Remembering the softness of his skin, Elizabeth held the single blue carnation in her hands. She gazed at its delicate petals before she inserted that the relevant documents had been received. It wasn’t lying really.
‘Could you come in please?’ Simon, her manager, pulled her out of her musings and into the heat of the afternoon.
‘Yes Mr Wilkins.’ Elizabeth started to perspire.
‘I need you to arrange the interviews for later on this month. I’ve just sent over the files.’
‘Certainly, sir, I will look in your diary.’
The file opened her thoughts whirled around to Thomas. They spent so few hours together. He was either busy with work or had something to attend to at home. She hadn’t meant to pry, but Thomas’s address just popped out from the page. Expecting to find he was single, as he had claimed, she soon found out different.
He was married.
Intending to send a text, she seized her mobile from her bag, but as she groped for the right keys, couldn’t even type. Deciding to wait till she met him face to face, Elizabeth replaced the phone in her bag. It was difficult to concentrate. She wanted to hurl her computer across the room. Instead she arranged the interviews, making sure Thomas was last on the list to be seen.
She was still agitated when he knocked on her door at seven that evening, with a big grin and a bottle of red wine.
‘Everything okay?’ Thomas asked, as Elizabeth threw his coat on the rack.
‘We need to talk,’ Elizabeth said.
Thomas followed her inside. ‘What’s this all about Elizabeth? Have I done anything wrong?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were married Thomas?’ Elizabeth pushed him forwards until he was backed into the door.
About to move towards her, Thomas lost the use of his legs. Collapsed to the floor. Flowers and wine spread at his feet. A stray piece of carpet around his fingers, Thomas wound it until the thread snapped in his hands.
