The Last Time

She hummed as she cleared away dishes and cups and glasses from the table. He started to sing along, the wrong words, and she changed her tune to accommodate him.

He sat at the head of the kitchen table, watching her float about the room, starting on the washing up. Their golden-haired daughter sat close to him, apparently enraptured by her parents. She sat there and looked at him, the man who had helped bring her into being, and nobody could say what it was she was thinking, but the look on her face was love.

She paused in her labours to look at them, her husband, her child, and she absentmindedly twisted the wedding ring round on her finger until she had moved it up past the knuckle and off.

She walked over to her daughter, crouched down, and held out the ring.

"Will you keep this safe for mum, sweetheart, while she does the washing up?" she said.

Her daughter nodded solemnly, taking the ring with her five-year-old fingers and wrapping it inside her tiny fist.

She stood up and he was smiling at her. She smiled back and thought how wonderful it had been, knowing him.

"I'm becoming a little obsessed with your bottom lip," he said. "I have this strange desire to kiss it."

She kissed the top of her daughter's curly head. "Your daddy's a funny man," she told her, and ran her fingers through the child's golden curls.

"Is there a cure, do you think?" he asked, as she went to the sink and plunged her hands into the hot, sudsy water.

"A cure for what?" she answered, out through the kitchen window, out away from this house and into the world outside.

"A cure for obsession with someone's bottom lip," he said.

"I don't think so," she replied, taking a plate from the water, washing it clean, then rinsing it. "I think it's probably hopeless to try."

"Hopeless? You mean there's nothing that can be done?" he said.

She washed and rinsed another plate.

"I think the best thing for you to do is to not look at the lip in question," she said.

"I can't see it now," he replied, "but I'm afraid I can still picture it."

The third plate from lunch was washed and rinsed, and the three plates sat together, stacked on the dish drainer, gleaming under the fluorescent light. The cups and glasses joined them, then the cutlery. She started to put the pans into the water. Her hands were scorched pink and she looked at her wedding finger, the way it was slightly waisted where the ring usually sat.

She looked over her shoulder at her daughter.

"Are you keeping mummy's ring safe?" she said.

The child nodded and showed her the fist, which would be hot and sweaty by now, her ring tightly clenched within it. Her daughter's other hand was on the table, her fingers tapping close to her father's arm, but not touching it. Her tongue was pushed firmly into her left cheek.

"You're a good girl," she told her daughter, and turned her face back to the window.

"Do you want me to dry up? Make a bit of space?" he asked.

"If you come over here, you'll only look at the lip again, and then where will we be?" she said.

"True," he said, "you caught me. I only wanted to see your bottom lip again. To check if it's the same as I remember it."

"It is," she said. "There's really no need to check."

She rinsed the last of the pans clear of suds and balanced it on the drainer.

"There," she said. "Done."

She dried her hands and turned around. Her daughter's right hand was still tapping its fingers next to her father's arm. Her tongue had left its refuge in her cheek, and she was examining the wedding ring as though it were rare treasure.

"Time to give mummy her ring back," he said, not looking at the child.

The girl looked up at her.

"Oh, let her look after it a little longer," she said to him. She didn't want to put it back on just yet. She was allowing her finger to enjoy its nakedness.

He stood up and came over to where she was standing, and took her in his arms. He kissed her on the bottom lip, and she let him.

"O fabulous bottom lip," he sighed, "I am so besotted with you."

They stood there together. Her arms had gone up automatically to return his embrace, and they maintained the pose beyond his kiss. There was a sound like a coin being spun on a wooden surface, and their curly blonde daughter wriggled her way into the centre of the embrace, wrapping her arms around her mother's legs. So now they both had hold of her, and now she knew.

The ring sat on the kitchen table, and she knew.

This was the last time that this would happen.

© J R Hargreaves 2006