Now She'd Never Know
- The spring wind whistled through the draughty Victorian building housing the library. Greyness filtered through the narrow windows – this and the dim overhead lights washed readers in turn of the century sepia tones.
- Murmurs hummed across dusty bookshelves. Time crept lethargically.
- Wearing a thick red jacket and a woollen scarf fraying at the edges, more suited to January than April, red lipstick smeared like oil paint on lips and teeth, she went purposefully to the Pe-Ri fiction shelf.
- Roughly, urgently she plucked the book from its allotted place between Percival and Perkins, its title stretching back to the undergrowth of her past, yanking at it like weeds from parched earth. She quickly checked it out, thrust it into a Sainsbury’s bag and walked briskly out.
- Without looking, she knew it was in there. The letter she’d been waiting for for 30 years. To the inexplicable, finally an unravelling. She’d arched a sceptical eyebrow when her informer had tipped her off but he had been correct. And after all, this was where it had all begun, both fleeing their bedsits for the anonymous companionship and relative warmth of the library.
- As she marched along Church Street, through the bag’s sticky plastic, the book had banged against her Lycra thighs. With each gentle, reassuring thud, she’d smiled inwardly, licking her lips with delicious anticipation.
- At home, she hid the book in plain sight on top of the washing machine, a place her lover never ventured. She answered him with empty words, her mind inside the book on top of the washing machine.
- Hugging the book close, she went to bed before the sun had set over the rooftops, pleading tiredness, a headache. After all these years, she’d thought she was ready, she’d imagined tearing the letter open and gulping its contents but she needed a little longer. She slipped it under the pillow.
- As he leant over and kissed her gently on the nape of her neck, she felt the sharp contours of her lover when he came to bed. She lay motionless, repelled by his proximity to both herself and the letter.
- The following morning the letter was gone, replaced with an angry farewell note from her lover scrawled on the back of a brown envelope from HMRC.
- Now she’d never know why he’d left their wedding reception abandoning her - a humiliated, broken-hearted virginal widow.
By writing group regular Yvonne Lloyd, who works as a freelance content creator.
