Moving Days

They said it was bad luck for a peacock’s feather to be winking at them as they moved into the house. They took it outside straight away and put it in the bin. But like old burial grounds and haunting ghosts, the fear of omens is usually a fear of personal failures.

And bad luck did come. Bad luck that life in a house, newly bought by first time buyers who brought the furniture and trinkets and pictures they’d collected over their past conjoined years, didn’t make them happier or more content. Bad luck that the disjointed pipes were discovered at the same time as their relationship started to bend.

Neighbours nodded and replied, and the two of them did the same to each other. An uncomfortable silence lived there; it took up more room than the sofa, smelt stronger than the cooking food, made more noise than the sound of the garage door being driven up. That silent, sombre tone penetrated the walls.

Maybe some things just aren’t meant to be good. Maybe it wasn’t the feather’s fault, though.