The Washing-Up Bowl

He’d finally forgotten her number. Maybe he’d forgotten it in his sleep weeks – maybe months, or years – ago, but he couldn’t recollect it now. Of all things, emptying the stoury washing-up bowl had brought it to mind. He’d went off his nut one time over this very thing. They were playing a silly game one night ‘name three things about me’ type of nonsense. She’d said blah, blah and then ‘you never empty the washing up bowl’. This was obviously something that got on her nerves and now she saw an opportunity to get it out there. To him it meant an utter rejection of his presence in her flat.

They both knew it wasn’t quite right him living there. Their relationship had been fractured beyond repair long before but he, still smitten, more smitten than she of him (she wasn’t the smitten type, at least not towards him, but towards her –ex as it turned out), had been hanging on to the carcass of their ‘love’ like grim death; almost rejoicing in her inability to pay her bills so that he could step in and help, the condition being….

Him, her and two cats that weren’t allowed out and literally climbed the walls and kept them awake half the night. (He was convinced she’d somehow managed to turn at least one of the cats against him).

She said that all the fusion music he listened to sounded like 1970s cop show themes, but the final split came over that damn remark about the washing-up bowl.

Her –ex, he suspected, would have had nothing whatsoever to do with washing up, never mind emptying the bowl.