Dear Doctor Lily Read Online Free PDF Page A

hands.
    â€˜Please,’
she whispered, ‘I’m not a baby. I’ve never done it before, but I want to, with you. Please, you must.’ It was not like with the bumbling, lunging boys, fighting them off. Paul was holding
her
off. ‘Don’t you want to?’
    â€˜Look, I’m ten years older than you. You’re a virgin. I’m not going to –’
    â€˜Someone’s got to.’
    â€˜Not me. We’ll never see each other again after we get to Boston, and you’d hate me.’
    â€˜No, I love you.’
    â€˜Don’t keep saying that. Let’s just be close. Here, it’s nice like this. Lie quiet. Let’s hold each other. You’re lovely.’
    â€˜One day, then.’
    â€˜There isn’t going to be a one day. I’m sorry, Lily, I have to say that, if you’re hoping I’m going to leave Barbara.’
    â€˜I’m not.’ She was.
    â€˜You’ve got to understand. I have a small son.’
    Oh, you can’t have. You can’t. You can’t be caught up in all that. Hurrying home from work and bending over a cot, smiling and babbling and matching the blue of your eyes to the round, staring ones with their spotless whites. ‘He’s the image of Paul,’ everyone says.
    â€˜I’d never do anything to hurt him… or Barbara. Hush now, quiet,’ he whispered, as tears sprang out of Lily’s eyes and floodedboth their faces. ‘It’s lovely together. Don’t spoil it.’
    Lily wept a little more and shuddered, and looked bleakly at the pain of eternity without him, her body grown cold and empty of desire.
    Still for now, he held her, and she slept.
    When she woke in grey light, he was asleep on his face, his back a graceful landscape of bone and muscle and beautifully designed long curves that she did not dare to touch. Better not wake him anyway, if her face looked as it felt after crying puffily and sleeping.
    At the door, with her coat over her hastily buttoned dress, she turned to look at the small transient room, green walls, metal cupboard and chair, hinged table flap with briefcase, a razor, the vague blue lump of the pullover, the sleeping man on the narrow rumpled bed. Other beds, other men – whatever was ahead of her, she would never forget anything about this.
    â€˜I’m not scared to stand before you this morning.’ Mort’s voice was unusually loud. His little beard waggled. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, your plane is on the runway.’
    Cheers and excitement, and in the stampede out of the mess hall, Paul and Lily came together out of sight in the corner by the dispensing machines, and he kissed her once, gravely.
    â€˜My heart is broken,’ Lily said.
    â€˜No, it isn’t,’ he said kindly.
    â€˜Will you come to London again?’
    â€˜I doubt it. I was only there for the trade fair.’
    â€˜And even if you did …?’
    â€˜Yeah. Even if.’
    He let her go and stood back so she could walk out. She looked round. I will never forget this place, never. She bent down and picked up a plastic spoon off the floor and put it in her pocket. The dream was over.
    The engines started, all four of them, with not even a ragged cheer from the passengers, because it wasn’t funny or frightening any more.
    Lily took Ida’s hand and ran her finger over the courageous little ring. ‘Look, Eye,’ she said, under cover of the engines revving up at the end of the runway. ‘You know, perhaps you shouldn’t marry him, if you’re not really sure.’
    â€˜Who
says?’
Ida pulled her hand away.
    â€˜Well –
you
did. I mean, last night.’
    Fool, fool. Put your foot in it again. Dear Doctor Lily and her advice column, forgot one of the basic rules – don’t remind people what they said. Yesterday’s leftovers are not today’s hot lunch.
    â€˜But I mean.’ She had to plod on, to make sure she had