Last Exit

It had began as a squall which became a storm that with speed neither of them expected washed away everything Pouri and Tom had been working for years to preserve.

Drowsy in the close warmth of the passenger seat of the new man’s car she counted the lights on the motorway as they passed overhead.

The house; the books; the small wrought iron bench on the decking; the shelves they had assembled together in comradely irritation on an overcast June day: all had seemed eternal, now dissolved.  

After they first slept together, the new man’s hands were in the wrong place on Pouri’s body, his smell different: not exciting but curious.  Now they were driving to his house by the sea.  She looked at him, someone she had known for less time than the summer Tom worked in Brussels.

“I didn't know how hard we were hanging on,” Tom had said, blinking, “until we stopped.

She thought of something to say then didn’t.  That would make Tom laugh but the new man is not Tom.

‘I wanted a change,’ she thought, ‘but maybe not this change.’

But they were on the motorway now and it was too late turn back.