How to Be Good Read Online Free PDF Page B

David, and attraction and all the rest of it no longer seems to apply: we have sex with each other because we have agreed not to have sex with anyone else, not because we can’t keep our hands to ourselves.
    And now, with Stephen begging in front of me, I do feel a little bit of vanity creeping in. Vanity! I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror in my surgery, and for a moment, just a second, I can see why someone would go to all the trouble of putting his arm in a sling. I’m not being monstrously vain, after all: I’m not saying that I could see why someone would want to throw themselves off a cliff, or starve themselves to death, or sit at home listening to sadmusic and downing a bottle of whisky. The sling must have taken him all of twenty minutes to knock up, and that’s presuming a certain degree of incompetence; throw in the drive from Kentish Town and we’re talking about a maximum of forty-five minutes of inconvenience, very little expense and absolutely no pain. It’s hardly Fatal Attraction , is it? No, I have a sense of proportion about this, and though it would be preposterous to presume that I’m worth much more than a fake sling, I do suddenly have the sense of being worth that much, and this is an entirely new and not altogether unwelcome feeling. If I were single, or had recently embarked on the latest in a long string of relationships, I would think that Stephen’s behaviour was pathetic, or threatening, or annoying, at least; but I’m not single, I’m a married woman, and as a paradoxical consequence I tell him that I’ll meet him for a drink after work.
    â€˜Really?’ He sounds amazed, as if he knows he’s overstepped the mark, and no woman in her right mind would agree to a date in these circumstances; for a moment, my new-found sexual confidence takes a knock.
    â€˜Really. Ring me on my mobile later. But please go, and let me see someone who has something wrong with them.’
    â€˜Shall I take the sling off? Make it look as though you’ve cured me?’
    â€˜Don’t be stupid. But maybe you could lose the limp on the way out.’
    â€˜Too much?’
    â€˜Too much.’
    â€˜Right-o. See you later.’
    And he strides cheerfully out of the room.
    Â 
    With a choreographer’s sense of timing, Becca walks in seconds later – she must have pushed past Stephen on her way.
    â€˜I need to talk to you,’ she says. ‘I owe you an apology.’
    â€˜What for?’
    â€˜Do you ever do that thing where you lie in bed and you can’t sleep so you end up writing out recent conversations you’ve had? So they look like a play?’
    â€˜No.’ I love Becca, but it has begun to occur to me that she might be potty.
    â€˜Well, you should. It’s fun. I keep them. Look through them, sometimes.’
    â€˜You should get the person you had the conversation with to come round and read their part out loud.’
    She looks at me, and makes a face, as if I am the potty one.
    â€˜What would be the point of that? Anyway. You know the last time we went out for pizza?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜I was, you know, writing out the conversation. And I remembered all that stuff about your brother. But – don’t laugh, OK – did you say something about having an affair?’
    â€˜Shhh! Shhh!’ I push the door shut behind her.
    â€˜My God! You did, didn’t you!’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜And I just ignored you.’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Katie, I’m so sorry. I wonder why I did that?’
    I make a face to show that I cannot help her.
    â€˜Are you OK?’
    â€˜Yes. Just about.’
    â€˜So what’s going on?’
    It’s interesting, listening to the tones in her voice. And there are tones plural there. There’s the girly-golly-gosh, I-want-to-hear-all-about-it tone, of course, but she knows David, she knows Tom and Molly, so there is caution there,