Potters Bar - by Sharon Lansbury

POTTERS BAR

She met a man from Potters Bar
her girlfriends wondered just how far
IT would go?
Take it slow!
Move in?
A diamond ring,
a cottage with roses round the door,
and Cotswold flagstones on the kitchen floor?
Two or three kids?
Noise like two clanging dustbin lids,
just for a few years?
Each at Private School:
Ten years on –
the diamond fades;
she’s out with the girls,
some hotel bar in the local town
and there’s a salesman
from Hull,
sitting alone
like a dog with a bone:
He throws her a wink –
she catches it, and his eye,
and uses her elbow to move her skirt just above her knee:
Not wife, not mother: Simply me.
He sweats in the summer heat,
his tie too tight for his bulging neck,
and he scrapes his chair across the floor
and everyone sees,
her skirt, shifting further above her knees.
He buys them a drink
and she tells herself there is no harm
as he slithers his arm
around the back of her chair
like the roots of an invasive tree,
imperceptibly
creeping towards the house
and all her security:
Her friend calls a cab –
Tipsy, alive, she gets in
and the random Salesman from Hull
doesn’t care:
Plenty more of that round here.
He goes to his room
tired of the chase
and orders Room Service.

In bed, her husband asleep by her side,
snoring and blissfully unaware;
She lies awake
and wonders how far
she could have gone,
Before Potters Bar.