The prompt: “WAG #16: True Love” People watching time! This time, go people watching and select a couple. Write about the “secret” part of their relationship… the things about this couple that they don’t show to the world. It can be good and sweet things, like gooey pet names, or darker things, like arguing over who should take out the trash. 

We don’t get out of the car, we never do. Beryl passes me the thermos and I poor us both a tea. My plastic plate balances on the dash loaded with sandwiches and cherry tomatoes from the tupperware boxes she packed for our lunch. We eat and drink in silence, staring out the windscreen of our old Austin Allegro. Wild country of woodland and moor spreads out around us, carpeting miles and miles before hitting town or village.

A couple, young and firm legged approach along the footpath. They stare for a moment. Nudge each other, tip their heads in our direction. We are the funny old couple, parked in the layby, eating their picnic in the car on a hot summer day. With the windows wound down we hear their whispers. Sad old dears, they say, shoot me if we get like that. Beryl and I stare back from within our out of date car, our out of date overcoats, from behind out of date glasses.

‘They’ll be old one day,’ I say, ‘and they won’t have the memories we have.’

I look to Beryl and she is smiling. She takes my hand and kisses the back of it. I know she is thinking of when we were young and what we got up to out here under cover of night. Too old for that sort of thing these days but it is enough to drive here and look out upon the countryside that hides so much of our past. I return Beryl’s kiss and think of where we buried all the bodies. None of them were found. Either of us could tell you exactly where to find them though. Even now, so many years later. We wouldn’t need to get out of the car to remember, we never do.

The hikers disappear around a bend in the road.

‘If we were twenty years younger, eh love,’ I say to Beryl and she smiles.