Читать книгу Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You - Nikki Gemmell - Страница 47

upon girls and women depend almost entirely the domestic happiness of men

Where were you all night?

The movies.

What did you see?

Some Iranian thing, you’d hate it.

Hmm.

Cole’s eating a bowl of Heinz tomato soup at the kitchen bench, a weekend jumper over his business shirt. The fridge is now a tomb for items with strange smells and growths: mouldering cheese, blue-speckled bread, jars of tomato paste hosting a soft pale fur. Neither of you has cared enough lately, the oven’s used to store pots and pans, it’s been a long time since a Sunday roast. There was such a tenderness to your little home, once: Theo used to drop in often, unexpected, as if she was cleaving herself to its warmth.

Now, Cole and you have stopped trying. You dreaded that once, that as a couple you’d stop the offers of a bath run or a cup of tea or the dishes done. Actually, it’s survivable. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. Indifference emotionally, indifference physically. You haven’t made love since the hotel room of fresh roses every two days, but tonight you kiss him on the crown of his head and let your lips linger and it wakens something in your groin.

I’m going to bed, you say.

Hmm, again; deep in The Simpsons and the soup.

He doesn’t seem to notice your gesture, or doesn’t want to buy into it right now: The Simpsons has ten minutes to

You smile. You don’t care. For you’ve walked back into the sun, it’s warm on your back. You have a new friend in your life, to play with, to be young again with, to wake you up.