The cup

My name is Elin. I have just broken one of your cups, and I am sorry.

The waiter looked at her for a long moment. Elaine? He said eventually.

No, look, that’s not how you say it. But that doesn’t matter. I broke a cup.

A coupe, in fact.

Yes, a coupe. I was going to steal it from you. From your place of work any way. I was going to take it home with me. You might as well know that. I was going to put it in the kitchen, on the table, so my children would come down in the morning and see it.

I was going to hold it for them to see. Look at this, look how wonderful the glass is. And they would understand from my tone that I was saying, look at how wonderful the world in fact is, look at how fragile this glass is. And I was going to let them drink from it, whenever they liked. Water or juice or milk or any fluid really any liquid at all. Didn’t matter what or when. I was going to say to them – I can trust you with this precious and beautiful thing, and you should get used to it, you should get used to holding normal things as though they are precious, and precious things as though they are ordinary.

So there you are, that is the story of your coupe. You probably think I am drunk. You think I have had too many coupes myself, but I’m quite sober. Do you think I will be able to just leave and not say anything else about it. I am very sorry it broke.

The waiter looked where she had dropped the glass. As if for the first time, he realised that it was part of his job to stoop down and pick up the larger pieces.

Elin bent down also, to try and help, but the waiter said, no I think you should see to your hand, madame. You are bleeding, look.

And she noticed that her hand had a crescent moon shaped cut, about a half an inch long. As she looked the cut smiled at her, bleeding just a little from the edge of its moon mouth.

She made a decision at this moment to steal a different coupe from a different table and more carefully this time stow it in her bag. Of course, when the children came down in the morning nobody noticed the new glass. Everyone was shouting and Weetabix and late.