All the Hopeful Lovers Read Online Free PDF

easier, but instead it gets much harder. When they’re little and in distress they come crying to you, they tell you about their bad dreams and their broken friendships. It’s easy then to take them in your arms and love them, giving them with kisses and caresses the comfort they need. What is a mother if she can’t comfort her children? The impulse is so primitive, so overwhelming. But neither Jack nor Carrie seek her comfort now. When she tries to find out what’s making them unhappy they get angry with her and ask to be left alone. So she leaves them alone. But that doesn’t lessen the ache in her.
    I’d rather be unhappy myself.
    Not some self-dramatizing pose: simply the truth. If she could save her children from unhappiness by taking their pain onto herself she would gladly do it. When you’re hurt yourself you can do things to mitigate the pain. When your children are hurt, all you can do is suffer.
    Laura thinks then of Diana’s children, who’ve grown up to be such self-possessed young Londoners. Isla, now twenty-two, making money as a model, without of course taking it seriously as a career. Max at Oxford, but already interning at one of the big international banks, Credit Suisse, is it? Jack and Carrie so clumsy and provincial by comparison. Lonely, surly, struggling to find their place in the world. But so gallant, both of them. So precious and so beautiful.
    Live your own lives, my darlings. I won’t burden you with the need to be happy for my sake. But when the clouds lift, I’ll be here waiting for you.
    Diana is already in the Hayward lobby, impatiently glancing from the exhibition programme in her hands to the people drifting in and out of the gallery. Laura sees her before she is seen: her older sister, her lifelong companion, the person with the power to annoy her most in the world. You’d think when you both pass the age of fifty some kind of truce could be declared, some plateau of maturity achieved. But as soon as she sets eyes on Diana Laura is six years old again, and Diana is nine, and Diana holds all the cards.
    ‘Where have you been, Laura? I’ve been here for ever.’
    Laura compliments Diana on her coat, clearly a new acquisition: purple wool, fitted to the waist, then flared. It looks chic on Diana’s bird-like frame. But her face has grown thinner. Laura can feel her unhappiness like a shiver in the air.
    ‘Prada,’ Diana says. ‘Bicester Village, forty per cent off.’ She offers no comment on Laura’s own appearance. ‘Come along, then. Let’s do the rooms.’
    She nods to a passing couple, murmuring to Laura, ‘You must know him, he owns the Wolseley.’ Laura knows nobody. Diana is in her element as metropolitan guide to her country sister. Presumably this is why Laura has been summoned to meet her in an art gallery. Diana appreciates the avant-garde much more in the company of one who is, artistically speaking, bringing up the rear.
    The show is called BREAK OUT, and features installations by three artists. The first installation is a complete recreated prison cell, built out of real concrete blocks with real iron doors and real bars in the window. The front wall has been ripped open, leaving a big jagged hole. Through this hole can be seen a realistic corpse hanging by a twist of sheet from the window bars. It’s called Break Out .
    Diana casts a rapid eye over the scene.
    ‘Interesting,’ she says.
    Laura stares at the artwork and feels her usual sense of bewilderment. How does one judge something like this? It’s disturbing to look at, which is presumably part of the point. The hole in the wall should have offered the prisoner a way out, but instead he has hanged himself. Is that interesting?
    But already Diana is moving on.
    The second room contains a sculpture in plastic of a life-size pregnant woman. Through the translucent skin of her distended belly can be seen a grotesque foetus, an armoured creature with long clawed fingers. The claws pierce the plastic