Prima’s short story competition
Outside, as they talk, ribbons of red and tangerine burn across the darkening summer sky, closer and closer to the shimmering horizon, and a deep purple slowly takes their place; a deep purple that will soon be dotted with stars.
Here, in the changing room, strip lights cast unforgiving shadows across the women’s faces. But not Luke’s. His skin is time-defyingly smooth, thanks to his regular Botox treatments. If they allow themselves, Tess and Davina can almost imagine it’s the old Luke in front of them; that the last decade hasn’t passed.
‘I think we’re done talking,’ Tess says, jangling the bundle of keys in her hand. ‘Let’s get this place locked up. We’re going to need all the sleep we can get.’
‘Sleep? You think you’ll be able to sleep tonight?’ Luke asks.
‘Probably not,’ Tess says. ‘But we’ve had over a decade to think about what we’d do when the time came, and…’
‘That’s much longer than we thought we’d have,’ Davina interrupts, to stop the argument she can feel is brewing.
Luke rubs his forehead wearily.
‘You only ever wanted to help,’ Davina tells him, reaching for his arm. ‘People will understand. We’d exhausted all of the other routes available to us at the time, so I was desperate and…’
‘We both were,’ Tess says quietly, sitting down on the wooden bench next to her wife and dropping the keys on to the tiled floor. ‘You were our only hope.’
A silence hangs between them – the kind of silence that is actually very loud. Luke is the one to break it.
‘I didn’t have to do it though, did I? You didn’t force me.’ He rubs at the skin under his eyes, where patches the colour of blackberries have bloomed over the last week, since Tess’s phone call brought them all back here. ‘And I could have walked away afterwards…’
‘You did, technically,’ Davina smiles. ‘You got the tr
