Here’s a prize-winning entry for a short story competition that I entered a long time ago in Stoke on Trent. It came second and my prize was a pottery mug by Emma Bridgewater, presented to me by none other than Andy McNab. He was most impressive. The mug is long gone – worn out – but the story lingers on. I hope you enjoy it – let me know what you think.

You’ll never come to anything …

It was the small things she noticed first of all. He was a creature of habit, her husband, Bill. Meticulous in his ways and ever mindful of the need to do things right, in order to please her, he had been her constant companion and love of her life for the past 43 years.

Yet, something had happened. It was such a small thing, and yet it had made her think. He had put his left sock on before his right one. She hadn’t said anything, although she was curious as to why he would do something he had never done in his life before, as far as she was aware. On the morning after their wedding (there was certainly no living together before you were married in those days) and every morning thereafter, he had carefully placed his underpants and his socks on the bed, alongside a clean shirt and his trousers. Then he had always sat on the bed, dressed with everything except his socks, keeping them until the last moment.

The socks went on, right one first and then the left one and, the first time she had commented on it, he had remarked, “You’ll never come to ‘owt if you put your left sock on first, duck.” 

It had been an amusing foible, but one that he had kept consistently throughout their lives together. Not only that, but it was also always the right shoe first, the right sleeve of a jacket or coat first and he would always pick the right-hand choice out of two doors, two packets of biscuits – in fact, she seemed to remember that she had been with her girlfriend when they had met and he had made a beeline, straight for her, where she stood … on his right.

So, for him to put his left sock on was hardly cataclysmic in the great order of things, yet it somehow shook her world to its very foundations. What was going on? Was he having an affair? At 72, men can come over all strange, or so she had heard. So she watched him more carefully, checking when he went out and how he appeared when he returned, looking for signs of something. Anything.

And for the next two months there was nothing.

Then, there came the next incident. Again, nothing that anyone else would remark upon and yet, it was significant to her. Two mornings on the trot she had followed after him in the bathroom and found his towels on the bathside. For someone who was meticulous in his everyday life, this was strangely out of character. He had always hung up his towel on the airer after his morning ablutions, ensuring that the vertical fold in the towel was to the right hand side, of course.

“You’re not in a hotel now, y’know,” she said, half-jokingly, half seriously.

He had turned and looked at her and, my, there was a strange light in his eyes – one she had never seen there before and then, instantly, it was gone and the same old Bill was back again, “Sorry love, I ‘ad me mind on ‘igher things!” and he grinned in that way that always made her knees wobble.

She made light of it, picked up the towels and started to hang them up, but he took them from her and put them in place, exactly how he always had. “Can’t ‘ave you pickin’ up after me, now can we?” She’d smiled and grabbed him round the waist and kissed him, right there in the bathroom. He seemed to like that all right because it was another half an hour before they managed to head downstairs for a seriously delayed breakfast.

Life rolled along in its usual way with their habitual round of shopping, cooking, eating, gardening (if the weather permitted), walking, watching TV, chatting, reading the paper and doing the crossword. Nothing really seemed any different, but the thought kept returning and her attention to his behaviour never wavered.Perhaps he was getting one of these terrible old age illnesses like dementia or, what was that other one? She’d forgotten. There had only been the two things, but they were so out of character for this mild-mannered, careful man who had been in her life all of these years. It was like having a tiny grain of irritating sand in your shoe when you’re barefoot inside. It just niggled at her.

It was a Thursday in late September when it all came to a head. It had been about six weeks since the towel incident and there had been nothing to remark upon in his actions all through that time. His habits, both good ones and the annoying ones, had been quite consistent so, when the next incident occurred, it came as a hammer blow that seemed to shatter her world.

The morning had begun in the usual way, waking up around 7 o’clock, Bill stomping blearily downstairs to make the tea and putting the porridge on to soak. Then he had brought the pot of tea up to the bedroom and they had sat in bed, watching the morning burst into life outside their bedroom window. They both loved that time in bed, side by side, sipping their hot tea and looking at the trees and bushes at the end of their little garden. They never said much, lost in their own thoughts and then they would finish their tea and get up properly, having a shower and getting dressed before breakfast. And today was no different.

Everything had happened in just the same way as normal, all the way through to them sitting down to breakfast. Bill had made the porridge in the microwave (three minutes rotating to the right and then two minutes rotating to the left) and had served it up, piping hot in the same bowls they always used.

She’d sat down opposite him and they’d both unfurled their serviettes and Bill had instantly grabbed his spoon and dug into the centre of the porridge, ladling a large blob of the gooey breakfast into his mouth. She’d stared at him open-mouthed as he repeated the process with another steaming lump of porridge that disappeared rapidly into his waiting jaws.

She had not yet picked up her own spoon and Bill had nearly finished his breakfast. They never said much at the breakfast table and today was no exception, yet she wanted to say something but the words wouldn’t come to her. Bill suddenly looked up from his near-empty plate and said, “I’ll nip out for the papers then, shall I?” and he stepped up and away from the table, grabbed his shoes and sat on a chair to put them on.

She watched in horror as he carefully pulled open the mouth and loosened the laces of his left-hand shoe and then put it on. He tied it up and repeated the process with the right-hand shoe. “Right, back in a mo’,” he cried cheerily and ducked out of the door and headed off to the newsagent.

When he returned, she was still sitting there, the now cold porridge congealed in her bowl. She stared at him as he walked in, a Daily Mail and a copy of The Sentinel tucked under his arm.

“What’s up, love?” he said. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.” He put the papers down and walked over to her, where she sat in front of her forgotten breakfast. “D’you want me to make you some fresh porridge?”

She shook her head and looked up at him with a fixed expression. “I know everything,” she said, firmly. “Everything.”

“What? Everything?” he replied.

“Yep. So, tell me. When’s the invasion?”

He looked at her and that strange light was back in his eye again. There was a pause. “The invasion?”

“Yes, the invasion” She kept her eyes firmly on his and neither one blinked. A little time passed and then …

“How did you know?”

“Little things.”

“Like what?”

“No human could have eaten that porridge the way you did this morning. It was like molten lava, fresh out of the microwave.”

His eyes flickered and she could have sworn that, for a moment, they looked like a cat’s. Then he said smoothly, “That’s not enough to tell you.”

She replied, “There was more – the towels.”

“Ah! Yes, of course, the towels. I knew I’d made a bad mistake there.” This time there was a much longer cat-like flicker in his eyes and it was as if the shape of his head changed slightly, just for a moment.

“And the socks. So when’s the invasion?”

He didn’t reply. Something was going on and it was something bad. He stepped back a little and the flickering in his eyes had extended to his whole face, which seemed to morph from the Bill she knew to a much stranger, alien set of features and then back again. As this sequence of changes rippled across him, Bill, or whoever or whatever he was really, stumbled back against the dresser, clattering the Blue Hen crockery on the shelves. His hands, flickering too, caught the edge of a big old dish they’d bought at a car boot one Sunday. It always sat on the top of the cupboard and he sent it flying to smash in pieces on the floor.

His voice croaked as he spoke again, trying desperately to hold together the construct that was Bill, but losing it more and more, “How … could … you … know?”

The last words came in a gargle as his whole form flickered and smoked and then shattered into a thousand shards that fell to the floor, leaving behind in the air a green smoke that smelled strangely of primroses.

She stood up with a grim expression and surveyed the devastation on the dining room floor. “You put your left shoe on before your right one. You’ll never come to anything without always putting your right shoe on first,” and she set to, sweeping up the remains of the big dish … and of her husband. But there was a twinkle in her eye as she realised, for the first time, she’d been unfaithful to her husband.

© 2026 Nick Evans

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