Hostile Castles by Rosemary Johnson, several glasses of mead

Ten-year-old Angela watched her father’s funeral feast through a chink the curtain. Motherless, now fatherless, she didn’t know who would look after her now.  Angela was scared. 

An unknown voice was saying, ‘Many winters past, I, Von Sterrenberg and my beloved comrade in arms, Bromser von Rudesheim, whom we have buried today in deep sadness, each made a vow before God, to defend the other’s kindred. So, therefore, I will care for his daughter.’

This was the age of chivalry, when a knight’s honour was worth more to him than life itself.

So, Herr Werner von Sterrenberg took Angela with him on his horse and rode back to his castle, Burg Sterrenberg, perched atop a steep ravine beside the River Rhine. A widower, Herr Werner was gentle, kind and fair, and Angela was happy again. In summer she and Herr Werner’s sons, Hendrik and Konrad, played on the beach, jumping over the ‘waves’ caused by the wash of boats and barges. In winter they jousted with wooden horses and wooden swords in the great hall, getting in the way of the servants. ‘I’m a better swordsman than either of you,’ she told them, many times.

Konrad always rose to this challenge. ‘I won’t be beaten by a girl.’  Sometimes he would win and sometimes she. On the few occasions she sparred with the older brother, Henrik, he always let her beat her. No fun in that.

So Angela was happy, until she started to grow up. She expected she would marry one of the brothers. That they both admired her in their different ways, she was well aware. Hendrik, devout in faith, home-loving and solicitous with his increasingly frail father, broke into a smile which lit up his rather plain face whenever she entered the room but he said little. Once she asked him to tie a ribbon in her hair but he claimed he didn’t know how and she had to do it herself.

Konrad talked and talked. He sat with Angela as she stitched in the castle keep, regaling her with tales of knightly valour, gleaned from his frequent visits to the tavern, some true, others more embroidered than her needlework. When he sat himself down on the stool beside her, it was as if the room suddenly brightened. ‘Maybe these tales are not for a pure and beautiful lady.’  He laughed as he said this.

‘Go on, Konrad, go on.’

In 1146 Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux sailed up the River Rhine on a grand barge, seeking recruits to fight on a Crusade in the Holy Land. Herr Werner forbade his heir, Hendrik, from joining the Abbott, even though Hendrik pleaded that it was his sacred duty. Konrad wanted to go because he was bored and his father let him. 

‘Will I ever see you again?’ Angela asked him as he made preparations to leave.

‘If you promise to wait for me, yes, indeed.’

‘And will you keep my heart free for me,’ she asked.

‘Heart and hand. By the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, I swear.’

After Konrad’s departure, Hendrik, urged by his father, attempted to woo Angela again, but she made it clear that her heart was promised elsewhere. Hendrik loved Angela, but, in those gallant times, a lady’s troth was sacred. Herr Werner also wished things were otherwise but he missed his younger son and longed for his safe return, so he built another castle on his land, naming it ‘Liebenstein’ because it was for two people in love.

Many years passed and news of the Crusades in the Holy Land trickled in to Rhineland, patchy and slow. Knowing he had little time left on this earth, Herr Werner, with Angela, spent many hours and days by the banks of the river, willing one of the passing ships to bear Konrad back home.

But this was not to be. 

The day after the funeral, Angela sat in her usual position by the river bank without him and it was then, in the early evening, she spotted what their hearts had burned to see – a ship, still distant, making its way upstream, its sails adorned with Crusader pennants. As it came closer, her eyes made out a knight in black armour. It could be… So many times she had thought… hoped… imagined… but this time…. Yes, it was. Yes, yes, it really was. 

The heavy, white overcast skies of the funeral yesterday, and the long days of poor Herr Werner’s sickness, had lifted. The sun, hidden for so long, shone into the clear water of the river and the clouds broke apart for the fresh blue sky. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she stood and waited.

She became aware of Hendrik scrambling down the cliff path behind her. She started to say to him, ‘Konrad… Konrad… he’s here,  I’m so happy… happy… happ…’  She grabbed Hendrik’s elbow. ‘Oh. Oh, I don’t understand.’

Hendrik had seen what she’d seen. Without speaking, they watched the ship draw up at the Burg Sterrenberg landing stage. Neither felt able to speak.

Yet Konrad was smiling his cheeky smile which they both knew so well, and surveying his home surroundings, confident of his welcome. Beside him, holding his arm, stood a black-eyed, olive-skinned beauty, with glistening baubles around her neck and more in her loose black hair, tumbling around her face. 

Angela froze, not just her body, but her brain and her heart. How dared the sun continue shining.

Konrad’s smile faded suddenly when he spotted the black flags fluttering on both castles. ‘I think my dear father has died?’

Hendrik inclined his head.

Konrad made the sign of the Cross over his gleaming armour. ‘I am grieved,’ He didn’t sound it. ‘But I must introduce you to my wife, Helen. Helen, this is my brother, Hendik, and his wife, Angela.’

‘I am not Hendrik’s wife,’ said Angela. ‘I gave my troth to you,’ she wanted to say. The words were pressing against lips, but she had her dignity.

In silence, the four of them climbed up the steep cliff path, the bride, Helen, stumbling in her flimsy sandals. Wearing shimmering silk, she shivered in the cool Germanic evening.

At the top at last, Konrad shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand. ‘I see two castles now.’

‘Yes. Because our blessed father built Burg Leibenstein for you and Angela,’ said Hendrik.

Konrad’s face, coarsened in the harsh sun of the Holy Land, creased into a frown. ‘But I assumed Angela would marry you, Hendrik.’

‘Having given her troth to you?’  Hendrik stepped forward, his fists clenched by his sides. ‘You, mein Herr, insult the honour of a lady, the lady I loved - seemingly more than you did. For three years, she has waited, refusing all other suitors, believing herself bound to you. I also held my distance, out of respect for…’ He spit out his last words. ‘For you.’ 

Beautiful Helen swung around to her husband. Her dark eyes bore into him like cold arrows, but he ignored her.

‘So…’  Konrad unsheathed his sword. ‘I will pay my respects to my father. Where does he lie?’  

Angela heard what Konrad said, but Hendrik, appearing not to, whipped out his own sword and pointed it at Konrad. ‘You want to fight me?’  The two eyed each other, side-stepping in a circle.

‘Is this what you want, brother?’ asked Konrad. ‘You, my only flesh and blood?  With my father – to whom, as you must realise, I wished to pay the customary respects with my sword – hardly cold in his grave?’

‘Don’t bring our father into this. He was a good man.’

‘Brother, you have so much. You are now Herr von Sterrenberg, lord of this castle. Make Angela Frau von Sterrenberg.’

Hendrik pointed his sword at Konrad’s throat. ‘Come on, you who fought the Infidel.’

Helen screamed. She raised her eyes to Angela in a desperate wordless appeal. 

‘No.’  Angela leapt in between them. Her glare passed from one brother to the other. Then she seized Hendrik’s sword - he is too surprised to resist - and brandished at her once betrothed. ‘We used to spar with wooden toys so let us see who is the better swordsman now.’

Konrad lowered his weapon at once. ‘I cannot fight a woman.’

‘Nor can you fight your kindred. Wars and pestilence may destroy us, but we must not do this to each other.’

A minute passed. The rasping, panting breaths of the two men mocked the gentle evening.  

Picking up her skirts with both hands, Angela spun around and strode back to Burg Sterrenberg, ran up to her chamber and threw herself on to her bed. Burg Leibenstein was hers no longer. Hendrik, just steps behind her, banged on her door. She didn’t open it.

‘Marry me, Angela. You know I love you.’

‘No. I thank you, Hendrik, but I cannot. I do love you, and I always will, as a brother.’  

‘I don’t deserve this.’

‘No, you don’t.’

For three days, Angela remained in her chamber, speaking not even to the servants. At dawn on the fourth day, she crept back down the spiral staircase. As she opened the main door, she cast one look back into the familiar rooms where she had loved and been loved, then scrambled down the cliff path to the river and walked… and walked… and walked.

Outside the abbey walls of the convent of Bornhofen, she stopped and watched the River Rhine, her constant companion for so many years, flowing on and on to the sea. It was time for her to move on also. 

‘Mother, please let me join you and the sisters,’ she begged the abbess. 

‘You come to us with a troubled heart, I think, my child.’

‘Yes.’  Now Angela told her whole story and the wise abbess listened.

‘Anyone who enters this blessed order must come with a full heart of love,’ she said, ‘but yours is brim-full with anger.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Go back down to the river, and wash away your hurt. This River Rhine is wide enough and long enough for all of it.’

So she returned to the river and stood by its bank again, and wept, for her spoiled love for Konrad, for Hendrik’s wrecked love for her, for the love and care in which Herr Werner had carried her as a little girl. She cried even for black-eyed Helen, confused and cold in the German summer. When she looked into the river again, she saw brown dirt – the poison of her pain. In an instant, it was gone, washed downstream. Her heart lighter, she made her way back to the abbey.

Back at Sterrenberg, the poison of anger and hate hovered around the inhabitants like a cloud of angry bees, festering in their hearts, rotting their souls. Konrad built a wall between the two castles, Sterrenberg and Liebenstein, but the brown muck seeped through the stones.

About the author

Rosemary has had short stories published in 'Paragraph Planet', 'Scribble', 'Mslexia' and CafeLit. Her novel, 'Wodka or Tea With Milk' set around the Polish Solidarity trade union was published in September 2023 and 'Past and Present', her anthology of short stories, by Bridge House Publishing, in June 2025.

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When The Shoes Do Not Fit by Oseyi Zack Edetanlen, tea

My mother spoke of Princess Diana the way other women speak of God. With hushed tones thick with reverence, she idolized the Princess of Wales like she was one of us. With novelty mugs emblazoned with Princess Diana’s signature hairdo and warm smile, fancy hats and worn-out shoes two times smaller than her actual size scattered around the house, Diana hovered over our daily lives.

The television volume was turned on too high, with my mother screaming back at the commentary as she sat back and drank sugary tea from her favourite novelty mug. She yelled back with spittle flying out of her lips, ‘No, it’s pronounced DI-ANAH, the emphasis is on the last part, you moron!’

She eased back into the sofa, happily watching the documentary series on the life of Princess Diana, her newest comfort TV show. When she yelled out DI-ANAH again, I almost jumped out of my skin. My mother’s obsession with a public figure was what many would call unhealthy, but this was the life she was stuck in.

I was named after the Princess of Wales with a single, obvious reason. Names were supposed to have a special meaning, but mine didn’t. My mother only admired having her own daughter who she could look after. I was meant to run around the house as a silly child in my underwear with a cheap, plastic crown on my black, wiry hair. She would have me sit on the sticky carpet in the living room as she styled my hair, with a small sized Marmalade sandwich in my tiny hand.

Being an only child was glorious. I thought I had everything I wanted and almost got away with anything. The image of my mother walking bare footed in the house with a sparkle of anticipation in her eyes as she rubbed the bump in her belly. She had wanted another daughter, a second Diana to make our family somewhat complete.

But all of that changed when my baby brother, Charles, was born. Charles had little, beady eyes just like my father. Their rich, dark skin shone brightly in the sun just like cocoa in hot water. Unlike the light shade of my skin just like my mother’s, Charles was the replica of my father. They were instant best friends, but I couldn’t stand him because his arrival to our family somehow ruined everything. I suspected he was named after the Prince of Wales because my mother couldn’t stand him too.

On one of my many harmless adventures with my mother away at God knows where doing God knows what, I discovered an old photo album hidden safely in the dresser in her bedroom. I hadn’t noticed how rare and special this was until I spotted that single photograph with an orange time stamp at the corner. This was before Princess Diana’s passing and it felt almost like walking into a fictional time machine.

With neatly braided hair and a care-free smile, my mother stood closely with a stranger; an unknown male. The thought of her being worthy and acceptable to someone other than my father was impossible to imagine. 

My father who wouldn’t miss anything for the world for his late evenings after work slouched on the sofa with crumbs of fish and chips all over his chin, slowly faded with the noise. His silence grew deafening and when he eventually stopped talking, or even visiting the house to bond with us, we welcomed the alien feeling with wide, open arms.

With my father away, the house only got noisier. The hallway was left crowded with Diana merch and novelty items from every thrift shop my mother could find in the area. When she wasn’t watching documentary series or movies on the life of Diana, she would play a game of pretend, like the one I liked as a child. She spoke with the most unbelievable UK accent with one of her ill fitted shoes.

Then she would ask, ‘Can you guess who I am?’. It was all fun and games when I was five laughing uncontrollably at my mother’s jokes but I was fifteen now and the sight was disturbing. When she got tired of the theatrics, she cried herself to sleep on those nights. She wailed and talked to herself loudly, ‘They never deserved her. No one did!’

My mother remained sober for the next few days. She moved from one part of the house to another in utter silence, it felt like living with a ghost that resolved to ignore rather than haunt. I prayed for things to stay this way, but they didn’t. Soon, she was back on her feet with the hysteria loud in her voice, calling for the justice of Diana’s death, even after all those years.

The yellow fever coloured hospital card with my mother’s full name; Lucy Onome Oghenevwede, written lazily with cursive that almost blurred the letters laid untouched on the counter, with its corners still sharp to the touch and her name uncreased. The other documents remained in a single file, battered with overuse. 

Just like Princess Diana, my mother had a timeline. From forgetful walks in the park to writing notes on things she couldn’t remember. I began handling the shopping lists for dinner and shortly after, began cooking them too. She watched me stir the pot of soup with a longing in her eyes. I could never tell what she was thinking; no one could. In fact, not even she could tell most times.

With Princess Diana gone, I was convinced my mother was out of reach too. The sparkle in her eyes fizzled out until we couldn’t spot it any longer. It got replaced with something dark, twisted and undesirable. The overwhelming grief had opened a gap into her soul and nothing could ever fill it up. We were left with echoing reminders of what we used to be, with pending questions that needed urgent answers. With the hospital card barely touched and regarded, it stayed with us. 

Everyone blamed Princess Diana for what my mother had become. For years, I did too. But it wasn’t about her. It was never about her. Hours of waiting and crying for help to the system led to my mother’s self-acceptance. They said she would be fine and urged us to patiently wait for our turn, but it never did, in fact, it might never come. We were waiting for a system that did not hurry for people like us. 

With the sugary tea gone cold with a thin film settling perfectly in my mother’s cup and snores louder than the TV volume still wrongly pronouncing Princess Diana’s name, my mother remained undisturbed on the sofa. The programme finally ended with everything else in our lives unchanged.

About the author

Oseyi Zack Edetanlen is a passionate lover of crime, thriller novels and draws inspiration from authors like Sandra Brown, Shari Lapena, Gillian Flynn and others. She is fond of incorporating subplots of thriller and crime into her writings, and wouldn’t have it any other way. As a graduate of English and Literature in the prestigious University of Benin, to her name is a self-published e-book, SOUL SISTERS released in 2023. Asides working in the Communications and Media field, she remains a proud introvert who would rather spend her time alone, reading books and discovering new music. You can find her on @oseyizackwrites on X.

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Living in the Past by Tony Domaille, rum and coke

The last thing I’d expected was to be run over by an Austin Allegro. That’s the trouble with time travel; you forget things were different in the past, and I’d forgotten the High Street wasn’t pedestrianised in 1986.

Anyway, after I tumbled over the bonnet and fell into the carriageway, I wasn’t just worried about broken bones. It was the timeline. What if a road accident happens in the past that was never supposed to happen? Will it change the future?

An ashen looking Allegro driver got out of his car. ‘Oh, my God. You walked straight out in front of me.’

Then a crowd gathered, with people saying someone should run to the telephone box and call for an ambulance. 

The next thing I knew, I was in A&E, going in and out of consciousness, worrying that they might do blood tests. Being full of statins and other drugs that hadn’t yet been invented might have complicated things. The other worry was the portal home to 2026. It would close in a little over an hour, but every time I tried to get off the hospital trolly someone pushed me back down, telling me to lie still. 

I prayed they would be done with me quickly. NHS waiting times were much shorter back in the eighties, and I mumbled about needing to leave but they ignored me.

Everything hurt. My back, my legs, my head. But for all that, the biggest pain was in my heart. I’d travelled back in time because I wanted to see the girl I fell in love with in 1986 just once more. But I hadn’t seen her and now I wouldn’t get the chance before the time portal closed. I’d been in love more than once in my life, but she was the one. Hannah. The girl I’d never forgotten and never stopped loving.

Lying there I was feeling the consequences of breaking Time Travel Agency rules. No using portals for personal reasons. They’re strictly for historical research and the very occasional intervention to stop something that would prevent a future good. Wanting to see your ex-girlfriend again doesn’t qualify. I’d tried to find her in the present and failed. I shouldn’t have done, but I then started searching for her across time, but she just seemed to have dropped off the face of the Earth. No digital footprint, no records, not a thing. I often wondered if she ever thought about me. I also wondered if she’d ever tried to find me, but the agency keeps its operatives very much under the radar. I hoped she sometimes thought about that all too brief year we were together before life took us in different directions. Before I realised too late that she had been the one. 

I winced as I tried to sit up on the hospital trolly, as much because I knew I’d have to leave this time without finding Hannah as for my injuries. But then my chance came. The nurses rushed off to deal with something more serious than my bruises and concussion, so I limped away. My watch face was cracked but I could see I had less than fifteen minutes to reach the portal before it closed.

I stumbled out of the hospital and down the road, attracting curious looks because of my bandaged head. My vision was blurred. My ears rang and my head and limbs hurt but, if I could stay on my feet, there was still time. In the distance I could see the gates to the park where the portal would still be open, deep in the bushes near the bandstand. But as I got closer, and my vision cleared, I saw the park entrance had a barrier: Police Line. Do Not Cross. There were armed officers ensuring no one did, and a crowd had gathered. There were TV crews and reporters with cameras. I asked a man smoking a pipe what was going on.

‘They’ve found something weird in the park, but they won’t say what.’

‘But I have to get in there,’ I said, too loudly.

My informant shook his head. ‘You’ve got no chance, mate.’

Though I knew it was pointless, I tried to push my way through the cordon, but a police officer grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

‘Can’t you read?’ he asked. ‘Police line. Look!’

And that’s when I knew I wasn’t ever going to get back to my own time. In moments the portal would close. There would be no sign of the weird thing they’d found, and I would be trapped in 1986.

I was still in a concussed daze as I walked back toward the town centre. In truth there wasn’t much for me in my own time.  I was twice divorced – both good women, but they weren’t Hannah. I was living alone. I had few friends and no family to speak of. But how was I going to deal with being trapped in the eighties? Maybe I would find Hannah, but now I wondered what I’d been thinking? She was twenty-two in this time. I was sixty-two. Realistically, I could only gaze at her from afar. Even that felt wrong now.

I stopped to cross the road, checking more than carefully to make sure I didn’t walk in front of another car. And then I saw her. Bathed in the orange light of a streetlamp, I recognised her straight away. Hannah. But it wasn’t the Hannah of 1986. She was older. As old as me, though I could see through all the years.

She raised a hand in a familiar wave and I crossed the road.

‘Hello, John,’ she said, and her bright blue eyes shone as I’d always remembered them.’

My words caught in my throat.’ Is it really you?’

She nodded. ‘This may be the year we last saw each other, but it’s been a long time.’

‘I tried to find you,’ I said. ‘It’s like you disappeared.’

And then she was in my arms, and the years just melted away.

‘How?’ I asked. ‘How are you here, like this?’

‘You’re not the only time traveller,’ she whispered, and then I understood why I’d never been able to find her in my own time. 

‘Did they send you to find me?’ I asked.

‘They did.’

I sighed. ‘I suppose I’m in all kinds of trouble when you take me back.’

Hannah smiled. ‘If I take you back. But what if we just stayed here?’

All the years of wondering, searching, waiting, were over. People say we shouldn’t live in the past, but that’s what I’d been doing for forty years, whether I travelled in time or not. I didn’t know how it would work, but I didn’t care. I was with Hannah again. And as we walked hand in hand back into the town, just as we had done decades before, I knew we would never be apart again.

About the author

Tony is a playwright and his credits include the Derek Jacobi Award for New Playwriting and three-time winner of the UK CDFF Best Original Script Prize. He has also had many stories published in anthologies and magazines. You can follow him here -https://www.facebook.com/tonydomaillewriting/

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A bit of fun? by Jane Spirit, latte with a caramel shortbread

As soon as Laura woke up on that Wednesday, she remembered about the message she’d received from her father just late the evening before. Texting her at that time had seemed so out of character, but then her dad had been behaving rather oddly over the last few weeks.

 Last weekend had been a good example, when he’d arrived unannounced early on a Saturday morning, something which he’d never done before. He’d made out that he had been passing on an urgent shopping errand, but clearly, that had been just an excuse to tell her about the new girlfriend. Laura hadn’t understood at first why he hadn’t just told her over the ‘phone. After all he’d been on his own since her primary school days, and she knew that he’d had discrete relationships over the years. And then there he had been, standing awkwardly in her small kitchen like a nervous teenager. She’d put the kettle on, and they’d sat at the breakfast bar together making small talk though he hadn’t touched the coffee she’d made him. In the end she’d asked him what his plans were for the weekend and it had been like flicking a switch on.  He’d started talking about this amazing girl he’d met and how she’d introduced him to folk music. She’d promised to take him to a festival, and even to take him interrailing if he was up for that. Laura had sensed something unusual about this new girlfriend and cut straight to the chase.

‘She sounds very up to date with everything, dad,’ she’d smiled. ‘How old is she?’ 

His hesitation had given her the answer before he spoke.

‘Emilia’s about your age, Laura,’ he’d said, before adding, still beaming at her, ‘Well, a couple of years older.’

There it was then. He’d added almost immediately that he would have to be going as he was already late to pick ‘Emmy’ up for a day festival. He’d given Laura a quick hug as he headed out of the kitchen door. As always, when her fiancé Daniel arrived back from the shop with some fresh croissants, he had been a patient listener. She’d tried to explain her mixed feelings to Dan. She was happy for her dad, honestly, she told him.  After all, he was the one who had picked up the pieces and glued his little family back together again after her mother had left them to it. Her dad had brought them up so well and he certainly deserved to have some fun now that her brother was settled, and she and Dan had announced their engagement. And yet that didn’t stop Laura feeling squeamish about him taking up with someone her own age. She didn’t like to think about how other people would be laughing about him behind his back, and that included her friends.

So now Laura sat up in bed to re-read her dad’s message from last night. He’d been asking her if she fancied a coffee as he knew that she was working a late shift that day. Would she have time at eleven? He had a little proposition that he wanted to put to her.  It would have been unkind to say no and Laura replied briefly to say she would be there. She even added the ubiquitous smiley face, though she felt a faint unease for which there was no suitable emoticon. Her dad usually worked Wednesdays, so whatever he wanted to talk to her about must be important to him.

Later, as Laura approached the cafe with its comfortable armchairs and cosy corners, it occurred to her with horror that her father might have decided to bring ‘Emmy’ along without asking her first. Her mood lifted as soon as she opened the door and spotted only her father seated at a table with a latte and caramel shortbread in front of him for each of them. Soon they were chatting away about their weeks so far. Her father enquired after Dan and Laura told him how hard Dan was training for next month’s charity 10k. Her father leant gently towards her to tell her how much he admired Dan for having a go, adding that he would make a good husband and maybe, one day, a good father. 

Nice though that was to hear, Laura wasn’t quite sure how to continue with the conversation, and neither was her father it seemed. She wondered if he was waiting for her to ask after Emilia. Or might he be about to raise the subject of her wedding?  Laura very much wanted it to be a traditional all-trimmings event. She had hoped that her dad might be keen to pay something towards it, but it didn’t seem tactful to raise the subject directly. Instead, she nibbled the edge of her shortbread and stirred her latte thoroughly to fill the silence.

Then her dad sighed a little and leant further forward before he spoke. ‘Well as I said, I do have a little proposition for you … it’s to do with your wedding, Laura.’

Laura looked at him directly. She tried hard to keep her expression neutral whilst musing on how large an amount he might be about to offer her. 

Then she realised that her father had started gushing about something quite different; about Emmy and how much he adored her to be precise. Yes, he was explaining, he knew there was a considerable age gap between them, but it turned out that they were kindred spirits. They had only been together for a short while, but already they knew and understood each other so well. He felt full of hope for the future. In fact, he and Emmy had even been talking about having a baby together. He knew she’d love to get to know Emmy properly, so he wanted to tell her his plan. He was going to ask Elly to marry him over a romantic meal that evening and then invite everyone to a little engagement party at the weekend.

Laura struggled to maintain her best impassive face whilst her father continued rather breathlessly:

‘Laura, I know you and Dan are starting to plan your wedding. And I know how expensive these things can be. I wanted to see if there was a way that I could help you to have the most wonderful celebration. So, I was thinking, how about a double wedding? That way we could hire a fabulous venue. I thought I’d run the idea past you before I see Elly tonight.’

And now her father was looking eagerly at her as if he’d been suggesting the most delightful scenario in the world. She could manage only to say something non-committal and smile at him as brightly as she could as she wished him luck that evening. Then she forced herself to drink more of her latte and eat the rest of her shortbread before casually checking her phone. She feigned surprise at finding an invented message from Dan supposedly asking her to pick him up from work because he wasn’t feeling well.

Afterwards she had been still so agitated that she’d found herself driving towards Dan’s workplace as if the message had been genuine. She’d ended up parking near to Dan’s office and messaging him. She’d told him that he must pretend to be off colour if her father contacted him about a party. She would explain all in due course.

As it turned out, she never needed to tell Dan the whole story. There was no party that weekend at her dad’s place, no message from him to tell her that Elly and he were getting married and no glimmer of that fairy tale double wedding he had dreamt up. Her father never referred to their café conversation again and Laura felt gratitude towards Elly who had presumably turned down his proposal. How would she ever have coped with having a mother-in-law who was her own age? How could she have stood watching her father cooing over a half-sibling the same age as the baby she planned to have once she and Dan had tied the knot?

After that weekend, Laura was immensely relieved to get on with organising her wedding to a sensible budget. Even so she felt a trace of sadness for her father. He appeared to give up on dating, and he took to calling round regularly to help with any DIY projects they had on the go. In time he was to strike up a relationship with a middle-aged woman he’d got to know at the pub quiz he and his colleagues began competing in each week. He and Kate had made a well-matched couple, she thought, although they’d never embarked on any long-term commitment or even moved in together.  As the years went on, Laura became aware that her father never spoke about the future again with any flutter of excitement. Occasionally she remembered the spontaneous, happy man who had emerged for that short time in the café from the chrysalis of her dependable if rather dull father.  It was then that she hastened to reassure herself that her father and Kate were surely more than content with the easy routine of their semi-detached lives.

About the author

Jane lives in Woodbridge, Suffolk UK. With the encouragement of the local creative writing class which she joined in 2021 she has been writing stories ever since, some of which have appeared on Café Lit.

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