disclaimer:
This is fiction. The views expressed in this publication do not reflect the views of the author. The stories themselves are based on imagined events. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is fictitious and should not be taken as representative.
LINK: the (real) story behind this story.⚡
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“It’s going to go one of two ways - either you are going to live a great life, or you are going to learn something.”
She told me it was, essentially, up to me what I wanted to do. I remembered that day at the stables; the first moment that my mother-in-law had actually offered me any kind of advice. She was an elderly woman, with white hair, and fingernails that always seemed to be scratching at something. This, at least, was how I remembered her. We had some kind of conversation, one that the generation below mine might have emptily labelled 'deep.' There was nothing deep about it. The grass of the manor-yard had been frozen down to a shallow few millimetres by the January fog. I remember yawning but, in defence of my ex-wife's extended family, I do remember them being incredibly good listeners.
The beauty of the statement was that I could not tell whose side she was on. Either I stayed, for the children, for the stability, or I left: for myself and the opportunities I might have within me yet. I remember looking at several of their horses, wrapped up in their winter coats, huddled together and huffing pointlessly with their wet, closed-in eyes. It seemed an awful thing, to own a stable, at that moment in time. "Often," she added, when I had tired myself of talking, "these things have a way of making themselves clear."
And so I agreed to meet with Stacey in the boxy Pret-A-Manger just off Vauxhall. I don't know why. It seemed a suitably fresh and stale environment in which to begin a conversation about divorce. I wondered how many families had been severed over a salad. I digress. The moment was of quite some importance, this being the first that Stacey would hear of it. Who knows how her mother had gotten word. I was nervous, and even arrived early. I took a seat facing the glass resin door.
Now, you will not believe what I saw run past.
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disclaimer:
This is fiction. The views expressed in this publication do not reflect the views of the author. The stories themselves are based on imagined events. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is fictitious and should not be taken as representative.
Read the full disclaimer.
"And so I agreed to meet with Stacey in the boxy Pret-A-Manger just off Vauxhall. I don't know why. It seemed a suitably fresh and stale environment in which to begin a conversation about divorce."
These were some fun lines, loved the tone and particularly the "stale" and "fresh" Pret. Nice little piece!
Pret a chevaux