Skeleton and Demons part III by Carol Naylor

"Oh shit, shit, shit!" He reached for a double whisky to numb his senses, downed that one and reached for another.

When Jane phoned him he felt too inebriated to answer or listen to her message on his voicemail. He undressed, then carelessly threw his clothes onto the floor and fell into bed hoping to wake up sober enough to deal with it all. What a mess!

Saturday was another chilly day as Dave wrapped up warmly and rushed to King's Cross station. He felt absolutely lousy and regretted the whisky. It hadn't solved his problem or made his life any easier. The dark clouds overhead made him feel tense. He knew that the next few hours would be crucial for his marriage, his own sanity. He did not relish the thought of Jane finding out. Perhaps Sue would excuse herself from the reunion and he would escape from his overburdening sense of guilt? Perhaps, perhaps? He just couldn't face the truth, that was the reality of it.

He would be meeting Jane and his daughters soon and he would try to pretend that everything was fine, just as he had done in the past, so many times before. He drifted off into a restless and fitful state of semi-consciousness, hearing Jane's voice bellowing:
"You bastard! How could you do this to me? To us?"
She was screaming through her hysteria. A softer voice pleaded through a flood of tears:
"But I love you, you can't leave me now. Pete doesn't mean anything to me...I love you."


As Dave's train pulled into the station, a dishevelled woman entered Jane's hotel room, blowing into her handkerchief, trying to stifle her tears. Jane was getting ready to meet her husband. She had left Jo and Steph shopping and the four of them were going to meet up and have some lunch together. She had felt refreshed after a peaceful night's slumber in that four-poster.Dave had left her a message to say that his train would be arriving about 1.0.p.m. She wanted to greet him by telling him how much she really loved him. She was feeling calm, happy even. It must be the change of environment she conceded.

As soon as that door opened, Jane's illusion of happiness crumbled into despair.
"Jane, can I talk to you?"
Jane withdrew into a shell to protect her fragile ego from destruction.
The look of anguish on Sue's tear-stained face startled Jane as she blurted out,
"I don't know how to tell you this....,I feel absolutely awful about this....I've told Pete...he's walked out on me and taken the kids to his mother's till he can think straight."
As Jane collapsed onto the bed screaming," No! No! It's not true!" she was haunted by Sue's revelation,
"I love Dave and he loves me......."

Her voice trailed off as she crept out of that room, into the lift, out of the entrance and across into the station to meet him, feeling that she had every right in the world to be there.............

Copyright 2013. Permission to use this story must be obtained from the author.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Stranger From Lagos by Cyprian Ekwensi

Image
  image courtesy of Google images   Ekwensi was born in Nigeria in 1921. He wrote about the country and people of Nigeria-city life and life in the rural areas. Loko Towns and Other Stories was published in 1966. A Stranger From Lagos was one of the nine stories in that collection.   The writer explores the place of women in society. Lilian is trapped by social conventions. Her fiance treats her like a possession as if he owns her. It is written in third person to allow the writer's thoughts to merge with Lilian's. The protagonist is unable to speak to the stranger in public although it is obvious that there is a strong physical attraction between the two. If Lilian asserts herself she will go against social conventions (for females) and her reputation will be damaged through rife and unhealthy gossip. She will therefore be stigmatised as a loose woman. The story explores her inner conflicts in accepting these "conventions" or flaunting them as well a
Read more

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson.

Image
                Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. Book Review. "Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on." These apparently disparate case histories cover 1970, 1994 and 1979 involving girls who had either been murdered or had simply vanished into thin air. Private Investigator, Jackson Brodie, beautifully drawn but flawed through and through had spent 12 years in the Cambridgeshire Constabulary and before that the military police. Forty-five years of age and working on irksome or dull cases like Binky Rain and her missing cats when he becomes inundated with requests to solve three case histories of people who have been seriously damaged by crimes committed against their loved ones. "He was used to being a voyeur, the outsider looking in, and nothing, but nothing that anyone did surprised him anymore." There i
Read more

A Stranger From Lagos by Cyprian Ekwensi Final Part

Image
                                                                    courtesy of Google images Lilian uses her sexuality to liberate as well as attract the opposite sex. Ekwensi uses "wiggled." Lilian had just had her hair done and was wearing very large, loop earrings. This had been done for her lover's benefit. She was conscious of all the eyes watching the two of them. The writer uses the simile: she felt like something projected on a 3D screen for all Onitsha to view. We are told very little about the stranger other than that he was tall and good-looking. We are told he didn't feel embarrassed by all of the attention. He would ruin her reputation and he was well aware of this: he would scandalize her and then she would be left to the gossips. You get the sense that this has probably happened before. The dialogue here is disjointed. Mystery surrounds him but his desire to see Lilian is compelling: "I have wanted to see you" and he refers to his
Read more