When No One was Looking

Peter and Petula walked down the street, arms linked for warmth. Neither spoke, though occasionally Peter’s lower lip would move as if a thought were trying to make itself heard. Each time, however, it was silenced.


At last they arrived at Petula’s house and, disengaging her arm, she turned with a smile to her companion.

“Thank you for the lovely evening, Peter.”

Her eyelids drooped, but not so much as to prevent her from carefully watching his face, his expression. She pouted her lips, very slightly.

“It was a pleasure. Bye Pet,” said Peter.

He smiled and turned to leave. Only then did he allow the melancholy of his heart to spill over his countenance.


With a murmured “bye,” Petula stepped inside, a dainty smile frozen upon her face. It remained while she greeted her parents and hurried upstairs. It stayed as she passed her sister practising aikido in the living room. It vanished the moment she was alone and no one was looking. In the privacy of her room, she burst into silent sobbing. Oh Peter! She adored him; for him she would do anything. He possessed those qualities that she most desired of a man – honesty and caring. He was a gentleman, almost to the point of fault and no false flatterer. He treated everyone with kindness and respect and girls as persons rather than spoils of the hunt. But he did not love her; she felt it with greater certainty every day.


On the floor lay a copy of Cosmopolitan, its cover brashly proclaiming ‘10 Sure Ways to Seduce a Man.’ She’d tried all of them and failed to elicit so much as a kiss. If anything, he had grown more distant. Not that she wanted to get laid, but desire, she felt, was half way to love. Their conversations had become barren and monotonous. It exasperated her, because she knew he was intelligent and could talk if it came to it – she had witnessed him engaged in heated discussions with other boys and even girls, but when he was with her, he seemed to shut up like a clam. He had no initiative, he made no move and the harder she tried, the more he seemed to resent it. If only they had some common ground, something they could share, something that would bring them together.


Peter trudged down the street. He must tell her soon that there was nothing between them. He disliked the idea of preventing her from finding happiness with another. Chance had brought them together, but it could not last. Once he had hoped something might come of it, but instead she had become more irksome. She, being the more dominant spirit, had got into the way of leading things, deciding what they would do and how they would do it. He liked neither pushing, nor being pushed. They had so little in common, so little to say to one another; so he thought.


Stepping between two parked lorries, he made to cross the road. No one was looking and not even the driver of the Opel Vectra saw him until it was too late. The screech of tyres, the cry and the thud drew everyone’s attention. Petula, looking from her window, cried out and fainted.

* * *

A boy with crutches and a girl walked slowly out of the hospital. The porter, who knew the girl by sight, smiled as he watched her help the boy manage the edge of the pavement and cross the road. They walked on until they reached the park with its pristine blanket of untouched snow. Stopping for a moment, the boy used a crutch to draw something. He turned towards the girl and her face lit up with wordless joy. They kissed love’s first kiss as the sun sparkled off two snowy P’s surrounded by a thawing heart.