'Strand' by Kik Lodge

Dad’s at the church already so Mum’s driving.

Her gloves, silky black today, grip the wheel tight and a strand of her hair is loose.

Her black shoes click the pedals out-of-sync; she brakes at invisible bumps, accelerates when the lights go red, and I try not to breathe.

Mother’s last words to me were “in you get” and that was back at home.

She’d better say “out you get” when we arrive at the church to join the hunch of black because that’ll mean she still sees me.

She’d better take my hand and not let go, like she’d better stop staring at the bird feeder out back and pouring too much milk in my cornflakes and ironing Ted’s clothes and shouting at me when I say but he doesn’t need them anymore! And I’d better stop starting to hate him and remember that I loved him too, but I can feel a scream growing inside me and I want to grab mum’s handbag and smash the passenger window, I want to tell her a strand of her hair is loose and that she’s different now and I don’t like it, and that her foot should be on the brake and not the accelerator because there’s a man with a red mac crossing the road and maybe if we were all ripped apart and dead it would be better, but then her feet remember before her mind manages, and she brakes and she swerves and we bump onto the grass verge and we’ve thumped to a stop and she’s taken my hand and kissed it and kissed it and she’s drawn a heart on my palm with her forefinger like she used to do with Ted, but it’s my palm and they’re my eyes she’s looking into.

 

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Kik Lodge writes short fiction from her flat in Lyon, France, or inside her caravan that never moves. Erratic tweets @KikLodge