Holloway Falls Read Online Free PDF Page A

glass.
    For three years, Kate had lived with a man called Adrian in a Clifton mansion flat that overlooked the suspension bridge. Adrian had not reported Holloway or pressed charges for assaulting him the previous New Year’s Eve.
    ‘Kate,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’ He was breathless.
    She had ordered drinks. A bottle of Chablis, a large bottle of mineral water. A half-drunk glass of each on the table before her. He sat, poured a tumbler of water, drained it. Then poured a glass of wine. Drained half of it. Looked up.
    ‘Oops,’ he said, and set the glass on the table.
    She raised an eyebrow.
    ‘So,’ she said. ‘Why the delay? Armed siege?’
    He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. Taste of salt.
    ‘Ha. No. No: I popped in on Grace. I hadn’t been for a while. Sorry.’
    Like his great-aunt’s, his wife’s face softened.
    She said: ‘It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t remember, anyway.’
    He shrugged.
    ‘Oh, the women in your life,’ she said.
    He smiled, trying to be good-natured.
    ‘Have you been waiting long?’
    ‘Five minutes? I knew you’d be late.’
    Seeing her smile for knowing him well made his stomach tumble. The previous weekend he’d bought a new suit and tie from Next. He’d worn it for the first time this morning. He hoped he looked OK.
    Kate was tanned. She wore a summer dress and flat, strappy sandals. Her hair was dark, cut short: a blunt fringe, feathered across her ears. To him she looked very beautiful.
    He remembered similar summer days, similar bars. Since the final dissolution of their marriage, she had acquired a certain serenity, a contentment the profundity of which hurt him.
    ‘So,’ she said. ‘How are you keeping?’
    He leaned his forearms on the table, knitted his fingers.
    ‘So-so. You know. Broken heart. Not sleeping.’
    She sipped chilled wine.
    ‘No, really.’
    ‘ Really really?’
    ‘Really really really.’
    He smiled. Deep, fond lines at the corners of his eyes, radiating. ‘I’m not sleeping too badly. Considering. Still seeing the hippie counsellor.’
    ‘You’re still going ?’
    It was nice to surprise rather than disappoint her.
    ‘Still going. Once a week. Twice, if I experience an urge to take a brick to someone’s head.’
    ‘That’s really good .’
    ‘That’s really embarrassing .’
    She laughed, and he laughed and for two or three seconds they were husband and wife.
    He wiped the corner of an eye with a knuckle.
    ‘You’ll tell him that?’
    That Holloway see a counsellor was Adrian’s condition for not pressing charges and losing Holloway his job.
    Adrian was a barrister.
    She shook her head.
    ‘He still has nightmares. He wakes up at night. He thinks you’re in the flat.’
    He laughed, and his snaggle tooth caught briefly on his lower lip.
    ‘Come on . He’s six feet fucking two inches tall and he bench-presses Volkswagens.’
    She smiled.
    You’re smiling because I was able to hurt him , he thought.
    ‘You know what it’s like.’ The smile fell and weather passed behind her eyes. ‘Imagine how he’d feel. Me here, drinking with you.’
    A pleasant, sinuous twist of vitriol inside him.
    ‘He doesn’t know you’re here?’
    ‘He doesn’t want me anywhere near you. He thinks you’re deranged.’
    The pleasure modulated in less than a second to something like agony.
    ‘For Christ’s sake.’
    He read her face, closed his eyes.
    ‘Sorry. Forget the Wurzel.’
    ‘He’s not a Wurzel. He’s from Bath. He went to Cambridge.’
    With that, he laughed. Later he would sob into his knees, as he did every time he saw or spoke to or sometimes thought about her.
    She said: ‘I don’t know why I bother,’ and slapped the back of his hand, gently enough. ‘You arsehole.’
    He drained the wine, poured a second. He lifted the glass and examined the light through it. ‘Beautiful,’ he said.
    ‘See?’ she said. ‘You’re learning to enjoy it.’
    ‘Hm,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking of taking a class. In the