Darren calls me love, or pet, and when he mentions me to his friends I'm always 'our lass.' Even when I'm standing right next to him. Our lass does this, he says. Our lass looks after the kids. Our lass looks after the house. Our lass can roll over and catch a ball in her mouth. Clever girl. Taught her that myself.

Christine…my name is Christine.

There's nobody here right now. Everyone's out. The kids are at school. Darren's at work. Richard and Judy are on holiday and another faintly similar couple are standing in for them. I just stare at the faces on the screen. I like the handsome vet. He was on a minute ago but now the picture has cut to a film of a wildlife sanctuary and some rescued swans having a bath. I wonder if there's a sanctuary for women like me. The Sisters of Mercy Home for Ignored Women. Nice thought.

I'm making a cup of tea. Would you like one? Hello? Is there anybody there? My name is Christine, and I'm speaking to you.

I look out of the kitchen window and watch an old man across the street lower himself painfully onto the bench by the bus stop. A grizzled, arthritic terrier waddles around in slow circles before settling at the old man's feet. Both of them stare into space, probably remembering the days when they chased girls and chased sticks and wondering where it all went. I can't tell them. It just goes doesn't it? The two of them remind me of something but I can't quite put my finger on it. An insect maybe, something crippled and wounded but still alive, something scratching in the dust that will not die.

I wasn't always Darren's ball and chain you know. I was Christine. I had a life. I had a personality. I had hope. People used to say that I could have been something. Not like a model or a singer, but they used to say that I could have been a nurse or a personnel officer, something purposeful like that. Instead I became a wife and a mother. You don't get certificates for that. You don't get promoted and you almost never get to go out for a drink after work with your friends. If you get any recognition at all it comes in the form of patronising claptrap in supermarket advertising campaigns: Hello mum - yes we're speaking to you because you're the one who never forgets to buy toilet paper! What a clever wife and mother you must be!

Do you know what they make me think of, those ads aimed at me? They make me think of a little silver cup I once got for coming last in the school sports day. World's Best Tryer, it said on it. There, there, little fat girl, don't feel like a loser. At least you'll never forget to buy the toilet paper from now on.

It doesn't matter now. I don't have a life anymore. Occasionally something interesting happens to me, but these minor events, these moments in between, are mere snatches of exciting colour and movement like flashes of life glimpsed from a speeding train. For instance, I sometimes flirt with the man who delivers my potatoes, and every so often I follow a stranger around town and imagine I'm a private detective trailing some poor woman's unfaithful husband. Another time I didn't bother to pick up the kids from school. Instead of turning right I turned left and joined the motorway. I drove as far as Sheffield, playing a game where I was leaving everything behind and heading into the unknown, destination destiny. I came back of course - I'm a good doggie - but the excitement of imagining what might have been was enough to keep me going for weeks.

I want to rob a bank. No, really. I've got this mad compulsion to pull on a ski mask and walk into the Yorkshire bank with a sawn-off shotgun in my hands. Not very ladylike I know, but I bet I could go back to being ordinary and live on the memory of that for the next fifty years.

I want to meet a dark stranger in town and follow him to his hotel room. I'm not sure what would happen when we got there but it would be something unpredictable and dangerous. Something like…have you ever been tied up? I haven't. Darren likes the Hokey Cokey - in, out, shake it all about. I don't know if I'd actually enjoy being tied up but it's something different isn't it? There must be something I like.

I want to steal something from Morrisons. Every time I shop there the urge to slip something into my bag whispers darkly in my ear; it gets louder and louder and LOUDER until the whispering melts into a low, discordant humming sound. Like this: mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm….

By the time I reach the checkout I feel hot and feverish and stricken by something like claustrophobia. I guess I must look a little mad because the girl on the till gives me funny looks. Scared looks, actually.

I never speak to anyone when I'm out shopping. I used to speak to the other women, but over…some unknown span…they have gradually receded into a strange state of fiction. They are no more real to me than the characters in my soap operas. I see the same faces day after day, the same dull, weighted faces plodding around the supermarket, dropping the same old things into their trolleys - it's always things for the kids and their husbands like amusing pasta shapes with tons of added sugar and man-sized Big Dick beefburgers in packs of twelve, with perhaps a little tub of cottage cheese as a special treat for themselves. And I hate them for moments that strike me like vicious insults. If I had something in my hands at these moments, something with a little more bite than a jar of Dolmio with basil, I think I could insult them back.

Stabbing is too intimate don't you think? A job like that needs a machine gun. Make a clean sweep of things. A supermarket sweep, ha-ha-ha. I don't know why that thought comes to me now. Maybe it's because I was going to stab Darren this morning. He got pissed off at me because I'd apparently moved his car keys. He likes to keep them in the little pot fish by the breadbin. I don't know why when we have a perfectly good key-holder made out of driftwood hanging by the door. He should put his keys on that shouldn't he? Where the rest of the keys go. But he doesn't. He keeps his car keys in the little pot fish by the breadbin. My little pot fish. He seems to have forgotten that I bought the little pot fish and not him. It's not his, it's mine. It's my little pot fish but because it happens to be in his kitchen, in his house, on his land, he's claimed my little pot fish as his own.

So he blew up at me, and for one of those rare but electrifying moments in my life, I saw myself smashing my little pot fish into pieces, one of which was long and sharp enough to hold like a knife and stick in his throat.

Do you know what stopped me in the end? It wasn't the thought of going to prison or losing the kids. It was knowing that the headline in the local paper would read: Wife Kills Husband With Little Pot Fish.

My name isn't wife. My name is Christine. And it's my little pot fish.

When Darren left for work I hid my little pot fish in the back of the airing cupboard. If he ever - and I mean ever - touches my little pot fish again I'm going to break his fucking neck.

There…I've gone and spilled my tea now. I don't suppose it matters, do you? I think I'll just leave it, same as I left the breakfast things and Darren's dirty socks lying around the bedroom like shredded snakeskins. I don't feel like cleaning up today.

The phone never rings during the daytime. In the evening it chirps with the demanding persistence of a hungry chick. Cheep-cheep - hello, luv, is Darren there? Cheep-cheep - hi pet, can you get Darren for me?

In my mind I hear myself saying: Yes, Darren's here, but so am I. I'm always here. And my name isn't love or pet or chicken or sausage or sweetheart or doll or anything except Christine! My name is Christine!

But even in my mind my voice goes all high and screechy and hysterical. What I should do is take a very deep breath, close my eyes and think about walking into a supermarket with a machine gun in my hands. I wouldn't say anything for a long time. I'd just stand there and wait for everyone to notice me. Then I'd smile. Like the cat that got the canary.

My name is Christine. I'd say it in a voice they'd remember for every single one of the nine seconds remaining of their miserable lives. My name is Christine.

Nobody ever calls me. I stand and look at the telephone for…oh, I don't know how long for, but I think a little more time passes each day…but it never rings until Darren gets home. People must assume that because Darren is at work the house is empty. They might even think of me as a fairy in a toybox magically brought to life whenever her prince enters the room.

Just the other day I was staring at the telephone, willing it to ring - and imagining all the exciting people it could be if it did ring - and when I eventually turned around I tripped over a bag of potatoes. At first I was horrified but then I got the giggles. I giggled until I slid down the wall and sat on the carpet just laughing and laughing and laughing.

The poor deliveryman (Stuart, they call him - see, I know his name, I know all their names) must have thought I'd lost my marbles. I can imagine him standing behind me, coughing delicately into his fist or-

All he had to do was say my name. Christine. For fuck's sake my name is Christine!

I wish that I'd sensed his presence there. Or better still heard his voice when he called me love or darling or fucking sausage or whatever ridiculous thing he confused me with. I would have turned around - ever so slowly - and fixed him with a wolfish smile. My name is Christine, I would have growled. My name is Christine, little piggy, and if you ever - and I mean EVER - call me sausage again, I'm going to…

I'm making something to eat. Can I get you anything? It's no trouble you know. I'm used to running around after other people. I'm a fucking waitress you know, got nothing better to do.

I open the fridge and take out a jar of passata. It's just tomatoes, you know, with no added sugar. I use it for soups and casseroles but not for spaghetti bolognese. They all like Dolmio and so I have to use Dolmio even though it tastes sweet and sickly and makes me feel like throwing up my guts.

I start to make myself some spaghetti bolognese but something about the passata throws a jittery, pulsating light into a dark corner of my soul. I'm utterly fascinated by the colour and texture of this staple, sugar-free Italian stuff. I pour a few drops out of the jar and watch it plop! onto the lino.

They look like spots of blood.

I take a knife from the drawer - the big, shiny bread knife that I never use for anything, not even for slicing bread - and I kneel down and pour the rest of the tomato sauce out of the jar. I divide the pool of tomato sauce into nine equal portions, and then I begin to work and shape each portion with the tip of the knife.

I don't know how long I've been down here, but at some point I have removed my top and bra. There are violent slashes of red down my breasts and belly where I must have wiped my red fingers or cut myself. I think some of it is real blood, you know. Or real tomatoes. I can't tell which is which anymore. I can't tell what's what.

It's done now. Do you know what I've written? Do you know what it says?

I'm very, very proud of it. Now I go and stand by the window again. The knife is still in my hand, the blade covered in tomato sauce. I try to hum my favourite song - When I'm Sixty Four - but I can't seem to find my way into the tune. I know it well enough but all I can hear is that low, droning humming sound in my ears.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM…..

I think I'll leave the kitchen exactly as it is. I don't feel like cleaning up today. I don't feel like doing anything today except…waiting.

Maybe I'll still be here when they all get home.

END