Before She Met Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

in three years of taking her out on Sunday afternoons they’d tried every teashop in North London. As usual, they had chocolate eclairs. Grahamate with his fingers; Alice with a fork. Neither of them commented on this, nor on any of the other ways in which she was growing into a person marked off from the one she might have been if he hadn’t left home. Graham didn’t think it fair to mention such things, and hoped she didn’t notice them herself. She did notice every one of them, of course; but had been taught by Barbara that it was bad manners to point out other people’s bad manners to them.
    After dabbing her lips with a napkin—Don’t be a Human Blowpipe, her mother always said—she remarked neutrally,
    ‘Mummy told me you specially wanted to see that film.’
    ‘Oh, did she? Did she say why?’
    ‘She said you wanted to see Ann in one of … what was it … “her most convincing screen roles”, I think that’s what she said.’ Alice was looking at him solemnly. Graham felt cross; but there was no point in taking it out on Alice.
    ‘I think that might have been one of Mummy’s jokes,’ he said. One of her cleverer ones, too. ‘I tell you what. Why don’t we have a joke back on Mummy? Why don’t we say we tried to get in to
Over the Moon
, but it was packed out, so we had to go and see the new James Bond instead?’ He supposed there was a new James Bond; there usually seemed to be.
    ‘All right.’ Alice smiled, and Graham thought, She does take after me, yes she does. But maybe he only thought that when she agreed with him. They sipped at their tea for a while; then she said,
    ‘It wasn’t a very good film, was it, Daddy?’
    ‘No, I’m afraid it wasn’t.’ Another pause. Then he added, uncertainly, but sensing the question was being invited, ‘What did you think of Ann?’
    ‘I thought she was
rubbish
,’ Alice replied vehemently. She did take after Barbara; he’d got it wrong. ‘She was such a … such a
tart.
’
    Graham, as always, concealed his reaction to her lexical discoveries.
    ‘She was only acting.’ But he sounded conciliatory rather than sage.
    ‘Well, I just think she did it too darn well.’
    Graham looked across at the open, pleasant, but still unformed face of his daughter. Which way would it jump, he wondered: into that odd combination of sharpness and pudginess he now associated with Barbara, or into a thoughtful, tolerant, mellow elongation? For her sake, he hoped she would resemble neither of her parents.
    They finished their tea, and Graham drove her even more slowly than usual back to Barbara’s house. That was how he thought of it nowadays. He used to think of it as their house; now it was just Barbara’s. And it didn’t even have the decency to look different. Graham felt resentful towards the house for not getting itself repainted or something, for not committing some act symbolic of its new, single ownership. But the house was clearly on Barbara’s side. It always had been, he supposed. Every week its sameness was intended to remind him of his … what, treachery?
    Perhaps; though Barbara’s sense of betrayal wasn’t as sharp as she let him continue to believe. She had always been a Marxist about emotions, believing that they shouldn’t just exist for themselves, but should do some work if they were to eat. Besides, she had for some years been more interested in her daughter and her house than in her husband. People expected her to cry thief, and she did so; but she didn’t always believe herself.
    It was the last Sunday of the month: as usual, Barbara let Alice slip in under her elbow and then handed Graham an envelope. It contained details of the month’s additional expenses for which she judged him liable. Occasionally it would be a bill for some reckless treat which Barbara held to be necessary if Alice was ever to overcome the unmappable hurt of Graham’s departure; the claim was unanswerable, his cheque wry.
    Graham stuffed the