A Minor Indiscretion Read Online Free PDF

Ali?”
    â€œEveryone’s entitled to look every now and again,” Ed said and gulped his beer, chasing it with the last cheese-and-onion crisp and wondering why his cheeks and his ears felt as if they were glowing.

CHAPTER 5
    I really can’t believe I’m doing this. Really, I can’t. I have taken an early lunch from work and am sitting—yes, you guessed it—at the Covent Garden Café eating a baguette which might be a lump of cardboard for all I know. And that’s not a criticism of the food here, it’s more to do with the state of my mind. I lasted a week before I did this though. Which, I think, all things considered, wasn’t bad going. And until I got here, I’d almost managed to convince myself that all I wanted was a cold coffee and a cardboard sandwich at a convivial hostelry and wasn’t the slightest bit interested in seeing if Christian was still around and how many other older women with dubious hair he might be drawing as an act of kindness.
    I don’t know if you can understand how I feel. It’s like when you used to leave a disgusting, fallen-out tooth under your pillow at night and, miraculously, in the morning the tooth would have vanished and in its place would be a shiny fifty-pence piece. (Although the going rate in our house now ranges from a pound to a fiver depending on the level of pain endured in pulling out the offending tooth. Tanya lost one of her front teeth going over the handlebars of her bike, which is worth five pounds of anyone’s money.) But, in my heart of hearts, I always knew that it was too good to be true. Why would anyone, let alone a fairy, wanta manky, bloody tooth in return for money? The tooth fairy always seemed to get a raw deal, and it left me with a nagging sense of doubt. Why would anyone do that? And that’s what this feels like, in a peculiar sort of way. Although I’m not sure I can really compare Christian to the tooth fairy, I think I can empathize wholeheartedly with the manky tooth.
    Life was very quiet at the Kath Brown Design Studio this morning. See, I told you she had a boring name. Not that there’s anything wrong with being called Kath Brown, per se. It’s just not a sexy designer-type name, is it? Perhaps if she changed it to Kathy or Katy Brown or even Kat Browne, it might perk it up a bit. Anyway, whatever. Things are quiet and I’m going to take a whole hour for lunch. So I might just eat this baguette quickly and nip off into Neal’s Yard to see if I can find something quirky or pretentiously New Agey that I don’t need so that I can justify my being here.
    The square is busy. Maybe that’s because the sun has deigned to come out. By the café there is a man painted from head to foot in gold with a squeaker in his mouth; not unexpectedly, he is squeaking at passersby, who in turn throw him money. There is a puppet theater called The Amazing International Theatre of Dolls, which consists of row upon row of wrecked-looking Barbie and Ken dolls and the odd Action Man thrown in who are dressed in bizarre clothes and are being made to mime along to popular hit tunes by an equally bizarrely dressed man who is desperately trying to make it look like there is some sort of skill involved. Across the street, a beautiful bohemian brunette is playing Vivaldi like an angel on a battered violin and making it look like there’s no skill involved at all. It’s a strange world, isn’t it? But, try as I do not to look, there is no sign of Christian anywhere.
    I pay my bill and wander into the market. I could take the direct route up James Street and past the Tube station, but you never know, I might find something in the market that I can’t live without. Well, I might. As I pass through the rows of painted glass and silk T-shirts, it seems unlikely, and then, as I get to the other end near the back of the Opera House, he’s there.
    He has his back to me and he is