Feet by Linda McVeigh

His feet never used to bother me. In fact, I lavished gifts on them once. I’d bought an ounce of fine merino and cashmere yarn (the cost was astronomical) and some fine-pointed rosewood needles and knitted socks for those feet. It was a complicated pattern requiring four double-pointed needles and the working of a turned heel: something I’d never attempted before. It was a labour of love.

Look at his feet now: hooked over the edge of the coffee table. His toes are long and thin, like fingers, and his heels are cracked and ingrained with dirt. Are those toenail clippings next to the Carlsberg can? Jesus!

We met at Virginia and Leonard’s dinner party. God, it was boring and she is such a bad cook. When Virginia was serving up the Black Forest gateau I felt something against my shin. I thought it was that nasty little spaniel of theirs, which always tried to shag people’s legs, and I bent down to push it away. And then I saw his socked foot slowly and deliberately rubbing up my calves and in between my bare thighs. Reaching over the table for the cream, I leaned towards him and breathed, “Well, aren’t you a naughty boy?” And then pouring the cream with one hand I slipped my other one under the table and rubbed his toes. I should have walked away there and then. The towelling tennis socks should have been a warning.

“Oi! Do you mind?” I say to him now, gesturing towards his feet. “It’s pointless telling the kids to get their elbows off the table when you’re sitting there like that.”

“Oh, give it a rest,” he says. But he does move his feet.

He shifts his body away from me so that I’m looking at the side of his back. He shoves his slippers on and crosses his legs like a woman. God, I hate it when he sits like that: so effeminate. And then the foot starts. Up and down, up and down. It’s all I can see now out of the corner of my eye.

The big grey slipper hangs off his toes as his foot goes up and down.

I turn slightly to get the foot out of my line of vision. I pick up my knitting needles and the half finished jumper that’s going to be his Christmas present. The yarn is a coarse synthetic, but it will wear well. My needles are metal and make a satisfying click as I work. I start humming a Mariah Carey song.

He stares at me and reaches for the remote, turns the volume up high on the television.

His foot goes up and down, up and down.

I only mean to give him a prod, but the knitting needle slips between his ribs easily. It only goes in an inch or two, so I’m surprised to see him fall sideways, driving it in much further.

I sweep the toenail clippings into the empty Carlsberg can and walk towards the phone.