Looking for the Way Out

For audio click here 

“When are we going shopping?” Jane said, her eyes still twinkling.

“Let’s have a take away tonight and go to Tesco in the morning,” Matty said, not even looking up from the cricket.

“No,” Jane said, “shopping, shopping.”

“Oh you don’t want to go into town today,” Matty said, “it’ll be crowded. You know I hate town on a Saturday.”

“Matty?”

Matty stared at the screen. He knew full well what Jane was getting at, but he was determined to play dumb.

 “Can’t you go alone,” he said, “you’ll get more done without me.”

“You promised.”

Jane stood there, arms folded, staring at her man staring at the cricket. She was waiting for a reply that wasn’t coming.

“It won’t take long,” she said. But Matty wasn’t taking the bait. It took three minutes before she gave up and stormed into the kitchen. The only thing causing her eyes to twinkle now were the tears.

Four minutes later Jane was back, plonking a cup of tea on the coffee table in front of Matty.

“I’m beginning to think you don’t want to marry me,” she said, standing between him and the screen. “Maybe you were looking at me, but really speaking to Hal Robson Kandu or whatever his name is.”

“Kanu,” Matty hated it when she got the names of footballers wrong.

“I don’t care what his fucking name is. Do you want to marry me or not?”

“Of course I do,” Matty’s words were positive, but Jane wasn’t convinced.

“So why don’t we go and buy the engagement ring then?”

Matty tried to shift his body so he could see the screen. But Jane was dancing in front of him.

“There’s no hurry,” Matty said.

“Typical,” Jane crossed her arms, “if you don’t want to marry me, why did you ask me?”

 Matty knew the answer to that. Robson-Kanu had just thrown the most outrageous dummy and fired the ball into Belgium’s net. Matty had jumped around like a madman before finding himself on his knees in front of Jane in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. His heart was full of love, it felt like the natural thing to do. He hadn’t expected her to take him seriously, and he certainly hadn’t expected her to say yes. But she had, and Matty was struggling to come to terms with it. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to marry her, it was just that he didn’t want to marry her. What made it worse was the South Wales Echo were all over it. Someone had videoed his proposal, it had gone viral, and now they wanted to run a feature.

Matty wished he could do what Cameron had done; resign and let someone else clear up the mess, but he doubted Jane wanted to marry Teresa May.

“We’ll do it next weekend, okay?” Matty said. If he couldn’t resign, he could at least use Cameron's other tactic and delay buying a ring, thus delay triggering the process. Hopefully the enthusiasm would wane as time went on.

“You’re incorrigible,” Jane said and stormed away. Matty took a sip of tea. Maybe the plan was already working.