JACOB AND ANNABELLE

Jacob and Annabelle are coming, both of them, and we are not ready.  We sit in the silence of our living room, staring out at the moon, racking our brains for a way ahead.
“The house isn’t big enough.  We’ll have to sell it,” you say.
I close my eyes, thinking of the peace of this living room, the sea views, the scrape your key makes when you turn it in the latch in the evening and the way the sea breeze gently blows the bedroom curtain on a Saturday morning.  The house is not the only thing that must be sold.  The sports car has to be traded in too.  It is not practical enough for Annabelle and Jacob.

On moving day I start in the kitchen, I take the bottles of wine from the rack and empty them two at a time into the sink, watching the fizz of champagne mix with Rioja red which used to smell so appealing.  We must be pure now.  You come through and without a word pick up the empty bottles and take them out to the recycling.  When you return you find me rooting through the fridge, removing pizzas, half mouldy cheese, an opened tin of frankfurters and an apologetic single item of rotten fruit.

“That was lunch,” you say.
“Not anymore,” I reply, “Annabelle and Jacob won’t tolerate junk food.”
“Shall we do the bedroom?”
We find the old love letters, the journal I made of how we got together, pictures of our exes and photos of us in our pie eyed drunkenness at party after party.  We don’t want to remember those times, they can never come again.  We burn everything.  Jacob and Annabelle won’t want us to have a past.

We stand on the porch waiting for the removal men, watching the bonfire ash being blown inland by the strengthening winds.  We are thinking of what we are leaving behind and of what is coming.  We have made such sacrifices and yet it has been easy.  Will we be good enough though?  Can anyone get this right?

“Oh God,” you whisper, your hand clutching mine, “I hope they know they’re wanted.”
I hope they know they’re already loved.