Flash Fiction 3rd Place: Because you believed him when he promised to leave his wife by Abigail Williams

Just not yet, not yet, because money, and children, of course the children but soon, because you are lobsters, the pair of you, wouldn’t you say? And lobsters are bound to each other for life.

So when Mark at work asks you to come for a drink – and even though you are tempted because he has that smile and wouldn’t it be nice to sit in a pub without checking there’s no-one who knows you, or going home alone again because it turns out one of the children had a fever or there was a row? – your faithful mouth says, Ah shame, I’m busy. Because you are a lobster and you have made a promise.

And so you don’t go for a drink, and you don’t discover yours and Mark’s shared love of Jimmy Stewart films, or tell him about the time you saw a ghost and he doesn’t say, Shut up, I’ve seen a ghost, and you don’t feel the dry warmth of his palm against yours when he walks you home. You don’t share moules-frites and suck each other’s salt slick fingers or eat tiramisu-with-two-spoons or watch Marilyn Monroe liking it hot in the park as you drink prosecco and lean into his shoulder. You don’t take that disastrous mini-break to Tenby in the B&B with the dirty en-suite, or have the argument about his ex-girlfriend, or the riotous make-up sex in the dirty en-suite shower. You don’t discover his fear of tortoises and he doesn’t learn you had your stomach pumped when you were sixteen years old. And you never feel that ponderous weight in your belly or lie together in the bath watching as five tiny toes extrude through your blue-lined skin and you don’t hear him promise he’ll never leave, never, as you grip his hand and your sweat-limp hair clings to your face and you swear blue enough to strip paint. And you don’t take him home for Christmas and listen as he and your dad discuss all the routes between their house and yours and your mum doesn’t give you a shoe box stuffed with hand-knitted baby clothes and tell you you’re doing a grand job. Just grand. And you don’t hold him when his dad receives his diagnosis or make flower arrangements for his sister’s wedding and you don’t comment on each other’s grey hairs over your anniversary tiramisu and you don’t discuss universities with the daughter who doesn’t exist and you don’t cling to each other with that desperate need when you realise the invisible halfway mark of life is a distant memory and he doesn’t say he wouldn’t have spent it with anyone else. You don’t mourn him when a heart attack takes him far too early at only sixty-eight and you don’t say it was enough. Enough to love and be loved. You say, Shame, I’m busy, because you are a lobster and he promised to leave his wife.