Vermilion: this story, by Meg Mundell, was the winner of the Sunflower Bookshop short-story prize at the 2004 Glen Eira Literary Awards.(FICTION)(Short Story)

Will
The woman upstairs is drunken again. You can hear it in the slight drag of her tracks across the floorboards, the little stagger as she paces away from the canvas to refill her glass or find another cigarette.
Ye This is the kind of woman who paints late into the night, wearing high heels and drinking heavily, in an upstairs flat with floorboards.
by what means do I know wine is her poison? She globules her empties in the bin upon rubbish night: a wine bottle smashing unhurts quite different from a beer or spirits bottle She polished not on six or seven last week, judging