John Heron Project

Curiosity has always been one of my failings. Without thinking I reached into the drawer, unpinned a slip, and opened it. On it was written, ‘Lack of trust arising from father’s repeated failure to keep promises.’

Belatedly, it occurred to me that I should have asked first, and I refolded the paper and jammed the pin back into it. “Can I look at one?”

Carol spun round. “No! This is confidential stuff. I shouldn’t really have it at all, but… We all have our little weaknesses.” She sighed. “And our not-so-little ones.”

I stepped forward and took her hands in mine. “If it helps you do your job, keep helping others, then I don’t see what’s so bad about it.”

Normally she’d have spotted that I was covering something up, but I think she was too relieved that this revelation hadn’t freaked me out to notice any furtiveness in my manner. She gave my hands a squeeze. “Thank you for understanding.”

I smiled, and hoped she’d never find out what I’d done.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 7th, 2005 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Bite-size serials, The Pain Collector. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.