Fear and Loathing

Triple-shot latte

Sarah Evans

It was instant loathing.
        You were slouching by the window, profile lit by morning sun. Carefully spiked hair. Perfectly ironed shirt. Aryan good looks. I bet you’d never struggled for anything in your life.
        My smile was irreproachable as Harry beckoned me over.
        ‘Lynda, this is Max. He’ll be joining you on the team.’
        ‘Good to meet you,’ I said. Your eyes were glacier blue, your clasp a touch too firm.
        Technically we were the same grade.
        ‘Had to offer him Associate Partner. Wouldn’t take anything less. I’m sure he’ll pay his way.’ Harry had explained. And you’ll be a full Partner soon. Surely that was implied. ‘We were all impressed with him. Of course he answers to you on the Hardman project.’
        I hoped you understood that. Your CV was somewhat slim from what I could see. I could picture just how you’d have bull-shitted your way through the interview.
        My desk was by the window: corporate prime estate with its river view. St Paul’s behind, Tower Bridge in front. You were opposite, but in the middle, squeezed between two analysts.
        Within three days you’d switched desks. How you did you do that? Negotiating a four-way rearrangement in which everyone traded down, but you. It had taken me years to get the desk I wanted.
        Now you were in my face. I’d take a micro-break, looking out over swirling pewter current. My returning gaze would find your wry smile and raised eyebrow, as if you’d discovered some insufficiency.
        You’d come up behind: ‘Which client are you billing this for then?’ Not as if I’d spent more than a couple of minutes Googling for a hotel break. Your tone was jokey and collusive. But I heard its undercurrent: you’d caught me out.
        It took one team meeting to fire those first impressions to an immutable glaze. You were late. ‘Meeting overran,’ you said. But you were sipping from a steaming Starbucks’ cup. You swung back on two chair legs, like a bored schoolboy. I waited for the perfect moment to pull you up. Then you straightened, and stared at me defiantly. ‘I don’t see why we don’t just…’
        Sheer arrogance! Only a few days in, and telling me the path we’d structured for months might be made much simpler. The problem was, I could see immediately that you were right. I fired off a dozen reasons why you weren’t and waited for you to argue.
        Your shrugged response – ‘you know best’ – was infinitely worse. No-one else said anything. I knew they knew: I was being perverse.
        You undermined everything I did and said.
        You made a point of always being in the office earlier than me. You never left before me. Setting up an arms race neither of us could win. It wasn’t that you worked hard. I overheard the personal calls, watched as you gossiped at the coffee point. I wasn’t the only one who Googled.
        ‘Harry dropped by at ten last night,’ you made sure to let me know. ‘I sorted him out.’
        This was how it should be. Shorter hours meant effective delegation.
        Nobody would buy that.
        You were unfailingly polite. Opening doors. Stepping back to let me out of the lift first. Playing on the weakness of my gender.

       *

Then it was the office Christmas drinks.
        I divided my time strictly according to rank. I pretended interest in others’ holiday plans. I deferred to Harry, used my allotted minutes judiciously, laughing louder than his wit warranted.
        I wasn’t going to give you the satisfaction of ignoring you.
        You sat amidst a female conclave, flirting shamelessly, the way you did with every other woman in the office. You leant back, sweating masculinity from every pore, legs apart, your thigh pressed against Katie one side and Leila on the other.
        I was used to the rank-and-file breaking off their conversations, waiting for me to set the agenda. You continued embellishing your story – what was it? Nothing worth remembering. Katie’s eyes flickered between us as she tried to choose where her best bet lay.
        ‘I’m heading off,’ I said, bored suddenly by the pretence, wearied by the muscle aching smiles. I turned to make my exit.
        It wasn’t the drink that made me stumble; I hadn’t drunk much. Red-faced merriment might seem jovial in a man; in a woman it looks absurd.
        Perhaps it was the heels, higher than usual in an attempt not always to be staring up at you.
        Perhaps it was the momentary relaxation, as I passed out of being observed and into being myself.
        In any case, walking down the steps something gave. I crashed down onto the mezzanine landing.
        I had already scrambled up before I heard you. ‘Are you OK?’ What instinct had told you it would be to your advantage to follow me? Your voice was a parody of concern.
        ‘I’m fine.’ Though I hadn’t yet figured out if I was or wasn’t. You took my arm.
        ‘Where does it hurt?’ Your other hand moved over my hip in a pretence at a pain-easing rub.
        ‘I’m fine. If you’d just let me pass.’
        ‘Not sure I can do that.’ I recognised the honeyed tone you dripped over our pouting PAs. ‘Can’t have the manager of our most lucrative project damaging herself.’
        You kept hold of me down the remaining stairs, hindering, not helping.
        The night air slapped against our faces. My short black dress did nothing to keep away the freeze. You pulled me under the bridge…
        …and kissed me.
        I tasted tannin, breathed in sandalwood, felt the graze of your stubble. We kept our eyes open. Our tongues matched the rhythm of the waves as they lapped the bank. You drew away first. I saw the mocking glint in your pupils and hoped mine glittered with as much acerbity.
        We kept to separate sides as we climbed away from the dankness of the low tide and up to the bridge. My ankle hurt, but I paced fast, matching you white-mist breath by white-mist breath. I started to walk across, the wind tangling my hair and blowing the short dress shorter. Christ, it was cold! I thought it would be safe now to turn and hail a taxi. A black cab pulled up. The door opened; you leaned out and beckoned me in.
        Insisting on remaining in the cold would just be stubbornness, and you’d know it. I let the fuggy warmth envelope me and gave my address to the driver.
        We sat in window-gazing silence, just like we didn’t chat in those taxis to and fro from client sites. Except this time your arm stretched across the seat; your hand grasped my thigh and worked its way under my skirt.
        We arrived. I let you pay. You followed me up to my flat.
        It was me who pushed you against the wall, who started tugging at your jacket, and undoing the buttons of your shirt. If you tried to use your strength against me, I’d scream.
        But you simply reciprocated step by step, never overtaking. You accepted my lead, surrendering to my will.
        Until I no longer wanted you to.

*

Later, we picked ourselves up off the floor. My toes curled on something hard and cold. I waited for you to go. Instead you followed me into the bedroom, where we separately removed the last traces of clothing. I didn’t look at you, couldn’t bear to see the victory in your eyes.
        In bed I curled up tightly and your body spooned close against mine. I listened as your breathing slowed into sleep. I could smell your sweat, mingling with the fish-market scent of sex.
        It had been so long since I slept with another’s arms wrapping me in an illusion of intimacy. It became one of those sleepless nights when you question everything you’ve become, all those relentlessly pursued goals, every choice you’ve ever made. What insecurity drove us to this, the constant proving of company loyalty and commitment? I entertained fleeting fancies. Ours would never be a hand-holding office coupledom. But perhaps there would be the exchange of glances, too swift for anyone to observe. We would collude together, while appearing to conspire against.
        But as the night deepened, then lengthened towards morning, the fancy vaporised. I tensed with fear for the consequence.
        Conquest remains a male preserve.

*

The alarm shrilled into the continuing blackness. You jerked away: ‘Christ, is that the time?’ You took an age redressing. Through slitted eyes I glimpsed the well-honed body that my hands and mouth had shamelessly explored the previous night. A shadow fell across my face and I felt your weight pressing down the mattress. I waited for your words, already flinching from the blow of sarcasm.
        Your fingers ran through my hair.
        ‘See you later.’ Your voice gave nothing away. You would enjoy keeping me guessing.
        I walked tall into the office, my tongue running over my swollen lips. I could feel the bruising on my body and knew your flesh would be hurting too.
        You formed the centre of a huddle. How had you got home and changed, and still arrived before me? They all laughed. Katie. Simon. Greg. Your long frame was angled into a sneer as your eyes flicked towards me.
        I know that look: pure masculine conceit.
        I clicked through emails and checked my schedule. I saw you glide towards the window, mobile to your ear. Your eyes leered at me as you embarked on some smirking conversation I could catch only snatches of. ‘Special night.’ Said with cocky emphasis. The immediate office wasn’t enough for your gossip.
        I reached into my bag for the small bar I’d found in my hallway earlier.
        Coffee. I needed coffee. And a few minutes to consider.
        In Starbucks I caressed the memory stick. What would it contain? A confidential report with our company logo? Copies of internal correspondence?
        You had been careless.
        I printed my message on a napkin in neat capital letters. Found in black cab, with a time and date. You would have done the same.
        The headquarters of the FT were only a short detour. I sipped my triple-shot latte, then slipped the metal bar, wrapped in soft tissue, into the letter box.
        My day was packed with meetings, each dovetailing importantly into the next. My mind was focussed as I made snapping decisions and delivered clear analysis. We were never alone. As I glimpsed the smug look on your face, I pictured the sequence of events.
        Security scandal, the headline in the FT would read. Or probably not. There would be a phone call to Harry. The editor was a golfing-friend. He’d tip Harry off, extract a return favour.
        I’d seen it before, the three-way interview in the glass-box office: Harry, woman from HR and red-faced employee. It was hard to imagine you blushing. You would be accompanied to your desk to collect personal items, before being stripped of your security pass and escorted from the premises. Such a breach would not be forgiven.


        I rose from my desk early. You raised your eyebrows.
        ‘Working part-time?’
        I awarded you a tight smile. ‘Looks like it.’
        Just for second the smile you mirrored back was warm and deep.
        ‘Wish I could join you. Harry wants to see me.’ Your face was clear and open; lacking any one-upmanship. What might you have read in mine?
        Katie caught up with me as I waited for the lift.
        ‘Good party,’ I said. I wasn’t going to act ashamed.
        ‘Yes.’ She laughed. ‘Max was saying Leila got off with Alastair.’
        I skipped just half a breath.
        Arriving home I felt flat, the empty evening stretching out before me. Harry could be having that conversation right now.
        I climbed the stairs to my apartment and remembered the previous night, the thrill of you watching every hip-swing. I found them laid outside my door: a dozen blood-red roses, and a card.
        In memory of a special night.
　


　
Bio: Sarah Evans has had dozens of stories published in magazines and competition anthologies, including: the Bridport Prize, Momaya Press, Earlyworks Press, Tonto Press and Writers’ Forum. She lives in Welwyn Garden City with her husband.
　

Old Friends

by Sarah Evans

Cappuccino

Russell arrived a little early, wanting to be there first, wanting to see her before she saw him.
He drank his coffee too quickly, feeling the caffeine humming through him, wondering why he was doing this and why the thought of seeing her could still – after all these years – fill him with joyful trepidation.
The time for their meeting came and went. The minutes by which she was late piled up one by one, mingling with the jitter of caffeine till he felt that he’d explode. She was always late. That hadn’t changed. Why the hell had he bothered being early? Ten more minutes, he thought, ten more minutes and he’d leave.
And then…
The door was opening, the old-fashioned bell tinkling; there was a blast of cold air, and a woman bursting through, her bright scarf flapping, her hands busy with plastic bags, eyes darting but not, it seemed, seeing.
Eleanor!
Middle-aged now. They both were. But she was wearing well, still tight and lean and conveying, even in the briefest of glimpses, a sparking energy. His heart was beating fast and he lingered for an hour-long-second, wishing he could simply observe, that he had time to absorb the shock and to let his pulse settle.
Her eyes alighted on him and his legs pushed his body to standing. Her smile stretched broadly. ‘Russell!’ she said, her voice unchanged after twenty years.
‘Eleanor!’
He manoeuvred out from behind his table, his shin banging against a chair and setting him tripping. They met midway, then both hesitated, before ducking towards each other for a social embrace, heads bobbing side to side, kissing the air which was fragranced with her still familiar scent.
‘It’s good to see you,’ he said, momentarily dizzied by the brush of her silk-soft skin.
‘Good to see you too.’ She drew back, looking at him openly, appraising, and he wished his hair not so thin, his middle not quite so thick.
‘You haven’t changed,’ he said, and her laughter was bright and vivid as she said: ‘What nonsense! We’ve both changed.’ Her mouth stretched to a lop-sided smile. ‘Both older. Wiser.’ Then she laughed. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Do we need to be wiser?’
‘We weren’t back then.’
‘I don’t know…’ And that was it, he felt he didn’t know, anything, other than that it was good to see her and that he couldn’t remember, not precisely, why they had split up.
‘Coffee?’ he offered.
‘Let me. Same again?’ She gestured his foam-lined cappuccino cup, and he said yes, meaning no, but it was too complicated to think of something different or to insist that he could buy them.
He sat down, grateful for the firm support of the wooden chair, and for the opportunity to watch her as she queued, her hand pushing back her thick, auburn hair and her eyes twitching round, her feet tapping. Watching her was tiring. Was that why they hadn’t endured; he’d been worn out by her?
‘Here!’ she exclaimed in triumph as she presented him with an extra large cappuccino, the abundant creamy froth feeling indulgent set alongside her espresso.
‘How are you?’ she asked.
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I stuck with law. Was made a partner three years ago. I live in Hertfordshire. I’m mid-divorce.’ He reeled out the basic parameters of his life, wishing they were more interesting, aware that none of this answered her question.
‘And happy?’ she asked.
‘What does that mean?’
She laughed. ‘What indeed?’
He had known to define himself as happy once; he remembered the certainty, the waking up beside her and saying I love you and that feeling – I’ve never been so happy – and the need to express it in words; and her laughing and telling him that all that told her was that he had been miserable before. But wasn’t that reasonable? Happiness wasn’t an absolute, it was relative, it was more or less, it grew or died.
‘You?’ he asked. ‘What about you?’
‘I’m good. No longer a lawyer.’ She grimaced. ‘But then you know that, you tracked down my website. Doing my own thing. Sort of making it as an artist, which is to say I make enough from commercial stuff to get me by and still have time to experiment with what I really want to do.’
‘You found your way then?’
And now he was remembering this point of difference between them. It was never that he loved his job, never that he felt that it defined or fulfilled him. But there was satisfaction in knowing that he did it well, gratification in the way his pay-checks swelled year by year and in the ability to buy the house and car and lifestyle.
‘My way? I guess. I found a way to be. There are still compromises, but not as fundamental as the nine-to-five grind. I’m OK I guess.’
‘And married? Partnered?’
‘No.’ She looked at him very directly. ‘I’m not good at the relationship thing. But then you know that.’
‘Do I?’
‘Don’t you?’ And he was remembering the pointless arguments and her inability to find a middle way until the moment when she was staring down at the floor and her voice was low and serious: maybe I’m just not cut out for this.
‘And you’re happy?’ he asked.
‘I guess. I mean as happy as anyone. I’m not unhappy and that seems as much as it’s reasonable to hope for.’
Somehow his coffee had been drunk and inside he was buzzing up like a nest of wasps.
‘Why did we split up?’ he asked.
‘Why were we together?’
‘We loved each other.’ Anger surged, surely she remembered that?
‘Did we?’
‘Didn’t we?’
She paused; her large green eyes stared ahead. It couldn’t be that difficult to remember. ‘It was very intense,’ she said. ‘All that wanting each other. It was very…consuming.’
‘And isn’t that love?’
‘Isn’t that just lust?’
‘It was more than that.’
‘It felt like more than that. But then it doesn’t it?’
Anger pulsed, along with resentment and regret, emotions all frothing up, refusing to settle, refusing to order themselves into any kind of logic.
‘It was more than that,’ he repeated very quietly.
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘It didn’t last though.’
‘It could have done.’
‘If it could have done, it would have.’
‘You left.’
‘You didn’t follow.’
‘You sodded off to the back of beyond. Finding yourself.’
‘You could have come too.’
‘I already knew who I was.’ The same grey-suited man who sat here now, who saw nothing wrong with nine-to-five routines and slowly making his way up a career ladder in a job he was good at, if not inspired by.
‘Did you?’
The question rested pointlessly between them. ‘Oh gosh,’ she said, raising her arm in a slightly exaggerated gesture, ‘is that the time?’
‘I expect so. Unless your watch is faulty.’
She looked at him then laughed. ‘I remember you making me laugh.’
…and Sunday mornings wrapped in sweat drenched sheets and the completeness of contentment, did she remember that too?
‘Why,’ she asked, ‘did you get in touch?’
‘I don’t know. Two old friends.’
‘Lovers. It was never really about friendship was it?’
‘Doesn’t lover imply friendship too?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘You must have had other lovers since,’ he blurted, angry and jealous. ‘Weren’t they friends?’
‘Yes. I must have.’ Again, that wide-eyed gaze, seeking answers in the distance. ‘And no, not really. I don’t really do friends,’ she said.
‘Can’t we be?’
‘Friends? I don’t think so. I mean do you? I mean really.’
‘Lovers then.’
Her laugh was deep and vivid. ‘It’s not that easy.’
‘It was back then.’
‘We were young then.’
‘We’re not exactly old.’
‘Too old. I really ought to go.’
Their eyes met, a lingering moment in which he failed to understand. Anything.
‘It was nice seeing you,’ she said and she leant in towards him, her lips against his cheek soft and warm.
Then she was gone. Just as she’d left him before.

Bio: Sarah Evans has had dozens of stories published in magazines and competition anthologies, including: the Bridport Prize, Momaya Press, Earlyworks Press, Tonto Press and Writers’ Forum. She lives in Welwyn Garden City with her husband.

Tying the Knot

by Sarah Evans



Champagne

Ben’s insides are a triple twisted knot. There’s the two-fold tangle – now familiar – of happiness and the fear it will be lost. The third thread is simply embarrassment. He’s about to make the biggest pillock of himself.

He strikes his glass with the silver spoon. Its sonorous ring pricks the bubble of chatter round the horseshoe table that hugs in their luck. Everyone turns. Exactly as intended. Exactly as he wishes they wouldn’t.

All very informal, they’d insisted. No best man. No maid of honour. No giving away the bride. And no speeches.

He doesn’t know why over the last few days, words have turned up uninvited, the bare struts of a speech attracting embellishments, like a fleece of iron filings to a magnet.

‘You don’t mind do you?’ he had asked last night, when he realised he was serious. ‘Siobhan?’ he prompted her, when there was no response. He loves the softness of her spoken name, so at odds with how hideous it looks written down.

‘No, if it’s what you want,’ she said eventually, her voice low and fluting.

He’s standing. He hopes his hands are doing all the trembling, so his vocal chords will be left free. It’s not as if he isn’t used to this. Addressing Court. Chairing meetings. He gave the proxy father of the bride speech at Pat’s wedding.

He glances round the expectant hush.

Siobhan is staring down at the backs of her hands. The three long bones from wrist to knuckle stand up, like an ivory carving, interlaced with fine blue veins.

Pat sits squarely, forbidding in her big-sister protectiveness, her navy cardigan taking informal a bit too far. His nephews wriggle round her in support.

Kathleen is also darkly dressed. The two sisters-newly-in-law could almost be sisters themselves. Except Kathleen is beaming widely at him. She’s willing him to succeed, as are the glamorous trio of Siobhan’s closest friends.

The various add-on men wear work day suits and good taste ties. They fade, disinterested, into the dimmed lighting.

‘I know I promised no speeches.’ His voice has not yet betrayed him. ‘I lied.’ The joke is weak, the laughter warm.

‘I also know it’s a dreadful cliché to say that today I’m the luckiest man alive.’ He hopes that acknowledging it as a cliché, makes it less of one. He judges the slight pause. ‘Of course in my case, it happens to be true.’ It sounded better playing in his head, but his audience doesn’t care. Those generously inclined to laugh, do so. Pat glowers. Siobhan is still looking down at her hands. The waves of her hair fall forward to caress her face, veiling her expression. His words, however trite, are for her.

‘The last eight months of knowing Siobhan…or to be more accurate the last eight months, one week, three days…’ The canned laughter is right on cue. But this isn’t an affectation. The evening he intended to surprise her with a naively large bunch of roses – blood red for passion – was their three month anniversary. Since then he has notched up each day. ‘…have been the most extraordinary of my life.’ His tone is serious now, the silence is broken by disquieted foot-shufflings. It’s not as if he can ignore it.

‘I don’t want to dwell on the times of distress, which you all know about, have shared in.’ It wasn’t painful, she said afterwards, not at first. He wouldn’t have believed it possible to hurt so much.

‘But it has also been a time of profound happiness.’

Profound isn’t quite the right word, though he failed to find a better one, to describe the seam of conviction, wide and deep. Happiness is even worse, but he doesn’t want to use a muted word, suggesting qualification. He doesn’t, of course, mean the champagne exuberance of their early days. Of his rapturous infatuation – and he knows now that was what it was – with her firework brilliance, which sometimes fizzled without warning to a darkness he had no way to understand.

Siobhan won’t mind all this will she? Her pale linen is embroidered in an intricate network of gold thread, spreading out in ever dividing branches. A sleeveless jacket hangs over wide trousers and billowing white sleeves pinched in at the wrist with delicate cuffs of lace. As she stepped out from the taxi to where he waited before the red-brick office, she’d never looked so beautiful. He’d been touched at her insistence on this one point of convention, that her attire remain a surprise.

‘I know what some of you are thinking.’ Pat, of course, but the others too. ‘That we’re being rash, that we should have waited, taken our time.’ They only invited their guests two weeks ago, giving the impression this was a moment’s impulse. It felt unlucky to count on it.

‘And it would be hard to argue with the rationale of caution. But our decision to marry today was, as perhaps it must be, a decision of the heart.’

Before he’d never seen the point of getting married at all. What difference can it make? The witnessed promises, the signing of a piece of paper. People stay together for love; they part for lack of it. Divorce is expensive. It’s his job to oversee it, to battle over settlements, to profit from it.

‘It’s a decision we took several months ago.’ He’ll leave it to his audience to judge which side it fell, of the fracture between before and after. ‘A decision I’ve always felt to be entirely right.’

He remembers the irony in her tone when he first suggested it. ‘Marry? Why would you marry me?’ He knew by then, it isn’t him she mocks.

‘And I’ve never felt so sure of anything in my life.’ The repetition is for Pat, whose clamped hands have become a sculpture demanding full attention. For years she’s told him to grow up, settle down, get married.

‘But today is not about the past. Today we ask you to join us in celebrating the future.’ It’s this, above all else, he wants to convince them of. His voice prepares to switch from serious to the gauze of wedding day speeches.

‘Today, Siobhan signed a legal document promising she would love me. And – if I’ve understood the small print correctly – sleep with me…’ He pauses for the studio laughter, as he borrows from the dullness of his trade. He’s his own best man, and after all a wedding is an affirmation of the body’s pagan rites. ‘…forever.’ Earlier he’d faltered on till death do us part. Why should a marriage ceremony already foreshadow death? Siobhan’s voice was unflinching.

‘And all I have to do to fulfil my side of the bargain … is the same in return.’ Kathleen is still smiling encouragement as he heads towards his punchline.

‘I can’t imagine anything easier.’

He can’t account for the surge of joy, or something like it, at the hospital. The psychiatrist offered book learned sympathy and advised, ‘She shouldn’t be left alone.’ He expected to yield his silent vigil to the greater claim of family. But it was him she singled out, chose to take her home. Kathleen’s look of hurt was swiftly overtaken by relief.

‘Of course,’ he interrupts the easy laughter. ‘If I understand the legal niceties, the contract won’t take effect, not until it’s ratified…’ He counts to three by the beating of his pulse, ‘…by a somewhat more private declaration of love.’ He wonders how long the evening will go on, before he can be alone with her. A bullet of wanting is lodged permanently within, deeper and more complex than just desire.

‘I’ve checked. No amount of pre-consummation counts.’ This goes down well in the galleries. They all know that she’s shared his bachelor pad for months.

Pat radiates disapproval like a dying sun. But it’s his wedding day, he’s supposed to fancy his wife. Pat thinks she knows him, that sex is all this is about.

‘Why?’ Pat asked him. ‘Why her?’ As if love is arrived at through analysis and careful reasoning.

‘A toast,’ he says, his voice loose and free as he capers towards the end. Siobhan’s seemed so relaxed the last few weeks.

‘To happy endings.’ Impossibly simplistic, but he believes it.

‘To decisions of the heart.’ His own is still tied in knots.

‘To love everlasting.’ He faces his audience, addresses the words to her.

‘And to being very thoroughly married by tomorrow morning.’ The air vibrates with willing laughter.

He sits. Her hand covers his, tickling it with the criss-crossed lace which covers up the scars. He catches the scent of her quiet amusement. Then her fingers squeeze briefly their resolve, before she rises in a graceful arc, one side of her mouth turned down.

‘Well I can’t let Ben have the last word.’ An easy quip. When she’s on a high, she talks too much.

‘I don’t have to tell you about all Ben’s qualities, about how lucky I am. In fact I think most of you recognised it before I did.’ How grateful her glittering circle were for his calm presence; how warmly he was drawn into the problem that is Siobhan.

‘Today you can celebrate that, for once, Siobhan has done the right thing, has managed not to screw things up.’ The tone is almost light and brings forth complicit smiles.

‘And for the same reason, Ben’s family are perhaps not celebrating quite as much.’ It’s there again, the rueful, half down-turned smile.

‘I hope Pat will forgive me if I presume to suggest what she perceives.’ Pat bristles non-forgiveness. Just be happy for me, he tried to plead. Ever since they were left orphaned teenagers, she’s adopted the maternal right of knowing what’s best for him.

‘Which after all is probably not that different from the slightly softer perceptions of my own family and friends.’ Her smile is slow and poised as she looks down at her clasped hands.

She lifts her eyes to fix her gaze. Confronting Pat directly is rarely the best way to persuade her to see reason.

‘That I’ve been a recipient of Ben’s love.’ Her words are clear and practised, as if she’s reciting a line of poetry. ‘I’ve taken his devotion, his care, his comfort.’ Siobhan’s eyes and voice drop. ‘And given very little in return.’

He reaches out to touch her arm, the contours of her name hovering on his lips. She doesn’t have to do this.

After the first impossible days in hospital followed weeks of sleepless nights and twilight days, in which she was his to hold but not to have. Amidst the unmarked midnight time, the open artery honesty, in which she listened as well as talked, he surrendered more of himself than in years of after work happy-hour drinks, law society dinners and city breaks.

She moves, almost imperceptibly stroking away his objection. His hand knocks clumsily against the glass, the wine spills in a spreading stain, the bubbles draining away into the starched white.

‘I’m not going to defend myself.’ She recovers her strength. ‘To explain or justify. I want only to return – as Ben has done – to the promises we made today.’ The waitress hovers in the shadows, waiting to judge the moment to provide coffee.

‘Today, I promised to love Ben. For ever and ever.’ His insides squeeze tight; there isn’t room to breathe. ‘I gave that promise with the same seriousness and conviction,’ her tone gives meaning to the words, ‘that I know he gave his in return.’ She stops in meditative reflection. She’s speaking to her audience, but this is for him.

She picks up her glass.

‘Ben has already made a very complete toast. For once I can’t think of anything to add.’ Her voice has returned to levity. He can almost hear the tensed muscles all around, relaxing. ‘So in true wifely fashion, I will simply paraphrase my husband’s words.’ It’s enough to get the gaggle giggling. She knows the rules of speechmaking as well as he. Light. Dark. Light. This is the stuff of wedding day banality, playing on the labels which don’t quite fit, not yet, like the way his fingers are fidgeting with his wedding ring.

She sways backwards slightly on her heels and forward to raise her glass.

‘To love.’ Her voice lilts upwards, like an incantation, or a prayer. Pat is still purse lipped, unwilling to be moved, but she’ll come round eventually.

Siobhan sways lightly back and forth.

‘To happiness.’ Her voice gently mocks the absurdity of this. Kathleen’s mouth is taut with the wanting to believe in it.

‘To wedding nights.’ Only recently has there been the return of desire. It was him who wanted to wait until today, unable to explain why, except that, like all of this, it felt right.

‘To the nights and days, to come.’ She picks up those twisted threads and in a conjuror’s trick they uncoil and fall away.



Bio: Sarah Evans has had dozens of stories published in magazines and competition anthologies, including: the Bridport Prize, Momaya Press, Earlyworks Press, Tonto Press and Writers’ Forum. She lives in Welwyn Garden City with her husband