Читать книгу Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You - Nikki Gemmell - Страница 84

go to bed not later than ten and get up at five or six when you are grown-up

You ring your mother. It’s her birthday; you’ve sent some lovely, hand-made Spanish riding boots that were way too much but you feel so generous and large-spirited in this new life.

Hey, you sound great, she says.

Yeah, I feel it. I’m getting lots of rest, and exercise.

You want to tell her about Gabriel, burstingly, but if anyone finds out you’ll have lost a little of your control: you’ll never know when it could slap you hard in the face.

Keep doing what you’re doing, she says in farewell. It’s working, darling.

You smile. Take down an old photo from the mantelpiece. Your mother’s in the Gobi Desert, on a dig site, a bucket in one hand and a spade in the other, and her eyes are narrowed against the sun and strands of hair whip across her face. You used to hate her loose, loud life when you were growing up: the way she’d wander around the house naked, push you out to experience something of the world, take you to interminable dinners to meet yet another of her men.

You recognise now that your mother was doing exactly what she wanted and, in her mid-fifties, she’s still doing it. She’s now contentedly celibate. Living a vivid life, which sometimes involves watching old black and white films until three a.m. and sleeping until midday and having just tea for breakfast and nothing else. Jumping on a plane at the news of a fossil find, gone for a month. Reluctant to go on dates. Shying away from what they might lead to: some sort of sharing of her life.

They’re so boring, the lot of them, she says. All they want to do is talk about themselves. Or stand you up. I’d much rather go out with a girlfriend than a man.

Most of her friends are divorced, don’t want another man, seem happier by themselves. They’ve done the kids, they’ve been the good wife. But you wonder if your mother’s being completely honest with you. Who really chooses to be alone? So much energy, in your adulthood, has been spent trying to escape from that state.

You wonder what your mother would make of you now, with your secret life. If she’d approve; if she’d worry for Cole or say it’s the best thing for you both. He’s been so buried in his work that he doesn’t seem to have noticed the languorous fullness of your movements as you prepare his dinner. Hasn’t noticed your fingers savouring your swollen, reddened lips as he watches television, chats, eats.

You’re a good wife, a good actress: it’s surprisingly easy, the cover-up. You were acting all along and scarcely realising it. But you want to grow old with Cole, you still want that. You’d be perfectly happy never to have sex with your husband again, except to create a child; and you’ve heard that before from married friends. Cole represents something larger than sex: he’s embedded in your life plan.

But where does desire go? Will this fugitive feeling eventually die out? Or now that it’s loosened will it lurk within you into old age, all rangy and discontented, just waiting to trip up your life?

You’ve been careful, Cole will never find out. Gabriel won’t tell, for you’ve been entrusted with a secret about him that virtually guarantees that. How mutually beneficial it all is, how perfect: you’ve found a lover who’ll do exactly what you want.

Who’ll never talk.

Who’s woken you up.