Consequences

He had imposed a deadline.

Tossing and turning the pros and cons in the scratchy grey dawn she suddenly recalled a conversation in Amsterdam, a conversation from three or four years ago which, due in part to its out-of-placeness, was unusually frank.

And they’d been virtually strangers too, since although Sharon was a fellow student, notorious for her installation of a bedstead to which was attached a row of papier maché penises, of varying dimensions and colours (Title ‘Sizes that mattered’) they’d hardly spoken before.

They’d been sat on stools in the window of a stepped, dusty-wooden floored café near the Rijksmuseum, one used by locals, the food cheap and unpretentious.

Sharon had spoken of her divorce, bitterly, bitingly.

“If I’d know then how hard it would be I’d never have done it, never have left him.”