Free writing session #2

Prompt #1

'A chorus of disapproval' (20 mins)

When I announced my wedding plans to my mother, I wasn't exactly met with a chorus of disapproval (how could I be, she is only one woman) but her expression made it extremely clear what the thought-train running through her head was.

Jeff was 10 years my senior, a pub landlord who drank almost as much as he made and didn't really seem to be  especially keen on me, truth be told, so it wasn't like I didn't know where this was coming from.

It wasn't even like my mother had made a 'shock-horror!' face or curled a lip in disgust or scrunched up her eyes in distaste. To anyone else, it was probably imperceptible but I saw the tiniest shift in her eyes and that said it all.

I'd been with Jeff for six years on and off and finally decided enough was enough and I couldn't wait any more. So one night after three bottles of pinot grigio, a chewy rump steak and the scraping from an old tub of vanilla ice-cream, I got down on one knee and slurred out "Are we gonna get married or what?".

Jeff laughed, belched softly, ran a hand over his ginger and white stubble and said "Yeah, why not?".

We celebrated with a bottle of rancid, piss-yellow chardonny that and been sitting on the top shelf of the fridge since I'd used a third of it to make a disastrous risotto a couple of weeks before.

We finished with a nightcap of cherry brandy froma dusty bottle in the wine rack and I tried not to think about the full bar downstairs, the fridges of champagne and processo, even the house wine (which wasn't bad) which Jeff would never let us touch once we were upstairs.

"How are you going to pay for it?" Mum asked. "I can't give you anything towards it, you know that."

"Oh Mum, don't get into all that yet. We haven't thought about every single detail. We'll do it somewhere cheap and we'll have the reception at the pub!" I looked out the window and tried to hold my temper, nostrils flaring. "You can never just be fucking happy for me, can you?" I murmured, temper gone and teeth slightly gritted.

"Don't start Lisa." Mum said, pointing an index finger at me. "If you want to get married, fine. If you want to marry Jeff, well that can't be helped. I'm your mum and I'll do what I can but I can't foot the bill and I can't pretend Jeff's the bloke I imagined you marrying one day."

I flicked at the beer mat at the edge of the table and breathed in, trying not to release it too fast or too loudly.

"Well neither did I mum, but here we are. I'm 39, I've been with him six years, we get on alright and it's the next step, isn't it? Everyone else is fucking married and I'm fucking sick of feeling like the odd one out, alright?"

"You're too like your bloody father, that's your problem." Mum said, shaking her head, her jaw set and sticking forward. "What do you think you'll wear, anyway?"

Prompt #2

A photo of a person being helped by a nurse in white, wearing a white vest and with bandages over their eyes.

"Well not white - it reminds Jeff of all that time he spent in the hospital after the accident - the nurses uniforms and the curtains and that." I said, relieved the conversation had moved on.

When he was 19 Jeff had a car accident. The Mini Mayfair he had bought off a mate was unreliable at the best of times, but one night he'd come off a country road going too fast round a bend and gone down into a ditch.

The engine had started to smoke - he always spoke about the itching, burning of the smoke in his eyes - and his leg had been trapped underneath the steering wheel column.

He'd managed to push the wheel hard enough for long enough just to squeeze his leg out, open the door and crawl out and away, just before the engine had blown up.

'It was like a fucking film" Jeff always said "But I weren't no fucking Arnie or fucking Bond, dragging myself away with my gammy leg, crying like a baby, and shitting myself I was gonna be blown up!"

"Not white then, how about cream?" Mum asked, jolting me back into the moment.

"I dunno yet Mum, can't you just say 'Cheers' or 'Congratulations' or something?"

"Cheers" she said curtly and held out her wine glass.

She'll be texting Anne, Beverly and Sue as soon as she gets home, I thought, clinking my glass with hers. And that's when there'll be the chorus of disapproval.

We left about 10 minutes later. There wasn't a lot else to say. Plus Jeff wouldn't be happy that I'd been drinking in the Three Horseshoes "when you could just as easily be fucking drinking here!".

It was a short walk back - Mum hadn't offered me a lift of course - and as I ot towards the side entrance through the car park, I felt a lurch of anxiety.

Jim, John and James - the self-christened "Three Muskeeters" would be perched at the bar, identical polo shirts, crew cuts and beer guts. Jeff would be in his element, tea towel slung over his shoulder, telling some crap joke.

Maggie, the only female regular, would be at the other end of the bar, permed hair all over the place from there she kept drunkenly patting it, perfectly manicured nails tapping the outside of her wine glass, eyeliner slightly smudged.

The mundaity of the whole sorry situation suddenly hit me in the gut and It felt like I was watching some other poor sod who was about to sign her life away to a shit man, in a shit pub, in a shit town.