THE CHOICE by Rosemary Vincent The radio on the dressing table began playing the Theme from Picnic, and just for a moment Meri closed her eyes and imagined herself in the Centre, jam-packed with the usual Saturday night crowd; everywhere you looked sweating, grinning faces, people happy with their independence, the boys on the stage hitching up their guitars and starting to play something else. The Theme from Picnic had been one of their favourites then, in the days when she'd practically lived at the Centre—never missed a Saturday, and been there most other nights too, including Sundays when they'd had those talent quests. What talent, too, better than anything you heard on the radio or saw on the films—and how they'd accepted it, all of them, especially her who had never imagined the day might come when she'd long to go back and not be able to; when she would sit in a blue and white bedroom, with a man's tartan dressing-gown folded at the end of the huge double bed, and beat time, in frustration, at the sound of a familiar tune. ‘If you want to go to the Centre …’ Colin had said tentatively, quite often, after they were first married. He'd never finished the sentence, and she knew he'd never finished the idea in his own mind. Supposing she'd said yes? Then, of course, he would have had to take her, and he would have stood protectively by her once they were there, trying to look with it, trying to feel with it … poor Colin, he might possibly have managed the first, but never the second. So she'd always said, ‘No, I don't want to go’; meaning that she didn't want to go with him, it just wouldn't be the same. She heard the motor scooter pull up outside the house, the front door open and close, and Colin's muffled voice as he greeted his mother downstairs; his mother's answering voice, and then the sound of his footsteps on the stairs. She pushed her comic under the pillow and sat up, tidying her hair. Her husband said ‘Hullo Meri’, and kissed her lightly. Then he went over to the window and looked out, his hands in his pockets, and she knew something was up. She waited, aware of the comic under her pillow, wishing she had the guts to take it out and let him see it; surely it was nothing to be ashamed of, reading an ordinary love comic. Everyone she knew read them. But Colin said it was bad for the mind; he said that sort of reading matter dragged you down until after a while you lived on that level yourself. ‘Ah, Meri’, said Colin. ‘I think we should have a little chat. Mother's just been saying—you know.’ He looked at her for support, for help; he wanted her to deny it before he'd even said it, the usual old thing she supposed. Living as he did in his parents' house, struggling along with little money to get his law degree, he tried hard, with a conspicuous lack of success, to keep things on an even keel. Meri simply shrugged. ‘Your mother's always saying. What d'you want me to do? Help, she should know by now—I'm no good with them.’ ‘But you must try to be.’ He turned eagerly: that was it, she must try. Make that one small sacrifice, mix with his parents who after all had been kind enough to offer to keep them both here. He was always reminding her of this, though their house, in the best part of Remuera, was more like a mansion—six bedrooms, three of them permanently vacant, constantly prepared for guests who never came; an enormous kitchen with all the mod cons that had ever been invented, two bathrooms, and three lavs altogether, a real ballroom of a lounge, and a dining room, sitting room, study, billiard room and cavernous hall besides. What did two middle-aged people want with all that space to themselves? Her own