A Close Connection Read Online Free PDF Page A

must-have list she had already compiled in her head, there must also be a separate grown-updining room. She had seen the very table she wanted already, oval and glass-topped and a bit pricey at just over £2,000 for the table alone but it was modern and edgy and the chairs that accompanied it were bright blue. Her mother would think it ghastly but she wanted to get as far away as possible from the boring traditional.
    After lying stiffly awake thinking about all this for what seemed hours, she finally drifted off to dream about it, only to wake early before the alarm went off and, with last night’s heated words retreating into her sleepy morning head, she relented a little, rolling towards the middle of the bed. To her annoyance, Matthew pretended to be asleep when he plainly was not and she was hanged if she was going to make the first conciliatory move. She wanted an apology which she might just deign to accept if it was a genuine attempt on his part.
    But none was forthcoming.
    ‘Sod you, then,’ she said, making a big deal of sitting up and reaching for her wrap and getting up, banging her toe in the process as she often did on the bedpost, letting out a curse and shutting her ears to what sounded suspiciously like a muffled laugh from her husband’s apparently sleeping form.
    Surprisingly it was their first major row and, up and about now down in the kitchen, it was stinging still, because, until you had a row with somebody, a proper one, you had no real idea how they would react, whether they would be steely-eyed and sullen or downright aggressive, giving as good as they got.
    She had seen the latter reaction recently from a hotel guest who had quite simply ‘lost it’ and it had not been pleasant to see. On that occasion, the manager had to be called for and he had been his usual calm and controlled self, managing to calm the man down and offer an ingratiating and, in her eyes, humiliating apology which duly satisfied the guest.
    Nicola knew she had not handled that situation well, in grave danger of losing it herself and telling the guy, hotel guestor not, where to put his complaint, a complaint that was in her eyes totally unjustified.
    ‘Be careful, Nicola,’ Gerry Gilbert had said, taking her aside and giving her a not very happy look when the guest had departed. ‘I know that guests can be extremely difficult sometimes but you’ve got to learn not to react. You should know by now that one of the cardinal rules is never talk back.’
    ‘I do know that but …’ She was very nearly guilty then of arguing with the manager himself which would have done her no favours whatsoever and, aware that she had earned a black mark, it put her in a rotten mood for the rest of the day.
    But that guest had been a stranger, the row quickly forgotten, and having a good old row with someone you loved was all a bit different with a new dimension added. Her mother and father did not row as such, certainly not full-blown yelling matches, but as she grew up she was often aware of an atmosphere, a peculiar sort of silence, and she quickly learnt that she was best out of the way on occasions such as that until the whole thing, whatever it was, blew over. It wasn’t until she was into her teens that she realized just what the silences had been about. It was a bitter blow too when she realized that her parents’ marriage was far from perfect. Her mother suffered in silence and her father took her very much for granted.
    She had just discovered that Matthew was impossible to argue with, not with any degree of satisfaction, because he simply would not retaliate, much too chilled-out. In some ways, a good old slanging match, quickly over, would have been easier to deal with but he remained irritatingly cool and unmoved, voice level, whilst she felt herself getting hot and bothered, heard her voice rising, which meant ultimately that she was losing the argument as he sat there with a bemused expression on his face, trying in vain