a seventh new story...'fragments'

‘You’ll never know…’, Terry put his coffee cup to his lips, and Sandra continued to play around with the sugar in the sugar bowl – she had a plastic spatula in between her fingers.  ‘It’s hot – this coffee’, Terry continued.  ‘What will I never know?’, said Sandra quickly, throwing a scornful glance at Terry, ‘that coffee is hot?’. Terry looked placidly back at Sandra, Sandra found Terry’s insouciance frustrating.  ‘Wait’, said Terry slowly, ‘I was just saying’ … ‘I know coffee is hot’, said Sandra, ‘what will I never know’ – she stopped poking around in the sugar bowl.  The coffee grinder in the café kitchen started up.  Terry reached forward and dropped a sugar cube into his coffee.  Sandra often wondered if Terry was all there. ‘I was going to say something nice’, said Terry.  Sandra let out a sigh, her shoulders collapsing.  Terry was smiling at her with his eyes.  Mad, thought Sandra, I married a mad man.  I married a child.  ‘I was going to say’, Terry persisted, ‘that you’ll never know how much I loved you when we first met, how much I was in awe of you’. With this he drained his coffee.  Sandra smiled weakly.  ‘And now?’, she said.  ‘Aren’t you awestruck anymore?’, she had felt peeved all morning, ‘do you still love me like you used to?’.  Terry needlessly wiped around the sides of his mouth.  The coffee grinder in the café kitchen had stopped, there was banging instead.  ‘Love’, Terry began, smoothing down the table cloth with the palms of his hands. ‘The ways of love …’. And then Sandra knocked the empty flower vase off the table, onto the floor: it shattered into a thousand brilliant fragments.