excerpt
…that fey little Katie who gave him such a glum time, she’s supposed to be
holidaying somewhere exotic with her new bloke. So much for his muse. Her
own friends, like Graham, Laura, Joan and the rest of the Westway crew, have
been phoning with kind offers. So she dislikes herself for getting edgy. It’s not
their fault that she simply wants the facts, even the worst.
Going to the police was the admission that the uncertainty principle was
taking over her life. There were negative associations, like that tiny indentation
over her eyebrow, her radical birthmark as a child of sixties activism, when
a police doctor tried to convince her she’d got in the way of another rioter’s
banner. Now she’s (almost) certain that it was a cop truncheon which
concussed her when she was sixteen . . . Was it Troops Out or Stop the Bombing?
She’s so dazed with weariness.
Anyway, the professional tea-and-sympathy strategy of her local station has
deeply confused her, especially when a young WPC tries to reassure her that
there’s no evidence of foul play, that hundreds of young people row with their
families and return in a few days. Oh yes, they’ve logged it on the computer,
Inspector Peetfield is looking into it, but they’re only going through their rituals,
she still doesn’t believe in them.
She’s shivering, she must find her dressing gown. It doesn’t fasten properly,
so the spill of white towelling still reveals her, fresh and damp. She’s not bad.
She’s alright. Breasts still riding high, well-defined waist.
But the struggles of ideology—staffroom/classroom/bedroom—have
divorced her from dwelling at ease in her own flesh. Nick’s creepy fingers handled
her like a portion of exotic sweetmeat. Did she really carry Lucas (with
such precarious agony) as a foetus in her uterus?
She looks at her straight nose, wide mouth, firm lips, worn shadowy eyes.
Crying will make her contact lenses sore. As a child Lucas hated them, because
she’d made a joke about taking Mummy’s eyes out in the bathroom. He’d
whimper if she even produced the tiny case. Years later she took him to see
King Lear and he walked out on the blinding of Gloucester. Out vile jelly,
where is thy lustre now?
She’s alright. She’s OK. A desirable wreck? She’d once permitted Larry
Dunbar to fondle her one afternoon, in a drunken interlude from one of
Nick’s madnesses. She felt there might be consolation, distraction from the
distractions, in a firm hand under her shirt. But in the end she had to wrestle
him off, it was an error of judgement.
At least she’s never pretended. Nick sulked when she stopped painting her
eyes like girls in the magazines; and later before his terminal crisis, she’d catch
him eyeing up the tribal face-paint of teeny nymphettes. Nick would try any
amount of cringing for a bit of glam, a taste of porno-kitsch. No wonder magic…
Libros Libertad 