The Stranglers Honeymoon

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‘In the next life I want to be an olive tree.’

She gestured vaguely towards the hills where dusk was falling fast.

‘It can live for several hundred years, according to what I’ve read. That sounds pretty reassuring, don’t you think?’

Afterwards, he would occasionally recall that these were her last words. That comment about olive trees and reassurance. It was remarkable. As if she was taking something big and sublime with her to the other side. An inspiration, a trace of some kind of insight that she didn’t really possess.

At the same time, of course, it seemed to him a little odd that she should make such a general — and actually rather meaningless — comment, immediately after those terrible words that had sealed her fate so definitively. Which ended her life and gave their relationship its final destiny.

I love somebody else.

Needless to say, it never occurred to her that things would develop the way they did. That what happened next was the only way out — not until the very last seconds, presumably — but in a way it was typical, both of her naivety and of their relationship in general. It had frequently happened that she didn’t grasp the full significance of things until it was too late. At a stage when it was pointless trying to put things right, and when all that could be said — absolutely everything — had already been said. When the only possibility available was decisive action. He had thought about that before.

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