Fiona Smith's Blog › Love Story: Shortbread's…

Love Story: Shortbread's Light Bite

Published 10 months ago

For today's tale we have a rather unusual story of unrequited love for all those romantics out there!

Love Story by Christy Valintine

Condensation trickled down the inside of the windowpane, forming little pools of water on the painted sill. Through the misted glass, I watched his retreating figure, shoulders hunched against the rain. I leant my forehead against the cool, wet glass. I would do anything for him.

I remember the first day he brought her here. Just a friend, he had said. Her lipstick smile denied his words. It was a warm spring. There was a picnic on the beach. She had a delicately slim figure, burnt easily. She could not swim. He struck out into the surf, catching the waves, showing off. She lay on the old tartan blanket, wrapped in a brightly coloured sarong. I stayed indoors.

The rain was coming down harder now. I could just make out his figure on the beach below the house. The rain distorted his silhouette, fracturing his body into the rivulets running down the windowpane. If I let my attention waver for just one second, I felt sure he’d slip and fall into one of these funnels of water, his miniature self ending up in a tiny, sodden heap on the windowsill. I held him in place with my gaze.

The bright spring days had soon lengthened into an Indian summer. Picnics on the beach became all-weekend affairs. An overnight bag appeared. Lacy underthings carelessly tossed over the end of the big brass bed. His early morning swims replaced by whispered secrets in the bedroom. Slow-moving mountains beneath the great white duvet. She stood on a wasp down on the beach. He brushed the sand tenderly from her foot and plucked out the sting. She sighed at the sight of the narrow path back up to the house. He picked her up and carried her, cradled against his chest.

She arrived one Friday night with a car full of strangers. I remember how my heart had leapt when his smile faltered. She ran to him, her skirt riding up her slim thighs as she reached up to embrace him. He heard how they had all been dying to meet him. How she had known Jack forever, and Becca was her dear, dear friend. Jason she had worked with on the Jimmy Bean campaign. Day and night. Practically joined at the hip! I caught the false note in her voice.

He’d watched as she stretched his carefully planned dinner for two into supper for five. A mangle of overcooked pasta dotted with slivers of smoked salmon, champagne carefully measured out in equal drops. The conversation had gone on into the early hours as they made their way steadily through his stash of supermarket Rioja. He had let her commandeer the brass bed for Becca and Jack. Jason took the sofa bed in the book-strewn sitting room. I took the other tiny sofa. They would bed down in the car.

Moments later she came back inside, shivering. Wrapping herself in the old tartan rug, she curled up along the bottom of Jason’s sofa bed. When I woke, she was stretched out beside him, the tartan rug covering them both. She had avoided discovery that time, her faithlessness masked by a fluster of activity as they were woken by his banging on the kitchen door. Locked out of his own house, joints stiff from the cramped confines of her car. His smile returned as she announced that her friends had to return to London by the early train. They spent the rest of the weekend under the covers of the big brass bed.

She didn’t make it down the next weekend. Or the next. Work commitments, she said. Car trouble. Her mother was ill. He resumed his early morning swims. The days began to draw in. The sea changed from rosy pink to milky grey as he woke each dawn to swim. I watched his heart break with every stroke.

She appeared suddenly through the curtain of rain: a lonely figure standing at the top of the path to the beach. I didn’t recognise her at first. Her slender figure was distorted by the rain pouring down the window. I stood up slowly and stretched. When I turned round she had gone.

He’d left the door ajar. In a few seconds I was at the top of the cliff, looking down at her delicate figure picking its way down the narrow path. A second more and I was by her side, snaking between her legs, my long tail brushing up against her knees.

It was the high heels, they said. Death by misadventure. A tragic accident, everyone agreed.

That winter it was too cold for swimming. Most days he just sat by the fire, working on his new book. A love story, he said. I just purred.

If you enjoyed this story please let the author know!

Share This Blog Post

Recommend this blog post to other social networking services such as Twitter and Facebook.