It was one of the few places in the city where she could just sit and think.
She was never much of an art lover, but the gallery was peaceful and nobody bothered you. Not even if you were quietly crying to yourself, sobbing into a tissue. How could she have got it all so wrong? She had always imagined it would be wonderful to start a family, but not like this. It was an overseas holiday. She would probably never see him again. It was quite deliberate that she still held the plastic test stick in her hand. It needed to be there, speaking to her, shouting at her. For her, there was no embarrassment. It represented the awful impact of it. From that moment in the cubicle, back in the office toilet, at the beginning of her lunch break, until now.
She pulled off another tissue. On reflection, this had been the way of it her entire life. It was as though she was now looking back at a couple of decades of cause and effect. She saw it clearly, probably for the first time; yes clearly, she was always the effect. She had never really caused anything! Her life was a constant stream of things that had happened to her. Did it all start with the bullying at school? Who knows? Never the cause, always the affect.
When she finally dabbed her eyes and looked up, the image that hung facing her was Picasso’s ‘Weeping Woman’; it was entirely appropriate. It was somehow solid proof that what she was about to do would break the spell, break the rut she had been in for so long. It would all change now. She alone would be the cause, and with this one decisive action would allow her future to turn on a point, and she would be changed. It really didn’t matter whether anyone understood or not; understood what was happening to her.
The art piece in question had been stolen from the gallery some three decades earlier, before she was born. She read somewhere it had been returned on a tip off and the case was never solved. She stopped in front of it and burst into tears. Falling forward, she grabbed at the frame to support herself. A siren began to shriek and in no time she was surrounded by uniformed staff.
It took some time for the uproar to die down. All those around her seemed to be greatly affected by the whole incident, and when they saw the little stick in her hand, they were all very kind. They brought her hot tea in a paper cup.
And now, she was young and healthy. She would go out there… and cause things…