Straight Through

THROUGH‐AND‐THROUGH
Edward and Grace first encountered each other at a charity gala in London.
Both had lives that overflowed.
Edward: a wife, two daughters, and the reputation for being a solid, trustworthy architect.
Grace: a husband who managed investments, and twelve years of marriage, ticking along like a reliable clock made in Oxford.
It wasnt attraction at first sight.
It was recognition.
As if they were cut from the same volatile cloth, stored on ice for years, waiting for a spark.
When our hands brushed passing the wine glass, I realised everything Id builthouses, plans, my whole lifewas just a house of cards, Edward would say later, sounding as if his words slipped out on a mist.
Passion demands nothing and waits for no one.
It began as text messages in the dead of night and mutated rapidly into a fever.
They met in chain motels along the Ring Road, in parked cars, in deserted workspacesalways under the glow of straining fluorescent lights.
Their infidelity became the air they breathed.
The only language they could speak with their partners was lies.
Edward sat across from his wife at dinner, feeling transparent as steam.
She spoke of their childrens school reports, but he saw only the curve of Graces lips.
Grace stopped sleeping altogether.
She flinched every time her husband called, despising him for his unwavering goodnessfor being so blameless it became another form of accusation.
Their love felt like anaesthesia without the surgery: bliss in the moment, but when it wore off, reality slashed raw and deep.
Secrets always surface, but theirs didnt just emergeit detonated.
Edwards family:
A stray photo on a phone.
His wifes scream, forever etched in his bones.
Children who stopped meeting his gaze.
He left with a single suitcase, traipsing away from the ruins theyd once called fortress.
Graces family:
She confessed herself.
Simply couldnt mime life anymore.
Her husband didnt shout.
He carried her bags to the doorstep and changed the locks before dusk.
Chilly, precise, terminal.
They got what they wantedeach other.
No masks, no deceit.
But the hunger that fuelled them had been all about forbidden doors.
Once those vanished, the tension went with them.
They stood in a rented flat, two souls emptied of status, trust, and the respect of their children and friends.
They loved each other through-and-through. The bullet passed cleanly through their old lives, leaving a wind-tunnel in its wake.
They lingered in their half-empty flat.
Unopened boxes on the floor.
One mug between them on the windowsill, and an ashtraystuffed with cigarette ends.
Rain streaked across the glass, washing the shine from a city that once seemed a stage for their grand drama.
Edward studied Grace.
Without professional makeup and the shine of West End restaurants, she seemed transparent and nearly fragile.
Do you regret it? she asked, not turning.
Her voice was dry as old parchment.
Edward sat, listening for the fridge’s drone.
I dont know what this feeling is, Grace.
Not regret.
More like they amputated both my legs, and said now Im free to run wherever I please.
Has your wife called? She finally faced him, wrapping her arms around her shoulders.
No.
The lawyer rang.
Alice doesnt want me at the youngests birthday.
She said its traumatic for the environment. Imaginethey called my existence a traumatic environment.
Grace smiled bitterly, moved to rest her forehead on Edwards shoulder.
My husband yesterday transferred the remainder of my savings into a separate account.
Called it a redundancy payment for twelve years loyalty. He isnt furious, Edward.
Hes just erased melike crossing out a misprint in a contract.
Is this what we wanted? Edward cradled her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes.
This freedom?
We wanted each other, she whispered.
But we didnt realise us existed only between our real lives.
Now theres nothing but us. And its so thin, Edward.
It barely holds up the walls.
Your voice used to take my breath away, he brushed her cheek lightly.
Now I hear your childrens crying in it.
And when I look at you, I see silence in your empty house.
They sat in silence.
The passion that once scorched everything had dwindled to the dying warmth of spent ashes.
Theyd shot holes through their old lives, and now the cold, indifferent wind whistled through them.
Were not going to survive this, are we? she whispered.
Well have to, Edward answered, his eyes lost in the corridors darkness.
Too high a price paid to admit you cant plant a garden on scorched earth.
A year passed.
Their life wasnt the triumph of love but the drawn-out rehab after a brutal accident.
The passion that once fuelled them was consumed, leaving only dull, grey dust of everydayness.
They still lived together, in that same flat.
But now curtains hung, a rug lay underfoot, and the dinners aroma tried to mask the emptiness.
Edward stood at the mirror, knotting his tie.
Hed gone very grey.
His work at a small firm (his old partners had gently asked him to leave following the scandal) brought money but none of the excitement.
Grace shuffled into the kitchen in her dressing gown.
The femme fatale of the gala was gone.
A quieter presence.
The shadow of her former self.
Late home tonight? she asked, pouring coffee.
Yes, site visit in the suburbs.
AndI promised Id drop the child support off in person.
Alice said I could sit with the youngest in a café.
Half an hour.
Grace paused with the kettle mid-air.
It was a moment they never spoke about but that always hovered between them, an invisible curtain.
Alright, she said simply.
Tell her no, never mind.
When Edward returned, the flat was in darkness, except for the TV, murmuring without sound.
Grace sat on the sofa, gazing out at the citys lights.
How did it go? she asked, her back to him.
Shes grown, Edwards voice faltered.
New hair clips.
She called me dad, but looked at me like a neighbours acquaintance.
Polite.
Detached.
He sank into the chair opposite Grace.
Do you know whats most frightening?
I caught myself wanting to go back.
Not to Alice.
But to the time when I was whole. When I wasnt this man who demolished two homes for
He never finished.
The word you hung jagged in the air, unfair and sharp.
Grace rose slowly, touched his shoulders.
It wasnt a passionate embrace.
More survivors clinging together after disaster.
Were statues of ourselves now, Edward, she murmured.
We cant partif we did, all the hurt, all the betrayal, the lost nameit would mean nothing.
Were compelled to be happy.
Its our life sentence.
Edward covered her hand with his.
Through-and-through, he whispered.
The bullet went right through, but the wound never sealed.
Weve just learnt to walk with it.
They stood in the darkness of their flat, holding tightnot out of deep love, but out of fear that if they let go, theyd crumble to dust, never finding their way back.
Five years passed.
A chance encounter, in the lobby of a new theatreone Edward had once designed long ago, finished by others.
Edward and Grace stood by the window, holding glasses of cheap wine.
They seemed an ordinary, faintly tired, middle-aged couple.
Then, the lift doors slid open.
Out stepped THEM
Alice, Edwards ex-wife.
She radiated not sadness, but a steely confidence.
Beside her walked a solid, composed man, holding her by the elbow as if she was the most precious thing in his world.
James, Graces former husband.
He strode slightly ahead, joking with Edwards youngest daughternow grown into a striking, angular teenager.
Time collapsed, four lives frozen in a single patch of space.
Edward was the first to avert his gaze.
He saw his daughter laughing at Jamess jokes.
The rival, who, it seemed, had become family in Edwards old home.
The impact was silent but devastating.
Grace paled, staring at James.
He looked younger than five years before.
None of the pain remained in his eyesonly oblivion.
The cruelest punishment for a woman who once believed her betrayal had been fate.
They didnt just survive without us, Grace thought, they became better.
Alice spotted them first.
She didnt look away.
She noddeda distant, impersonal nod, reserved for acquaintances whose names barely register.
Not forgiveness.
Something colder: indifference.
Dad? The girl paused, seeing Edward.
Joy flickered, then settled into a polite mask.
Hi.
Hello, sweetheart, Edwards voice cracked.
You youre here?
Yes, James invited us.
Mum wanted to see the premier, she retreated, drawing closer to her mother and James.
Closer to her real family.
James looked at Grace for a couple of seconds.
There was no flicker of recognition for the passion that had once razed their home.
Good evening, he said dryly, touching Alices shoulder.
We should get to our seatscurtains soon.
They passed by.
Alices scentcalm and expensivelingered briefly, then faded, replaced by dust and dressing-room greasepaint.
Edward and Grace remained at the window.
Theyre happy, Grace spoke, her voice lifeless.
Without us.
On our ruins, they built something genuine.
No, Grace, Edward set his glass down, hand shaking.
Were the ones left on the ruins.
They just moved to a new building site.
He looked at his handsthe same hands that drafted fine structures, and with which he demolished the life of the woman beside him.
They understood: their love through-and-through wasnt the start of a new life.
It was only a surgical operation, excising themselves from the lives they once loved.
The patients healed and moved on.
The surgeons lingered over the blood-spattered operating table, wondering what to do with their instruments.