The Red Dress

It’s hard to know what to do the night before your father’s rape trial begins. I settled on drinking. Wine, vodka, cider, that awful coffee liqueur people always regift. I even consumed the dregs of some cherry tequila. I started my drinking on the flight down to London, returning to my childhood home for the first time since a teenager. My mother had demanded the four-storey building in the divorce and then never set foot in it again. She called it her Mausoleum to Marital Woe.

I jumped in an Uber at the airport.

“Miss Genie Slorah?” The driver leaned into the surname. Sinking into the back seat, I barely twitched my head in response. My surname always made eyes catapult with excitement and, lately, disgust.