Short Stories by Francesca Astraea

‘Reg, dear, would you mind doing the washing up?’ Clarissa asked her husband as he slouched on the sofa. The TV was showing something sport-related, and the volume was one notch higher than Clarissa found comfortable.

‘Hm?’

‘The washing up,’ Clarissa repeated. ‘It’s just that Robbie and Hannah will be here soon.’ In fact, they would be here in precisely one hundred and forty minutes, allowing for traffic. Which meant that Clarissa had one hundred and forty minutes to finish making dessert, chop the vegetables, adjust the leg of lamb that had been simmering in the oven for hours already, have a shower and do her hair. And do the washing up. ‘I’ve done three lots already, and we’re going to need the counter space.’ What they really needed was a dishwasher and a kitchen that wasn’t the size of a small prison cell, but as Reg did not personally cook he couldn’t understand why his wife’s deepest desire was to renovate.

‘I’ll do it in a minute.’

Clarissa knew that a minute in Reg Land was a little longer than a minute in reality, but it was Clarissa who pushed for this one last dinner party with their son and daughter-in-law before their first grandchild arrived, so she took a deep breath and went to attack some carrots.

Their guests were actually ten minutes late (‘our cabbie was awful, Mum, but I wanted to have a drink,’) but Reg was not ready to greet them. His carefully constructed beauty routine – a shower, shave and possibly a hair wash – took five minutes during the week and four times as long whenever they entertained. Interestingly, the finished results were the same.

‘Clarissa,’ Hannah greeted her mother-in-law with a bottle of prosecco and a bouquet of seasonal flowers. ‘Your house looks lovely. Have you done it up?’

‘Of course not!’ The hallway wallpaper had not been updated since before Reg and Clarissa bought the house in 1990. ‘It’s amazing what some accessories can do, though, isn’t it?’ The large mirror by the front door, for example, did an excellent job of hiding the wallpaper.

‘Reg still isn’t letting you redecorate?’ Hannah raised an eyebrow. With her winged eyeliner, warm South Asian complexion and gold nose ring, she managed to make being eight months pregnant look quite comfortable. Sometimes Clarissa thought she liked Hannah more than she liked Robbie – Hannah was funny and headstrong and with her around, there was no chance Rob would inherit his father’s reluctance to leave the sofa.

‘Of course he isn’t,’ Clarissa smiled. ‘Reg doesn’t want to pay for a decorator, but he also can’t be bothered to do it himself. Don’t let your husband get into such bad habits.’

‘Bad habits as in not decorating for thirty years or bad habits as in not letting you decorate for thirty years?’ Hannah’s gaze was a little too knowing.

‘Drinks, everyone?’ Clarissa called to their guests. ‘The first course will be about twenty minutes.’

‘Mum, do you want a hand with the washing up?’ Rob asked. ‘Not like you to leave it, even while you’re cooking for the five thousand.’

‘Oh!’ Clarissa glanced at Reg, who was already animatedly talking football with Robbie. Rob was doing a solid job of pretending to look interested. From this angle, Clarissa realised, they looked almost identical. How disconcerting. Robbie was far more outgoing. ‘Don’t worry, dear, I’ll do it later.’ Clarissa took a deep breath. ‘Now, have you decided on any names yet?’

Five hours later, the evening was over. The family had made appropriate food-appreciating noises at every turn, Hannah’s waters had not broken – something that had worried Clarissa greatly – and a prosecco bottle sat next to the recycling bin. Clarissa was just about done with washing all the dishes.

Clarissa pulled the sink’s plug and stepped back to admire her work. They hadn’t quite finished the second prosecco and Clarissa thought she might pour another glass.

‘Look, Reg, not a piece of crockery missing.’ Unable to keep pride from her voice, Clarissa rewarded herself with a dance. ‘Even that coffee mug with Christmas holly… I thought I was going to run out of washing up liquid.’ Clarissa trailed off. She really should replace her beloved Fairy Liquid with a home brand. Much cheaper. Still, it did the job – plates positively glistened; knives shone.

Even the one she’d used to stab Reg the final time he suggested he went to bed and left her to the washing up.

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Thank you to Liz for the critique.

© Francesca Astraea 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Francesca Astraea and francescaswords.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.