in the fullness of time

by Ian Johnson

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

Over after-work wines, Cass had caved to her primal self, that hair-pulling surrender—a rocky softness she’d thrown herself onto.

Sex was a confrontation, challenging to give more and take more—a shiftless slavery to stolen weekends, rattling exotic headboards.

And then, suddenly, something else. It wasn’t just lighter than dark. It wasn’t just the hours in between. It was Rob and Cass, themselves for themselves. co-conspirators sneaking around on meres and mountains, traversing duck boards and holing up in wonky shepherd’s huts, and pubs with wood burners and stranger’s dalmatians at their mud-caked boots. Waking on craggy beaches, the fine rain shushing their canvas ceiling, her boiling loneliness brought to a simmer. The flat stones tipped free from her skimmed soles.  

“Come on, Cass. The worst thing. What is it?”

There was no fiction between them. He wore the gold band that branded him as Lesley’s, and Lesley was his story. The organiser of barbecues. Consoler of potential mothers. Knitter of rainbow bobble hats for others’ little ones. Adoreable.

Cass wasn’t connected. She wasn’t involved.

“You’re feeling rueful?” she sneered at him from the cooling hotel pillow as he buttoned his shirt, the bitterness of dammed tears stinging her sinuses as they did whenever their time was up.

“About what? I’ll leave her, babe, just say the word.”

“No way. That’s on you, Rob!”

“It is on me cos I have no option. I’m in love with someone else, but you need to say so.”

“Why?!”

“Because I’ll have nothing afterwards. I need you to say it.”

“Never.”

*****

The day the divorce came through, Rob was down on one knee.

Him being him, he needed an audience, but it was no one they knew—a want-away waiter, an elderly couple with crinkle-cut smiles, a bemused table of Iraqi businessmen.

They scoped and rushed the registry office like old-hand bandits. Rob’s blessed mother, their only witness, told Cass how pretty she was in that charity shop crushed velvet dress, but couldn’t quite meet her eye.

Back at her flat, Cass sent him out for Chinese, the good one that didn’t deliver, promising him something spicier if he didn’t forget her prawn toast again.

As she contemplated shaving her legs, the ornamental landline rang.

“Hello?”

Silence. She listened for the click of a telemarketer—the cacophony of some open-plan cubicle in Mumbai.

“Hello?”

The silence persisted. Her presence burnt. Cass took a punt.

“Lesley?”

A sigh punctured through.

“I’m sorry, Lesley,” Cass sighed back like semaphore between shrouded ships.

“There’s no need. Congratulations, Cass.”

“Thanks. He’s not here.”

“Good. It was you I wanted to speak to. Just quickly.”

“Alright.”

“You’re not the first.”

Cass waited in vain for the scarlet demon to work her tongue. “I know. We’ve been open with each other about all that.”

“Good. He’s a special man. But despite what he says... what he wants... if you find out it’s not what you want, get out. Before it’s forever.” 

The loose bound first edition hung up, the only time they’d speak without his careful curation.

Lesley would be fine. She remarried, an electrician. Bill. Boring and dependable with grown-up children. They’d adopt. Two little girls. Twin sisters. Adorable. And Lesley would be happy enough and line her house with photographs, loving and cultivating them like her own, and becoming very fond of Bill, and only occasionally, when the nest emptied, fantasising about having it all with her childhood sweetheart while she sat in her corner of their bespoke conservatory and had a little cry.

*****

They honeymooned in Sorrento, spending long, blameless days tanning on the jetties or slipping into the Med with swim-up bars carved into the cliffs, the hulking tumour of Vesuvius casting its hollow shadow far faraway on the glittering bay.

Cass strained to capture snapshots of the immaculate marble hotel room. The fluffy white towels, rearranged into stiff swans. Sleeping and screwing the morning sun and head-throbbing night-before-and-night-before limoncello away. Wandering in the lush lemon groves, the leaves of the fat fruit fluttering in the rare sating breeze.

On the quayside, they ate the fresh catch, full of seabass and each other under criss-cross fairy lights, posing for selfies as they stared into their imagined futures and sniggered at the hack baritone vibrato laid on for the tourists by some curly chested troubadour.

They picked the fine bones clean, the clipped tide shushing.

Cass watched a cat traverse the sea wall, slinking under tables and through the longing fingers of groping diners to a pastel apartment. A bucket waited, and it hopped gratefully inside. A walnut spinster pulled her shiny black beloved skyward by a plaited rope to a window box, where it sprung into her wasting arms.

Rob watched two little girls dance barefoot in cotton dresses. He hid his chin with a napkin so she wouldn’t see it crumple.

*Originally published at Trash Cat Lit.

Photo of Ian Johnson

BIO: Ian Johnson is an archivist and writer from North East England, hung up on generational trauma and malaises of the heart. He is currently working with Product magazine on his first published short, and
querying his debut novel – a literary crime thriller. His words also appear in Free Flash Fiction.