Storm

Her hand gripped the steering wheel with more ferocity than usual as her son whined as usual. 

“Mum-my,” he wailed. “Where are we going no-ow?”

The two syllable ‘now’ set her teeth on edge, it signalled that her little angel was only just warming up. 

“Yeah. Angel. Right!” She muttered under her breath.

“What, Mummy? You speak too quietly.”

“Home.” She gritted her teeth before she added more gently. “Home.”

Her son began to sob loudly in the back seat. Clearly, going home was not what he wanted but with the dark clouds looming in the distance, she wasn’t about to be waylaid by her son just because he was being a pest.

Comic store pleas began to be hiccoughed amongst the noisy klaxon-like drone. These she ignored as she put her foot down harder onto the accelerator. 

Lightning flashed followed a ground shaking thunder strike. 

He stopped his noise. 

“I don’t like storms.” 

“Neither do I,” she muttered as she whizzed through the backstreets trying to avoid the traffic. “At least not anymore.”

She used to love storms. She would sit alone and watch the drama unfold as she sipped on a glass of wine and enjoyed the earth shake underneath her. 

Then there was that one storm when she didn’t sit alone. She didn’t sip on a glass of wine, instead they had one bottle of red wine and then another. After the second bottle the earth shook beneath her for reasons beyond the angry sky.

She glanced in her rear view mirror and looked at the blue eyes staring back at her, just like the blue eyes which had implored her to not worry about the condom all those years ago.

“Sometimes, I really hate storms,” she muttered again as she turned into her driveway.