MORNING SERIAL

“JUST to get out of the house,” stated her mother.

‘Of course not.’ Issie was beginning to run out of steam. Owen eyed the sitting-room door. Wolfi sidled his legs round in front of his chair, as if preparing to bolt, should the opportunity present itself. ‘No. I just feel SO fat.’

‘Well, you are fat!’ stated Renate, and the light of God appeared in her eye. ‘You’ve always been heavily built, there’s no help for it, Isolde, that’s just how it is.’

‘Charming,’ said Issie. ‘Thanks a million.’ Suddenly she felt all blubber, beached like a whale in the easy chair. Yet at the same time, she thought: Well, whatever, Wolfi loves me as I am. She remembered in the quick of her the intimacy that was still so novel and young between them, and her body secretly glimmered with his touch. Deep touch, as they learned to know each other in a way the pastor had always admonished. She knew so much more about sensuality now. Flashed Wolfi a sudden radiant smile, which came and went on her lips as she remembered details of their loving.

Wolfi grinned back. Their eyes maintained a conspiratorial conversation across the lounge, while Owen remonstrated, hurt on Issie’s behalf, ‘Oh no, she’s never fat, dear. Fair dos. She is beautifully made.’

‘Yes,’ said Wolfi in German. ‘That’s right. Your daughter is totally beautiful. In every sense of the word.’

Renate stared, flinching. Her heart hammered up into her throat. For this stranger to speak German at her hearth seemed not only a solecism but a wilful insult. If she could have spat out her native language she would have done so. And now this foreigner came and disputed rights and wrongs in her own home in that soiled tongue. She looked away from the three faces under the dingy festoons with which Owen had painstakingly decorated the sitting room, precisely as he did every year.

> The Element of Water by Stevie Davies is published by Parthian in the Library of Wales series www.parthianbooks.com

CONTINUES TOMORROW