Chapters (40)
- Cover
- About the Author
- PENGUIN BOOKS
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- THE BEGINNING
He took his arm away but his eyes remained shut. She kissed his mouth and he sighed. She moved her hand down until it rested in the coarse tangle of his pubic hair.
‘Adrian?’ she repeated softly. ‘I want to say something, so we start the New Year properly.’ He opened his eyes and made himself look at her. ‘The first thing I want to say is that I do love you, you know.’
Adrian made a sound as if someone had punched him, the air going out of his body.
‘And it’s been a hard year,’ she said. ‘The hardest we’ve had and it’s not over yet. There’s no magic wand.’
He said nothing; was trapped in her eyes. She leant across and kissed him on his mouth and he closed his eyes again. He couldn’t bear to see her face, and the tenderness that was in it.
‘That’s all right,’ he said at last.
‘I know it’s been a long time since we, you know …’ He made an assenting noise, willing her to stop, but she continued. ‘Made love. God, listen to me; why do I feel so shy and awkward? Since we fucked. And the longer it’s been, the harder it’s got, until it almost became impossible, if you see what I mean. It wasn’t you. I just got so knotted up about it. Self-conscious. It got mixed up with everything else. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.’
‘I know.’
‘We should have talked, shouldn’t we? Before now, I mean. We shouldn’t just have pretended it wasn’t happening.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Yes it does. It matters a lot.’ She waited, her hand on his limp penis. ‘Adrian?’
‘Mmm?’ He made himself sound drowsy, although in fact he was wide awake, and his heart was thumping in his chest so loud he thought she would hear it.
‘It’ll be all right, won’t it?’
‘Of course.’ His voice was gruffly emphatic. ‘It’s not that I’m not responding. I’m just rather sleepy tonight.’
‘That’s OK,’ she said. ‘I just thought I ought to say it out loud. Little things can turn into big things without realizing, can’t they?’
‘Mmm,’ he said.
She took away her hand and lay down beside him, her head turned into his shoulder and her breath warm on his neck. She drew up her knees and crooked them over his legs. He put a hand across her hips. That’s how they went to sleep, holding each other.
Eight
She did see a look. She noticed that as it happened. From that single glance, intercepted across a room, her conscious world began imperceptibly to change.