Since some of you liked the other 500 word story I wrote for a local radio competition I suppose I may as well post the second one (the competition allowed 2 entries per person). This isn't a tear jerker but may raise a wry smile.

Love in the slow lane

John self-consciously fingered the red carnation in the buttonhole of his sports jacket. He wasn’t used to it, not sports jackets nor buttonholes nor the flowers that go in them. He searched the tables in the Motorway café. Then he saw her sitting alone reading The Spectator, and walked nervously over.

“Hello, are you waiting for me?”

The blonde head turned, and they looked at each other in surprise. “John, what are you doing here?”

Seeing his wife took John aback. “Err … I don’t know really. Just fancied a cup of tea?”

Mary noticed the carnation, and the unusually smart appearance of her husband of twenty years. Always quicker on the uptake than her spouse, she was the first to suspect. In any case, their marriage had been shaky for years. “You’re here to meet someone. Who is she?”

John, already on the back foot, found it difficult to dissemble. “Someone I met on line.” Then he recovered enough to ask “Why are you?”

Mary smiled ruefully. “The same. He’s named John too.”

“Had he to wear a red carnation? I thought her name was just a coincidence. She’s called Mary, too. Is it possible …?”

In a moment they were sitting together and laughing for the first time in years. There’d been no arguments, no fights. They’d simply drifted apart in their deliberately childless marriage, both in well paid, time consuming jobs that made them too busy, too tired, too often.

John looked round the café distastefully. “I’d … we’d planned on meeting here and going on somewhere more … well, more salubrious. To get to know each other a little. Would you like to do that? We haven’t done anything like that for years.”

Mary smiled again. “We haven’t, have we? You’re right; always too busy; always too many projects. Yes, let’s.”

They walked out, hand in hand for the first time in ages. When they reached the lobby, Mary squeezed his hand. “Wait a minute. I’ll just go and powder my nose.” And disappeared into the Ladies.

To John, it felt like old times. He’d spent many happy minutes hanging around outside ladies’ toilets. He was idly reading the posters when a tentative voice said “John? Sorry I’m late, I overshot the slip-road and had to turn at the next junction.”

He spun round. Standing before him, smiling shyly, was a small blonde woman wearing a light coloured coat and carrying a copy of The Spectator.

“Mary?” he said.

“I’m here, John, are you ready?” His wife emerged from the toilets and stared at her husband and the blonde with The Spectator — especially The Spectator. The trio stood in silence, confused and tongue tied, each looking from one to the other.

None of them noticed a tall man enter the lobby. His dark suit had just one splash of colour, a red carnation. He studied the tableau for a moment before slowly removing the flower, turning and walking back out into the night.