Beginnings

This is the beginning of a story that will get longer...maybe a Chapter One...


Everything had stopped moving in the morning, she thought. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, no paths to tread and there wasn't anyone to tell, no delivery to be made in thought or word, no one to give it all to.

She waited for him to leave. He slept loudly. She tried to wake him without it seeming deliberate - putting the radio on, fidgeting, sighing melodramatically, coughing, making tea loudly and then, when all else failed, jabbing him in the ribs and saying, "Sorry, but it's getting late and I need to get on."

He blinked at her, not knowing her face, where he was or what the correct etiquette might be at such times. Clothes on and out, he surmised. After all, she was not his wife.

He was not her husband but her husband would return soon, eyes filled with nothing and briefcase full of paper deals. He would be jet-lagged when he returned and she would make him his favourite drink with added sleeping tablets, listen to his edited summary of his trip and then take his daughter and pregnant maid and drive six-hundred miles away from him.

The new place was all rugged coast, tumble-down house, beautiful and wild; a place for her girl to grow and be free. A place where he would never come.

She watched him get in the taxi. "Sorry", he had said as he left; his parting gift an apology, an admittance of wrong-doing, of regret. Her one night of desire in six years, driven away sat beside an apology in a taxi, gone and gone and gone.  Change the sheets and get the sleeping tablets. Where is Leila?

Leila is praying, eyes tight shut, "Please God, make sure my child is healthy and happy and safe. I am not sure I believe in you any more, Lord, so please step up and do the right thing. Step up and be a father to my child."