June 23, 2025 - “Cracks” by Callum McGee
Graeme McNeil was brushing his teeth for the night when he heard his wife scream from downstairs. He paused, straining to hear more, then gurgled and spat in the sink. Before he left the bathroom he placed his toothbrush back in the glass above the sink, twisting it so the bristles faced away from hers.
Sheila was standing in the living room, shards of broken glass at her feet. An icy draught drifted through the gaping hole in the centre of the window, making him shiver under his dressing gown. He moved past her to the window, crunching over the glass in his slippers. A large stone lay on the carpet by the radiator. He picked it up and felt its weight in his hand. He raised the blinds and scanned the dark street for signs of movement. Nothing stirred, except the gentle swaying of bushes in the wind. The only light came from the harsh glare of the lampposts.
‘Who could have done this?’ Sheila said, still standing behind him.’
‘Someone who doesn’t know any better,’ Graeme said. ‘I’ll call the police.’
He could feel her eyes on him as he walked over to the telephone.
The McNeils had lived in the village for almost twenty-eight years, nearly as long as they’d been married. They were both retired and their sons had already moved out and started their own families. Graeme had been the village postie, up every morning at six o’clock to deliver mail to their neighbours and friends. Sheila had worked in the local nursery, a job she loved so much she still volunteered there a few hours a week. She threw herself into community activities and in retirement had become the unofficial ‘village planner’, helping to organise school fairs, bingo nights and sports days. She carried around with her an A5 notebook in which she scribbled down dates and ideas for future events. Sometimes she also wrote down the village gossip.
***
Now Sheila was watching him from the living room sofa, her notebook open in her lap. He was sitting in his chair by the window, reading the paper and eating a slice of cake. It was Sunday lunchtime – the day after the incident. Graeme had swept up the shards of glass and thrown them in a plastic bag, ready to take to the tip. He’d then stuck some masking tape over the hole in the window, but a cold wind still whistled through the room. Half a dozen families had already dropped by the house to offer their condolences. Doreen Farquhar down the road had baked them the cake – a lemon sponge.
‘They’re all talking about it,’ Sheila said.
Graeme didn’t look up from his paper. ‘Let them talk,’ he said. ‘As long as they stop coming round.’
‘How’s the cake?’ she said.
‘Too sweet,’ Graeme said. He grabbed another slice from the coffee table and crumbs rolled onto the carpet.
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Sheila leafed through the pages of her notebook, but she couldn’t concentrate.
‘Who could’ve done this?’ she said at last.
‘Probably just some daft teenager thinking he’s clever,’ he said through a mouthful of cake.
‘But why this house? Why us?’
‘Who knows? Things just happen.’
‘But what have we ever done to folk in this town?’
‘Who says we done anything to anyone?’ he said.
Graeme finished off the rest of his slice, licked his fingers and then folded the paper. He turned on the TV and let out a sigh. She watched him for a moment, then got up and went to the kitchen.
***
When he got back from the pub that evening, she was waiting for him at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea. Her face looked hollow under the bulb’s dim glow.
‘Your dinner’s cold,’ she said. ‘You’ll need to stick it in the microwave.’
‘Righty,’ he said. She didn’t get up, so he crossed the room and took his food out the oven.
When he sat across from her to eat, he noticed her notebook on the table beside her.
‘Anything coming up this month?’ he said.
‘Just the bingo,’ she said. ‘The same as every month.’
‘Bingo,’ he repeated, like it was a new word to him.
‘You should come,’ she said.
‘Not after last time,’ he said, spearing some lasagne with his fork. ‘That game’s fixed.’
The wind had picked up, and he could hear the fence creaking in the back garden.
‘You said nine,’ she suddenly said. She looked at him from under her specs.
He felt his lips working. He’d never liked it when she watched him eat.
‘Eh?’
‘You said you’d be back at nine.’ Sheila slurped her tea and watched him.
Graeme had once meant to tell her about it – the slurping. But that was over thirty years ago. He wondered if she got irritated by things he did. She was bound to, after so long together.
‘I tried to get away, but folk kept buying me drinks.’ He swallowed. ‘Because of this business with the window.’ He’d left the food in the microwave too long and it stung the roof of his mouth.
‘What if they come back?’ she said.
Graeme reached for her hand and squeezed it.
‘I won’t let it happen again,’ he said. Her hand felt small and frail in his.
They sat like that for a moment, then Sheila pulled her hand away and got up. She went over to the sink and started washing dishes, keeping her back to him.
He glanced again at her closed notebook on the table, then shovelled another forkful of dry lasagne into his mouth.
***
She sat on the sofa doodling in her notebook while he slumped in his chair, watching TV with the volume low. It was Thursday afternoon, and the rain and wind were battering against the window. Every so often she looked up and watched him. He didn’t make a move to turn the TV up. He followed the moving pictures with a confused look on his face, his lips forming silent words. The tape covering the window was peeling off, and raindrops spattered through the crack. The room was cold and damp.
Sheila shut her notebook and drummed her fingers on the cover.
‘When are you going to call the window repair man?’ she said.
‘Tomorrow,’ Graeme said, keeping his eyes on the TV. ‘It’ll hold for now.’
‘Mañana, mañana,’ Sheila said to herself.
Graeme looked up. ‘What’s that mean?’
‘It’s always tomorrow with you,’ she said.
Graeme snorted. ‘Alright, give me time,’ he said. ‘I’m still processing the whole thing. I’m in shock over here.’
‘I was down here when it happened,’ she said. ‘I witnessed it.’
‘Aye, well at least no one was hurt,’ he said, grabbing the remote. ‘That’s the main thing.’
Sheila looked across at him. He gripped the remote in mid-air, his thumb hovering over a button. She could remember how safe she’d once felt in his strong hands, the hairs on his knuckles like copper wire. Now his hand was visibly shaking.
‘I do wonder,’ she said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Why it happened.’
‘This again.’
‘I just can’t think who’d do it. I’ve been racking my brain and nobody pops up.’
‘Don’t waste your time racking,’ he said, turning up the volume of the TV.
She picked up her pencil and looked at him side-on. ‘Maybe there’s something,’ she said.
‘Something?’
‘Maybe something you’ve done, Graeme?’
She watched the wheels turning in his brain.
‘Like what?’
‘Well, you know the way you are with people sometimes.’
He turned the TV off.
‘What you on about?’
She consulted her notebook. ‘Last Saturday, when you ignored John and Linda Morrison at the shop.’
He had turned away from the TV and was now facing her.
‘That woman’s got verbal diarrhoea,’ Graeme said quickly. ‘We’d still be there if I didn’t —' He paused. ‘How come you recorded that in your wee book?’
‘It’s not right.’
‘Ach, John’s thick as mince, don’t think he even noticed.’
‘You see? The way you are with people.’
‘That’s not enough to chuck a stone through a window.’
‘Maybe not, but you’ve got to watch the way you are with people.’
Graeme snorted. ‘The way I am with people.’
‘And there was Thursday 17th October,’ Sheila said.
‘Was there now?’
‘Don’t you remember? When you gave wee Alfie Simpson a rollicking for kicking his ball in our garden?’
‘It was hardly a ‘rollicking’, Sheila. I merely advised the young lad he would be better off shooting away from our house.’
‘You didn’t need to puncture the ball right in front of his mates and hand it back flat as a pancake.’
‘That’s the only way they’ll learn.’
‘You made them all cry.’
‘Ach, kids are too soft these days.’
Sheila licked her finger and flicked through more pages.
‘You enjoying yourself?’ Graeme said.
‘These are the facts,’ she said.
‘I’m telling you none of that is enough to target this household.’
‘What is enough?’ She stared at him.
He didn’t answer. For a minute they both listened to the rising wind rattling against the window pane.
Sheila then stopped on a new page. ‘I’ve also been meaning to tell you about last—'
‘Hold on a minute,’ Graeme said. ‘What about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Aye, let’s do you now,’ Graeme said. ‘You and your constant planning and meddling in folks’ lives.’
Sheila let out a short puff of air. ‘I haven’t done anyone harm.’
‘That right?’ Graeme said. ‘You sure about that?’
‘Name one thing I’ve done,’ she said. Her voice had got high and quivery.
‘Gossiping?’
‘I’ve done no such thing.’ Sheila got up and stormed out of the room.
***
That night Graeme slept on the living room sofa. He tossed and turned, shivering from the icy wind blowing through the hole in the window. At one point he got up in the dark and examined the glass, tracing his fingers along the web-like pattern. The cracks had spread, spiralling down to the windowsill. He turned on the TV and tried to watch an old black and white western, but he couldn’t focus. He was listening more for movement from upstairs. All was quiet. He went out into the hall and put on his shoes and coat. He made sure to close the front door quietly behind him.
Outside, it was bitterly cold. He walked briskly down the street with his head lowered, feeling himself propelled forward by the wind at his back. The streets were so familiar he didn’t need to look up to know where he was going. Every front garden, every tree, every path, every pothole and crack in the road – they all flashed through his mind like images in a photo album.
When he turned off down a cul-de-sac and reached the Morrisons’ bungalow, he stopped and looked up. Both cars were there, one parked in the driveway and the other along the curb. There were no signs of activity inside the house. All the lights were out.
It had been a one-time thing four years ago, not long before he retired. One Wednesday morning he’d knocked on their door with a parcel, and Linda invited him in for tea and cakes. They blethered about the weather and other nonsense for half an hour, and all the while he felt she was looking at him in an odd way, and not just because there were cake crumbs stuck to his beard. Graeme had always secretly found her attractive and good for her age, though the woman talked too much. It wasn’t long before she was leading him upstairs, and into her brightly lit bedroom. Her husband John was at work and wouldn’t be back till six.
After that day, Graeme had left future parcels beside the wheelie bin in their back garden. He had wanted to see her again, but it was too risky. After all, words spread like wildfire in a wee village like this. At the time he’d told himself these things happened everywhere, probably more than folk realised. He had needs that weren’t being satisfied. He was human, after all. It had already turned stale with Sheila long before that morning with Linda.
Now it had finally come back to bite him. After so many years, the guilt must have got to Linda and made her confess it all to John. Graeme didn’t think John had it in him to retaliate, but he guessed he was wrong.
He took one last look at the bungalow and turned back for home, pushing back against the powerful wind.
***
The next day, Sheila met the ladies for lunch at the village coffee shop. According to the forecast, a storm was on its way. Outside, fallen leaves danced along the pavements and cartwheeled through the air. She spoke less than usual and spent most of the time watching her friends’ faces for signs of hostility. They chattered away, but nothing showed in their eyes. Not even a flicker of ill-feeling towards herself. Yet she still felt a hot, rising guilt building inside her. For what, she didn’t know. All she knew for sure was that the house had become too suffocating. Graeme kept so still in his chair she often wondered if he'd stopped breathing.
After lunch she drove to the city and spent a couple of hours in shops, taking her time walking down the aisles. The shops were mobbed and most of the shelves empty with folk panicking over the approaching storm. But Sheila didn’t mind. There was a different energy in the city that she liked. She was less likely to bump into someone she knew.
When she returned to the village, it was late. The trees in the park were shaking, and wheelie bins were rolling up and down the streets. She turned into the driveway, and immediately drew breath when she saw Graeme in his usual position, glued to his chair. Anger burned inside her. As she hurried with her shopping bags through the wind and rain to the front door, she thought there was something odd about the way he was sitting this time.
And when she entered the living room, she knew something was different. The room was freezing and smelt wet and earthy. She looked past him to the window, but it wasn’t there. All that remained was an empty rectangular space. The pane had shattered under the force of the wind, and hundreds of pieces of glass lay glinting all around the room – on the radiator, the carpet, the coffee table and even on his arms and feet. But he just sat there rigid, staring at the blank TV as if nothing had happened. Sodden leaves and empty sweetie wrappers swirled through the room.
She set down her shopping bags and waited.
Graeme didn’t move. His lips were working.
