The Folded Leaflet

The leaflet opened flat between the two glasses on Roscoe’s kitchen table.

Veda had picked it up while he fetched supper from the oven. She recognised the cover from the library and the public session, but this was the first time she had read the back panel slowly.

Fishers can move to alternative grounds or straightforward opportunities in the growing shore economy.

She read it again. Straightforward had been given a whole line to itself by the fold.

“Did you see this before it was printed?” she asked.

Roscoe put down the oven dish. He looked at the sentence under her finger.

“Yes. I signed off the wording with the others in April.”

“Before we were seeing each other.”

“Yes.”

“After we’d met at the first consultation.”

“Yes.”

He stayed standing. Veda wanted him to sit, then didn’t. She wanted the sentence to belong to a version of him she…