Tuesday 5 February 2019

Day 28





Julie could feel the tray of tea wobbling in her shaky hands. She felt like Mrs Overall without the laughs. The dapper man had turned out to be Arthur Jones, father of the deceased. Now she thought about it, she could see the family likeness. The short dark hair, the gaze that seemed to bypass you, looking into another world that was calmer and serene, but somehow always just out of reach. It was a world that Julie would have gladly been inside rather than in this one at this moment.

Julie set the tray down very, very slowly. The tea slid up to the edge of the periwinkle blue rim and then subsided in a series of ever decreasing circles.

“Tea,” she announced stating the obvious and secretly hoping that someone would speak those immortal lines ‘shall I be mother?’ But no-one did.

She looked at the woman. The woman was holding the photo frame of the Happy Couple and gently sobbing.

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