Flash Fiction 2nd Place: It’s All So Unexpected by Laura Besley
I’m doing fifty-two on a forty mile per hour road when I see a fox dart out from the verge. I slam my palm on the horn and my foot on the brake. Next to me, Kaley screams, the contents of her backpack spilling into the footwell. The fox freezes, stares, her eyes top-hat black. Only when I’ve stopped the car, does she saunter off and I imagine her shaking her head at me.
Kaley doesn’t tell me I was speeding or mention the near-emergency. Instead, one by one she puts the items back into the old blue rucksack we used for family camping trips. Then she asks why her daddy has moved out. ‘I don’t know, button,’ I say, which is not too far from the truth. The second time she asks, I ignore her, lips pursed. The third time, I say, ‘I don’t fucking know, okay?’
She sighs, unzips the front pocket of the bag and pulls out a notebook. Silence booming between us, she writes me an IOU for the swear jar. Back in the autumn, when the trees were shedding leaves like rotten confetti, I said to my sister, ‘That’s the only decent thing to come out of this whole fucking mess: I’ve got enough fifty pence pieces to feed the meter.’ The first time I asked Kaley to substitute a coin for a slip of paper, it was fun. And this way she was practising her handwriting, so I could tell myself I was being a good mother.
Now, I drive past rows of Sunday-best hedges lining the aisles of straight steep country lanes. Spring buds bulge on branches, like the balls of debt stuffed into the jar on the kitchen windowsill. Wedding announcements peel out of the radio. Kaley reaches down to turn it off, but I say, ‘No. Don’t.’
When I park outside her daddy’s new house, which is actually her daddy’s new girlfriend’s house, he opens the door before I’ve turned off the engine.
‘I don’t like her,’ Kaley says. ‘She’s so…’ She wrinkles her nose as if someone has farted during a ceremony. ‘Sweet.’
I laugh and laugh, loud as a brass bell. Kaley laughs too, her pitch higher, but chiming in with mine. In that moment, I realise I was never what Jack wanted.
From his new girlfriend’s doorstep, Jack mouths, ‘You girls okay?’
I nod, then tuck a wayward curl behind Kaley’s ear. ‘We’re more than okay, aren’t we, button? We’re fucking A-okay.’
‘We sure are.’ She reaches for the door handle. ‘And you can have that one for free.’
On the way home, I sing along to Sunday love songs, checking the dashboard over and over to make sure I stick to the speed limit. When I see the fox again, I slow to a crawl. I smile. She glares at me, then blinks once, slowly, and I swear she smiles back before slinking away into the wide wild expanse of land she calls home.
