Heather Patterson lives a life of converging and diverging lines.
Her husband had been incompatibly perpendicular, merely crossing her life temporarily on his way to ‘better things.’
Her teenage son is gradually drifting away from her as he heads for adulthood.
And her father has completed the arc of sending her off into the world and then welcoming her back to his home in need of care.
Is it too much to expect that someone with matching tastes could converge with Heather’s own continually straight line?
Can she find a parallel love?
“Lines” is available for the month of October 2025 on this site. The ebook is also available on most major online retail stores. You can also read this story in the collection Baverstock’s Allsorts Volume 1.
Lines
By Jessica Baverstock
I CAN HEAR voices in the kitchen as I come down the stairs – my father and my son in their morning ritual of grating on each other’s nerves.
I think about ducking out the front door without breakfast or packed lunch but my stomach steers me onwards. I stop at the bottom of the stairs and check myself in the mirror – brushing a pesky spot of toothpaste off my pressed black trousers and fixing the button I’d missed on my white blouse. The low heels of my black work shoes clack on the tile floor as I skirt the breakfast table and head for the fridge.
“Morning, munchkin,” my father says looking up from his bacon and eggs, ignoring the 30-odd years that have passed since the nickname fit me. “Titus the Great has an exam today.”
Titus buries his scruffy teenage head deeper in his book while still managing to stuff soggy cornflakes into his mouth. His school tie is crooked but I don’t say anything. I think he wears it that way just to irritate me.
“What are you studying?” I say, grabbing my quinoa salad from the fridge and placing it in my faux-leather handbag I left on the counter last night.
“Relativity,” says Titus, not looking up. Eye contact is a bit much to expect at this age.
“Ah,” my father nods, “grappling with the mathematical paradoxes of intersecting parallel lines, are we?”
“No,” Titus says, with the standard teenage eye roll. “That’s Non-Euclidean Geometry.”
“Oh,” says my father, “they’ve given it a posher name nowadays, have they?”
“No,” says Titus. “It’s—”
I kiss Titus on the head and pat my father on the shoulder as they launch into another heated discussion. At least they’re talking. I can only hope that means they’re bonding.
I grab my breakfast, a banana and an energy bar, before leaving. My father would call it ‘monkey food,’ but he’s too busy to notice. Then I pause by the front door to slip on my smart blue suede jacket before setting off into the morning sunshine, its rays warming the lavender bushes that line our little red brick path to the curb. I run my hands through their purple heads as I pass. At least having my father around means the garden is well tended.
As I walk to work, I think about the geometry of relationships – how wonderful it would be if the parallel lines of two ideally suited people could actually intersect.
My husband had been incompatibly perpendicular, merely crossing my life as he passed through, on an ever-diverging path – promising a cathedral wedding, but providing a registry office marriage and departing before Titus was born. The line Titus was taking, once so close to mine, was rapidly diverging, while my father had completed the arc of sending his daughter off into the world and then embracing her back in need of care.
Was it too much to ask for a converging parallel, someone with similar likes and dislikes who would be content to travel in the same direction as me? I think back to my days in art school, at parallel lines heading off into the horizon, perhaps intersecting in infinity.
I arrive at the stationery shop and open it up for the day. Here I will spend my hours behind a pine wood counter, surrounded by greeting cards, envelopes, journals, masking tape, and an endless array of pens, while I stare out the large front window at the lines of people passing by – framed by the perpendicular.
Today is a slow shop day but the pavement is busy as always. A mother with a pram. An elderly couple, arm-in-arm. And then there’s Silvie, her nose pressed up against the glass, the pinks and purples of her curly hair clashing with the thick green eye shadow she’s chosen today. Her bright red lips mouth the words, “Still on for lunch?”
I nod.
With a wink and a grin, she dashes off to work at the florist three doors down. I figure it’s the best place for her – at least there she can blend in with all the floral showoffs. It’s about the only place where green goes with any color.
The morning passes with only two customers – a dour gentleman looking for a bereavement card and a flustered woman who’s forgotten it’s her anniversary and is in desperate need of a here-honey-of-course-I-thought-of-you kind of card. The ‘beloved husband’ card always does the trick.
I meet Silvie at the outdoor cafe across the road. She buys a ham and avocado roll. I sit down on the sun-bleached wooden bench, dust off the wooden slats of the table and then pop open my homemade salad.
“You’re missing a golden opportunity,” she says, setting down her plastic tray across from me.
“I’m not interested in making eyes at the tall guy behind the counter,” I say. I fish a plastic spoon out of my bag and wipe it with a napkin I stole from Silvie’s tray.
“You can’t just wait for guys to come to you. You’ve got to go to them.” She picks up the roll and bites into it, causing a slice of tomato to come shooting out the end of it and land on her plate. “Ugh,” she says, wiping mayonnaise from the side of her mouth. “Hate it when that happens.”
“Guys come to me just fine,” I say. “Look at my father.”
Silvie wrinkles her nose. “Not what I’m talking about, and you know it. You, girl, go through life in a straight line, no trips off to see the sights or to investigate a possible guy, just straight on, as if you were wearing blinkers. No wonder you’re still single.”
“Maybe I like it this way,” I say, searching intently for a cherry tomato. Those things always seem to disappear and I start to wonder whether my father’s been eating them on the sly.
“Whatever,” she says.
We move on to other topics – movie premiers, fashion faux pas of passersby as decided by Silvie, the dread we have of hand washing our woolens with winter approaching – and then lunch is over. Silvie gives me a quick kiss goodbye and I walk back to the store wondering if I’ve got any of her lipstick on my cheek.
In the afternoon a mother, taking advantage of her freedom before school gets out, comes in to exchange a green pen that’s stopped working. She’s a writer, I can tell by the callus on her middle finger and the loving way her eye scans the journals and notebooks. Then there’s nothing, nothing at all, for that interminable period between two and four thirty.
I watch the people in the window. A little boy dragging his mother in the direction of the toy store, zigzagging back and forth as each tries to get their way. A young woman meandering along the street to the jaunty song playing in her headphones. A middle-aged gentleman with a bunch of flowers in hand, staring straight ahead, perhaps about to meet up with his wife for her anniversary and receive a ‘beloved husband’ card purchased this morning.
And then there’s a gentleman wearing a sharply tailored black suit and black bow tie, looking up and down the street as if lost. He’s got textbook good looks, dark hair with the merest gray at the sideburns, a jaw that could cut butter, and an endearing dent in his chin.
He stops, looks around and then changes course into my shop – a perfect 90-degree turn.
“Excuse me,” he says, his accent smooth but his voice slightly gravely. “Could you direct me to the Hershowitz Gallery? I seem to have lost my way.”
I stare into his soft, green eyes.
Who cares about parallels? I’ll settle for any angle.
“I’m about to close up shop,” I say. “I can take you there.”
At first he refuses. He doesn’t want to put me to any trouble. But I insist I’m going that way anyway on my walk home.
He stands by the door, politely looking at the nearest rack of cards as I go through my closing up list. Then I turn the sign in the window to say ‘Closed’ and we leave together.
“So,” I say, trying not to sound awkward, “you’re going to the gallery for something special?” I start walking slowly, at a conversational pace.
“An opening night cocktail evening for my sister. She’s an artist.” He pulls at this bow tie in that adorable way guys do when they’re uncomfortable.
“Oh,” I say. “Painter?”
“Yes,” he says. “She likes the impressionist stuff.”
“Really?” I say, nodding. I stop at the edge of the road and make a point of looking both ways even though there are hardly any cars. “What about you? What kind of ‘stuff’ do you like?”
“Me?” He laughs. “I’m more partial to optical illusions myself.”
“Oh,” I say, stepping out onto the road. I can’t really think of where to go with that. I fear if I open my mouth something stupid will come out. My brain starts racing. I’m halfway to the gallery and I don’t know what else to say.
“And you?” he says, easily.
I let out my pent up breath. “My favorite artist is Singer-Sargent.” Then I kick myself. I’m trying to make conversation with someone who doesn’t seem to be into art by naming famous artists. Where did I think this was going?
“Why?” He looks at me as we walk, curious and smiling.
“His painting are so lifelike,” I say, trying to stop my nerves from tripping me up with words. I direct him towards the alley. “He captures reality just as it is.”
“Don’t all artists do that in their own way?” he says. “Reality looks different to each one of us. Some see it as picture-perfect. Others see it in muted tones. And to some the world is just one big optical illusion.”
I stop walking, trying to fathom what it is he’s saying. Should my alarm bells be going off right now? Or is he just a philosophical kind of guy?
He glances around at the narrow, graffiti-strewn walls of the alleyway. “Is the gallery somewhere nearby?”
“Sorry,” I say, walking on. “It’s up here a little further.”
“You’ll have to forgive me,” he says as he falls back into step with me. “I get a little abstract at times. It’s a habit I’m trying to curb.”
I grin. “No need to do so on my account. You’ve given me something new to think about.” I round the corner and there is the gallery on the other side of the street, its huge windows showing a posh group of people inside, the women in evening dresses and the men in suits and ties. “Well,” I say, pointing to the building, “there’s your party.”
He looks up and there might be a flicker of disappointment in his face. Or is that just my wishful thinking?
“It was nice meeting you,” I say, extending a hand to shake his goodbye.
He takes hold of my hand but doesn’t move. “Would you like to come in?”
I stand there stunned. “But,” I say, thinking there must be good reasons why I can’t. I look past him, straight on towards home. My father and Titus will be waiting for me. If I’m not there to prepare dinner they’ll start eating out of cans.
“Well,” I say. Then I look down at my dowdy work clothes and flat shoes. “Thanks,” I say, “but I’m not really dressed for it, am I?”
“I don’t mind,” he says. “And I don’t think my sister would either.”
My feet point onward, straight forward on my usual line home. I hesitate for a moment longer. Then I turn myself toward the gallery, a perfect 90-degree turn, and follow him in a new direction.
“Lines” is available for the month of October 2025 on this site. The ebook is also available on most major online retail stores. You can also read this story in the collection Baverstock’s Allsorts Volume 1.
“Lines”
Copyright © 2018 by Jessica Baverstock
Cover and Layout copyright © 2018 by Jessica Baverstock
Cover design by Jessica Baverstock
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.