| Straight: Husband and Wife: First time: last time (5/18) |
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there. They know where I am now, but they were worried when I first ran off.’ I looked quizzical. ‘The doctors, fucking social workers. Anyway, I’ll be out of their hair soon enough. They thought I might top myself, leap down the stairwell – it’s fucking deep enough. Bet they fucking wished I did - save them a few quid and a lot of trouble if I had.’ Her face was serious now and she lowered her voice. Tears filled her eyes and anger, then resignation flashed across them. ‘I was going to do it. Ten flights. Fucking simple. Eighty feet onto solid concrete? Overkill really. Eighteen would have done it. Anything but this. I don’t want to fucking die slowly. I want to fucking live… I wanted to live…’
‘Then fight it. Give it everything you’ve got. Miracles happen!’ ‘Why are you here, Adam?’ She instantly changed the subject, ignored my patronising, though heartfelt statement. So I told her about my wife, my beautiful, loving, dying wife: her accident and recovery; our meeting and our marriage; her illness and impending death. She gently twirled the ring on my third finger as I spoke and her tears audibly splashed onto the Formica tabletop, mingling with my own. ‘Danielle…’ She turned the word around in her head, looked at it from every angle. ‘That’s a lovely name,’ and she quietly sang, ‘I can see Danielle waving goodbye… I hate mine… bloody parents fucked up right at the start. Regina! What sort of name is that? Makes me sound like a right c…’ ‘Anyway!’ I interrupted her expletive, ‘I like it. It’s lovely. Means ‘queen’ doesn’t it? Suits you. You have regal bearing, they must have known how you would turn out.’ Her frown quizzed me. ‘When you walked in here… God… you cut a very impressive figure.’ She rolled her eyes and giggled, wrinkled her nose. ‘You’re a bloody smooth talker, Adam.’ Her slightly husky voice and measured delivery were much older than her lovely face. ‘But, I actually meant, why are you here, here now, with me? What made you ask me?’ I wasn’t expecting that one and she threw me. ‘I… I don’t know. Well, I felt responsible back there, I suppose. You were obviously in pain, maybe trouble of some sort… I wanted to help, wanted to be sure you were ok. I couldn’t just leave you there.’ Seeing her now, a better reason stared me in the face, but I couldn’t return its stare. ‘So it’s a … mercy mission? You felt sorry for me?’
‘No, course not.’ I lied. ‘I was concerned, but… but…’ her incredulous expression squeezed the truth from me, ‘yes, OK, I felt sorry for you.’ ‘I don’t need your pity, Adam…’
‘Not pity… I was worried, thought you maybe… might just need someone to talk to. And I’m glad I came. Really, really glad.’ ‘And why’s that?’
‘Er… well… you, er…’ I spread my palms, shrugged my shoulders, maybe even coloured a little. She laughed at that and then merely smiled, half closing her eyes, teasingly. ‘You… you don’t fancy me, do you? Aren’t I too young for you?’ and then she sang, very tunefully, ‘I would have liked to know you, but I was just a kid….’ I looked down at the tabletop, the inability to meet |
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Re: wow.
