The Last Impression

She was a girl at a party, sitting on the sofa when a gap appeared on another cushion, so you sat down next to her to rest your legs, and then of course you had to talk about something, since that’s how parties work, otherwise you could have stayed at home.

You said something about the flat, that it was nice, bright, that you appreciated the corner windows spanning two directions. She held her mulled-wine mug in both hands and took a sip while you spoke, then told you it was even a little brighter one floor up, in her flat. Everything was actually a bit better on the next floor, the view stretched over the rooftops, she experienced a different freedom there, here it was more claustrophobic, but such things were relative, depending on what you were used to, she pointed out.

You, living on the ground floor of your housing estate, insisted that the space here was delightful and exclusive too, but apparently it was not like the floor above, quite different in fact, almost that you ought to drop by and experience the difference. Besides, they had furnished the rooms a bit more cleverly, and the kitchen was new.

She had to move. A child needed feeding, and you felt on the sofa that the conversation had left behind a bitter aftertaste, and then you thought no more about it until the girl at the party was mentioned a few months later because she had unexpectedly died of cancer, an incurable aggressive kind that quickly drained her of life.

The thirty-year-old widower had wandered alone with pram and baby in the stairwell, and your mutual friend decided to move, since the daily reminders of the tragedy became unbearable. She sobbed as she told it.

For you the girl remained as a conversation only you could now recall, and so you kept it to yourself, like a tightly bound riddle. A first impression that became the last.