, what else was she to do? Their father was worse than useless – he was right there in the kitchen with them – and just sometimes the kids needed to indulge in natural consequences. Jeremy especially, needed to learn that actions had reactions (luckily for him not always equal and opposite).
Apathy plodded out of the back door, unnoticed.
The DNA of Stories 