Forever Yours Read Online Free PDF Page B

one of his faded sunbeam wrinkles. For him, “then” obviously meant “straightaway”, Judith thought as he prepared to pay.
8
    She’d picked up the lamp that stood beside her ochre sofa in the living room in an antiques shop in Rotterdam. The adjustable shades hung from a thick, curved stalk like laburnum blossom. The light source flowed back into itself and petered out. The room got no more than the rays it needed.
    It had taken Judith ages to set all the shades at the optimal angles. Now the light had the ability to make even the most tired eyes twinkle, the gloomiest faces shine, and bring the saddest people to laughter. Had Judith been a psychotherapist, she would have simply sat her patients here for a few minutes in silence, and afterwards asked them what worries they had, or if they could remember them at all.
    Judith was so receptive to intimate lighting and its effects that she could sense it even now, when her eyes were closed, at the solemn ceremony of her first kiss with Hannes kiss. What had Lara asked on the phone? “Is it nice kissing him?” Nice? Kissing him? She touched his lips with her fingers, he put his hand at the back of her neck and gently pulled her head towards his. Then she could feel him in several places at once, spread over her entire body. His legs clamped hers. His left shoulder was pushed firmly against her torso. His elbows brushed her hips, his arms squeezed her narrow waist and then inched upwards. His hands took hold of both sides of her neck and fixed her head. She was in a tight clinch when his lips positioned themselves for a landing on her mouth, like the wheels of a heavy aeroplane on soft tarmac. They bumped up and down a few times then dropped and vacuumed tightly to hers. Judith opened her mouth and released her tongue, which proceeded to be tossed all over the place, as if in the spin cycle of a full wash.
    She slapped the back of his head with the hand she was able to free. “Hey, not so hard, I can’t breathe,” she complained. “Oh, my darling, I’m so sorry,” he whispered into her ear. Only now did she open her eyes. The sight of him reassured her. Hannes looked contrite, like a clumsy schoolboy who’s done it all wrong again.
    “Do you always kiss so… violently?” she asked. “No, it’s just, it’s just, it’s just…” He needed three run-ups. “It’s just that I love you so much, I don’t know what to do,” he said beseechingly. O.K., she thought: an acceptable argument. “But that doesn’t mean you have to swallow me up, lock, stock and barrel,” she said gently. He gave an embarrassed smile; his eyes beamed in the light of the laburnum lamp.
    Judith: “You have to be gentle with me, I’m made of porcelain.” She tapped the tip of his nose with her index finger. He placed his hands tenderly on her cheeks. Her: “Why are you trembling?” Him: “I want you so badly.” Her: “Do you want to sleep with me?” Him: “Yes.” Her: “Do it, then.” Him: “Yes.” Her: “But we’re keeping the light on.”

PHASE THREE
1
    June started out hot and dry. The daylight shone bright white, as if from a cosmic neon tube. Sunglasses were required to make out colours. The small azalea bush on her roof terrace had dropped the last of its red blooms. But now the huge weeping fig, which Hannes had brought over, was pushing out one shoot after another. Judith intended to go on gazing at it until the autumn, when sadly she would have to prune it.
    *
    Sitting on the stone steps, she closed her eyes and focused on the yellowy-white blocks forced beneath her lids by the sun, hoping that she might fathom something about herself. She was impatient, she wanted to know there and then what had happened to her over the past few weeks, why she was where she was, and where she was in the first place. Indeed, where was she?
    Did she want a man? (Not especially, not anymore.) One “for life”? (Only on certain conditions.) Hadn’t she already gone through