Читать книгу The Essence of the Thing - Madeleine John St. - Страница 6

Jonathan had been looking downwards, as if in search of the atavistic poker, the atavistic fire; he now looked up once more. ‘I want you to move out,’ he said. ‘Sorry – there really isn’t a nice way to say this, as I said before. Sorry. It just isn’t working. I mean, you must know that as well as I do.’

‘Move out,’ Nicola repeated dazedly. There was this dreadful lurching feeling in her stomach and she had begun to tremble. Her fingers closed more tightly around the keys, the money, the cigarettes. This was a very nasty kind of joke; it did not seem possible that it could ever become funny.

‘Yes,’ said Jonathan. ‘Well – that is – I’ve thought about this, obviously—’ He was suddenly on much firmer ground: he was down to brass tacks, now. Brass tacks were his stock-in-trade, he being after all a lawyer. ‘I mean, yes, I could move out, of course, and you could stay here, if you wanted to, but I just assumed you wouldn’t want to take it on. I mean, I’m offering, obviously, to buy you out.’

Her state of shock was only intensified by each succeeding sentence. He was offering – obviously! – to buy her out. She had said nothing, and so he went on. He was looking carefully at the china poodle dog. ‘I’m assuming, of course, that you wouldn’t want to buy me out.’

Couldn’t. He means, couldn’t. How very tactful. Of course she couldn’t. Nicola worked in the publications department of a famous, but medium-sized, arts organisation. She found that she was not trembling quite so much now, and might dare to speak.

‘No,’ she said, quite evenly. ‘I wouldn’t.’ There was a very brief pause: you could hear the silence. ‘In fact,’ she went on, ‘I wouldn’t want you to buy me out either. In fact, Jonathan, I don’t believe I know what you’re talking about. I don’t believe this conversation is really happening.’ She got up. ‘Look, I’m going to hang up my coat,’ she said. ‘And I’m going to make some tea, okay? And then you can tell me all about it. Because just at this precise moment I don’t understand what the fuck you’re on about. Excuse me.’ And she left the room.