I'm not sure I would react the same as Shelagh but you know... Dedicated to the crazy lot over at Madness Central, but also to Emily (I know it's late) hope this puts a smile on your face xx
It had been Patrick's fault to begin with. A lazy Saturday afternoon, with Timothy outside playing cricket and their new daughter asleep in her cot, allowed Patrick and Shelagh to spent some quality time together in the bedroom. However, parenthood caught them out, and now Patrick was entertaining a newly awoken Angela whilst Shelagh made herself look once again presentable, whilst sitting at the oak dressing table and mirror.
In his large hands he held a babbling infant who was being moved around in the air like a plane doing acrobatics in the air.
"Who's the areoplane? Neh yow!" And Angela was once again whisked through the air above his head again. Without realising, he knocked Shelagh's glasses off the bedside table, and onto the floor. Having heard something land on the carpet, Shelagh went to stand up to take a closer look.
Crunch.
Shelagh looked in horror as she bent down to see what was underneath her slipper.
"My glasses!" She gasped. One lense had slipped out of the sleek metal frame, which it, itself had bent out of shape. Taking them carefully into her hand, she sat back down at the dressing table. Shelagh placed each arm of the spectacles behind her ear and peered into the mirror in front of her, even tilting her head slightly left would not help in making them look straight. Sighing gently, she placed them carefully onto the table.
Patrick watched her from his place on their bed. He knew how much she relied on wearing her glasses, it wasn't until the first night she had spent under his roof, as Miss Mannion, that he found out how bad her eyesight was. He had thought that he would awaken her in the morning with a bowl of cereal and orange juice. Unable to tell how far away the objects he had placed in front of her, she knocked over the glass and the spoon for the cereal had flung out of the bowl and onto the floor.
However, as a married couple in the safety of their bed, his wife relied on other her senses as they wasted away the moonlight hours.
Patrick placed Angela into her cot at the other side of the room and walked over to Shelagh, who was staring misty-eyed at her reflection.
"Darling?" He tried to catch her eye in the mirror but her gaze fell downwards, and her shoulders sank and stiffened.
"Please my love. I'm sorry." He took her by the shoulders in an attempt to rotate her, but she shook him off. Even after his hands fell by his sides, she wouldn't stop shaking. It was then he heard the faint giggles coming from in front of him, and her eyes lifted to his in the reflection. Her blue depths now clear as the sky on a cloudless summer day and her smile radiating warmth to every corner of the room.
"Oh Patrick!" She giggled, Patrick now seeing a hint of how his beautiful wife looked many years before he met her. "It's my own fault, I should have looked where I was putting my big feet"
"I think they are rather dainty in my opinion" He slid a hand into hers and pulled up up and flush against his body. "And now you can't see clearly further than your nose, you'll have to put up with me being very, very close". He edged his face nearer to hers with every word, until their shallows breaths mixed together.
Shelagh, having enough of the temptation, looped an arm around his neck and pulled his head down to meet her lips.
She hissed as her foot hit the sofa. The pair decided that although Patrick would have to cook the dinner for the family tonight, he was still better having the guidance of his wife.
"Sorry" he bashfullyapologised. He briefly let go of her shoulders and wrapped his arm around her waist. "Now I have better control of where you walk now", he grinned. Patrick saw his wife's mouth tilt upwards in the corners.
"Daft man"
And now he was going to make everything alight...