The Twelve Days of Roses.

On the fourteenth, she received with guarded joy the cellophane-wrapped bunch of twelve  toy-sized red roses. Pretty little things, harmlessly thornless and passionless. But they filled the crystal vase with a vision of pretended love and everlasting happiness. The champagne fizzed and popped its way down her gullible little throat, floating bubbles happily speeding  their way to her innocent mind.

On the fifteenth, he told her she was a good wife, approved of the way she caressed his cotton shirts as she smoothed the iron over the creases of her love for him. She smiled.

On the sixteenth, she dusted and polished, hoovered and abolished all ancient mags and rags of dubious status.  She sighed.

On the seventeenth, she baked a cake, forsaking all other forms of idle diversion. She iced it with care, devotion and synthetic emotion, setting it prettily on the cut-glass stand of her make-believe life. She considered her role as a wife.

On the eighteenth, she went to the shops, with a list in her matrimonial fist, clutching it tightly, intent and hell-bent on achieving domestic economy. At all costs.

On the nineteenth, she boiled the whites, made them brighter than bright, and washed out the sinful  bins in the kitchen. Her husband was late.

On the twentieth, she checked the bank balance. Wearing her turquoise rimmed glasses, her worried blue eyes scanned the revealing account of his false, treacherous life. She held her breath and bit her lip. A forsaken wife.

On the twenty-first, she rang her sister, the blister on her lip stinging and itching. And poured out her heart, weeping and cursing. She sniffed, then scowled.

On the twenty-second, she hid all the Andrex, his ties and his  extra-marital  Durex and wickedly cut them in half. She grinned.

On the twenty-third,  she went into town,  to a shop well renowned for  its delicate and delectably naughty lingerie. She went overdrawn. And laughed.

On the twenty-fourth, she consulted a firm, and the respectable, bespectacled partner guided her through the minefield of law and her individual rights.  Her confidence reached new heights.

On the twenty-fifth, she threw out the roses. They were, after all, dead.