Scenes from a restaurant

Lisa listened loosely to what William was wittering on about. She listened to intonation more than to words so she could copy the tone with the uh-hers and yeses that she sprinkled his monologue with to signal she was ‘listening’. Boy could he talk, they'd been in the restaurant about 40 minutes and she’d said about 15 words, the rest of the time he'd been motor mouthing on about this, that and the other. This was not how first dates should go. She could put it down to nerves but still you’d think the man might take a breath or ask a question or something. She longed to look at her watch but she knew she had only just done so, surely looking again would be too obvious. Lisa wished they could just sit in silence for a few moments but that was impossible.

Maisy just wished he’d say something, anything, just fill the silence with words that would help change the mood, lift the spell of awkwardness. He’d done anything but talk to her. He’d taken ages digesting the menu, reading it like a good book, then he’d gone to the toilet, played with his phone and stared at the people on the next table. The food would come soon, meaning they could eat and she’d feel slightly less uncomfortable for a few moments until the plates would be cleared away and the silence would descend. They used to talk, all the time back in the days before the words dried up. Maisy couldn’t remember when it had happened but she’d woken up one morning and realised she had nothing left to say, nothing. He'd kept the conversation going for a little while until eventually both of them were like a school book dropped in a puddle, where once were words only  feint outlines remained. Finally the food came and the clank of cutlery filled the silence. Better no words though, than angry words.

‘Do you have to do that?’ Stacey’s voice was full of disgust. Mark’s crime was noisily licking his knife. Why did he do that? It was bad enough him doing it at home but in a nice restaurant? Did the guy have no self-awareness, no shame, or at the very least no respect for her. She knew the answer to that and she didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t use to mind his knife licking, or his sniffing, or the way he mangled a paper napkin to within an inch of its life. She didn’t use to mind that back in the day when she loved him. Well she did mind it, it used to annoy her back then tpp but there were plenty of lovely things to preoccupy her like the way he called her beautiful or the way he stroked her hand across the table. But gradually they had seeped away leaving only the annoying little foibles.

Eleisha was busy with her food, but Ben had stopped eating, his attention had been caught by the passion with which Eleisha had set about her meal. She deconstructed the meal in a way an artist might go about constructing a picture; there was a careful method, a rationale for every move of the knife or lift of the fork. Somehow the process of getting the food to her mouth was like a ballet while she chewed with graceful elegance. He could watch her for hours, imbibe her beauty. She noticed he’d stopped eating and looked at him watching her. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked blushing slightly. He put his hand across the table and took hers. ‘Just thinking how much I love you’ he said. It was the first time he’d said what he’d been thinking. She smiled a smile and said ‘
I love you too.’