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 watched her as she took off her towelling robe and hung it on the hook on the door. She was pale, with freckles on her shoulders, a mole on her hip, and prominent rib bones. She used to be slim and quick – like a flame, he’d said to her once, bowled over with love; like a wild flower – but now she was thin. He could see the sinews in her arms, and the way that her skin was slightly loose. He tried not to compare her to that other golden body, half glimpsed like a ripe fruit among the camouflaging leaves, and when Irene lay down beside him in the bed they’d shared for over a decade, he put his arms around her and held her spooned against him, feeling her vertebrae sharp as a zip against his chest.
‘I still smell of sick.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
He put a hand on her flat stomach, between the sharp angles of her pelvis. She held herself carefully, neither rejecting nor inviting him.
‘I love you,’ he said into her hair. His head was swimming; breathing deeply made him feel faintly queasy. ‘You know that I love you, don’t you?’
‘Mmm. Me you too.’
He moved his hand lower. ‘Irene?’
‘Mmm?’ She kept absolutely still. Her eyes were wide open and she gazed into the darkness.
‘Never mind. Sleep well.’
A soft mutter came from her and he rolled onto his back, putting his arm over his eyes, feeling the walls rush towards him.
Irene stared out at the bedroom. She always left the door slightly ajar so that she could hear the children during the night, and a fuzzy yellow blade of light from the landing lay along the carpet. She waited until she heard Adrian’s breath deepen and then she got out of bed, pulled on her towelling robe, and went into the room that Clemmie and Agnes shared, their two low beds separated by a narrow gap that in their games was sometimes a river, sometimes a raging fire, sometimes an abyss that they would heroically leap across, though Agnes often missed, crashing onto the wooden floor with screams of frustration and woe. Clemmie lay with her head on a towel and a bucket beside her. She had hectic red cheeks and, when Irene laid a hand across it, a clammy forehead. The skin on her back was burning hot. A thick, sour smell hung round her.