Читать книгу The Map of Us - Jules Preston - Страница 10

The bottle of ‘sturdy’ Rioja we had chosen tasted thin and vinegary. It wasn’t our usual choice. It clung to the side of the glass in an odd way. I swilled mine around just to have something to do with my hands.

The table top was a slab of grey slate. It had a ring of wax where yesterday’s candle had burnt down. I didn’t pick at it. I wanted to though. I wondered how many other couples had sat where we were sitting now and had got together or broken up or talked about getting a dog or moving in together or celebrated or commiserated or decided to give it another go and had gone home hand in hand for the first time in months and made love and then separated for good. Maybe even while yesterday’s candle was burning down to a stub. I could see where today’s candle had been shoved into the candlestick holder on top of it and on top of other melted stubs for what looked like the passing of centuries.

‘10.37am?’ Matt said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Not 10.37pm?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Oh.’

He looked more confused than ever. Somehow it bothered him that our marriage had come apart in the morning. Before lunchtime even. Not at night. Did it really make any difference? The end result was the same.

We were sitting in our favourite wine bar – that wasn’t really ‘ours’ anymore – discussing who should take custody of the three-seater sofa from the living room. It had seen better days. So had we.

‘10.37am,’ Matt repeated absently. Like the title of a film that he had never seen, starring someone that he couldn’t quite remember.

How could I be so exact? I had an affair. It started at 10.37am on April 22nd. It was a Thursday. I have a graph that explains why. Not why it was a Thursday – why it started at 10.37am. It’s more of a flow chart, actually. It’s on Page 5 of the report. We’ll get to that. Maybe later.

I didn’t really want the sofa. But Matt did.