Читать книгу The Map of Us - Jules Preston - Страница 26

Matt called the day after our meeting in the wine bar. The fate of the three-seater sofa was still preying on his mind. The whole 10.37am thing had rather overwhelmed the conversation.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘It’s me.’

I knew who it was. We had been together for five years. Married for three. Just because we were separated now didn’t mean that I would suddenly forget, even if I wanted to.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Sorry about last night.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. I wanted to see where this was going before I said anything more definite.

‘Are you busy?’

This was a typical Matt tactic. He liked to make sure that I was in the middle of doing something so that I’d have to stop doing it and give him my undivided attention. I made a mental note to find some way of quantifying his approach in a graph.

‘Just stuff,’ I said, trying not to be curt.

‘I wanted to talk to you about the sofa,’ he said.

‘I know,’ I said.

‘How do you know?’ He said.

‘Because you always want to talk about it,’ I said.

‘Oh’ he said. He sounded small and distant and brittle.

I sighed. I couldn’t help it. This was getting ridiculous.

‘You can have the sofa. Okay? I don’t want it.’ I said.

It was the truth.

There was a pause on the line.

‘Why do you have to be such a bitch all the time,’ he said. Then he hung up.