Jilted

A short story with a twist

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Rosy’s Ramblings.

As a writer, I love exploring ways to surprise my readers. When I read a novel or short story, I dislike it when I can predict the ending. To me, it means the author hasn’t put in enough effort. Hopefully, my writing is both enjoyable and unpredictable.

This is a short story I wrote last year, but having re-read it, I thought it needed some slight tweaking. Hopefully, it’s tighter and flows better. Let me know if you enjoy it. Thanks for reading and for being here.

Lesley sat at the bar, something she would never normally do. But today wasn’t a normal day. Her husband of thirty-one years had just told her that he was leaving her. For a younger model, no doubt, she thought cynically, ordering another large glass of dry white wine. It wasn’t even good wine, despite it costing nearly nine quid a glass. Christ, she could buy a whole bottle for that. What was she thinking? She wasn’t. To hell with everything. So what if she had just blown nearly thirty quid on a few glasses of wine? In the whole scheme of things, it was nothing. Her life had effectively come to an end. The life that she had shared with her childhood sweetheart had just ended as suddenly as a car crashing into a brick wall. She was in the wreckage and had to deal with the fallout because he had gone tripping into the light fandango with his new lover. He told her he had ‘met someone’ as though he was telling her about changing his car.

Lesley ordered another glass of wine and carried it over to one of the leather couches positioned to best take in the stunning estuary view beyond the 8th green. As she sat down and settled her glass on the shabby chic table in front of her, she leaned back and took in the vista through the glass-walled bar of the plush golf club. All sorts of thoughts were ricocheting around in her head. What’s going to happen to their beautiful home on the hill with the fantastic view over the Kingsbridge estuary? She was buggered if she was going to move out. Should she change the locks in case Brian changed his mind? Stop that bastard from ever entering their beautiful home ever again. And what about the kids? Who was going to tell them? How would they take the news that their father had dumped her for a younger model? And why hadn’t she seen it coming? So many thoughts were tripping across her mind, colliding and bumping into each other. So much so that she felt slightly disorientated. But that could be down to all the wine, she thought.

‘Is anybody sitting here?’ an older guy asked, smiling down at her. He was dressed in some fancy golfing gear and was holding a pint of Guinness. He looked harmless enough.

‘No,’ she replied dismissively, wishing he would sit anywhere else in the bar but at her table. No sooner had he settled into one of the fancy upholstered chairs opposite her, another bloke dressed in similar gear plonked himself down next to him. They began analysing their round, dissecting their round, hole by hole.

‘That was a brilliant chip onto the 9th’, one said to the other enviously.

‘Yes, even though I say so myself. But your tee shot on the eleventh was phenomenal.’

Brian had bought her a set of golf clubs way back. They were still gathering dust in their triple garage. She never had time to learn and then play. She was always busy with the kids. Not like Brian. He spent half his life down here at the Golf Club. Even now that the kids were grown and had flown the nest, she had her own clique of friends and wasn’t interested in taking up the sport. Besides, Brian had actively been trying to dissuade her lately, complaining about a recent hike in the fees. He needn’t have worried. She wasn’t interested.

She took out her phone and sent a text to her friend, Brenda. Suddenly, she was feeling very tearful, and the enormity of what Brian had just told her hit her like a punch to the gut. She wanted to tell the two golfers to shut the fuck up but of course, she didn’t. If she did, she would be taking her frustration out on them when she should be taking it out on her soon-to-be ex-husband. How could she not have known that he was seeing somebody else? She hadn’t found any stray lipstick on his shirt collar, nor caught a whiff of an unfamiliar perfume. He must have covered his tracks well. And why hadn’t he talked to her? Told her that things weren’t great. She thought things were okay between them. Admittedly, sex had dwindled to once in a blue moon, but she had put that down to their age. People who have been married forever don’t keep having good sex, do they? Emboldened by the wine, she thought about asking the two men sitting opposite her, but then realised that it probably wasn’t a good idea, even in her half inebriated state.

Her phone pinged; Brenda was on her way. Draining her glass, she thought she would make her way downstairs to the fancy foyer to save Brenda from coming up to find her. The bar was filling up fast as the glorious summer evening lured couples out for a drink and a romantic meal on the terrace. God, she and Brian had eaten here so many times since it first opened back in the Nineties. Family gatherings, romantic meals, girlie lunches. It was one of their regular and favourite haunts, and it was still as good now as it had been back then.

As she pulled out a compact mirror from her handbag to check her appearance, she couldn’t help feeling hurt that Brian didn’t find her attractive anymore. She knew that she still had ‘it’ because the men opposite had been surreptitiously sneaking looks at her shapely legs, which were still beautifully tanned from her and Brian’s recent holiday to the Caribbean. And then she overheard one of them saying, ‘Did you hear about the golf pro?’

‘No, what’s happened?’ the other one replied, leaning forward in his chair, anticipating something juicy was about to be imparted.

‘He’s only run off with a bloke. Brian, his name is. Lives in that flashy house on the hill. I didn’t see that one coming, did you?’ And with that, the two men roared with laughter.

She felt as though she couldn’t breathe. Her legs went weak, and she thought she was going to vomit. She shot up from her seat and made her way quickly to the exit, unsure whether she would make it to the Ladies room before she threw up.

Have a great week,