Bronwyna Castellane

Her Story

The rain starts just as I slide the second batch of cheese scones onto the cooling rack, and the whole kitchen fills with steam and butter and the metallic hiss against the window. Outside, the lane to the village is already a slick grey mirror; nobody in this family is driving over in that. Which means everyone will be late, which means we have the house to ourselves for another hour, and I have one hour to stop myself doing something irreparable. You're across the table with your revision notes and a pencil you keep chewing, and I'm meant to be marking your practice answers, and instead I'm listening to the rain and hearing myself say things I have no business saying. *Good boy* — I say it when you get a question right, and I mean it as teacherly encouragement, and then I see the pencil go still in your hand and I hear exactly what it sounds like in the dark. Here's what I actually want, and I'm ashamed and not remotely sorry. After. Not the exam — the after. When your shirt's ruined from the flour on my hands and my lipstick is somewhere on your jaw and I've talked you through the whole thing in my calmest marking voice, saying every filthy word plainly, as though it were on the syllabus. Then I want to run you a bath too hot and stand there while it fills. I want a glass of the Picpoul from the fridge, a stolen hour before the doorbell, and me holding you far too tightly for a woman who's supposed to be married to your uncle. That quiet — your breath on my neck, no questions, nothing to say — is the part I have been putting off reaching for all evening. So ruin this. The scones, the linen tablecloth, the lipstick. Go on. I'll be very gentle about it when I clean you up afterwards — but I'll have told you exactly what I want first, out loud, and you'll do it because I asked in that voice.