Читать книгу Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You - Nikki Gemmell - Страница 86

few women pass through life without being called upon to nurse a relation or friend

Your mother rings. Theo has called.

Really? Why?

I don’t know. She just wanted a chat. She remembered it was my birthday.

I haven’t spoken to her for a while.

She said that.

We had a bit of a falling out.

She said that, too. What was it about?

Oh, things. I just felt that she was crowding me. I was beginning to feel a bit suffocated by her.

It’s not such a bad thing, perhaps. People come and go. I always thought she was so high-maintenance. Exhausting, you know that.

Your mother’s reservations about Theo used always to be the flint for another fight but you see it now, she’s right. Your best friend was vastly entertaining but the flip side was the constant calling, the jealousy at any new lover or friend and, most smothering of all, the insistent interventions in your own life. Your mother had categorised Theo as overwhelming from the age of thirteen: she’d requested you be placed in separate classes at the start of the next term and out of fury at her meddling you didn’t speak to her for a month.

She said that Tomas and her are trying for a baby, she says now, as the conversation winds down.

Oh?

She wanted you to know.

Oh.

So, Theo gets in first. She always does, from starting her period at eleven to losing her virginity at eighteen to getting married: and now this. Why has she chosen to keep you informed, does she want you to know that something has passed?

You hadn’t told your mother about Cole and her; dreading the knowing in her voice, perhaps, wanting to sort it all out for yourself. Now, it doesn’t seem worth letting her know. You’re moving beyond it. The rage is softening from you, at last; like a fire collapsing into its embers, it’s almost out.