Husbands Read Online Free PDF Page A

and I am sure I can still smell the blood. It isn’t the right shape to accommodate a long bar and leave space for clusters of tables and chairs; necessary to facilitate gossip and giggles. The chairs fall into an awkward line and always need shuffling.
    ‘Morning,’ says Laura. She bends and kisses my cheek. One not two because we don’t work in the media and neither of us is French.
    ‘You look lovely,’ I say.
    ‘I look terrible,’ she states with no self-pity.
    Neither of us is accurate. She looks OK. She could look lovely. She could be a total babe but usually she looks like what she is, a fraught mum. Her babe status would be immediately more attainable if she stood up straight. She’s tall, about five ten. I’m not quite five two. Clearly, God gave her the extra four inches that weresupposed to come my way. A clerical error among the angels, no doubt. She doesn’t know how wonderful it is to be tall. She doesn’t understand the frustration of not being able to see your way to the bar in a busy club or having to lop a good four inches off every pair of trousers purchased.
    I’d love it if she was able to somehow recapture the magnificence I have seen evidence of. Old photos of Laura in her early twenties show a curvy woman, with big breasts, strong shoulders and thighs. I think Laura started to shrink after Eddie was born. By the time he was two years old he weighed three stone and Laura had lost the same amount. Every spare scrap of fat and flesh seemed to fall and melt from her. When Oscar left she seemed to lose height too. She stoops so badly now that her shoulders almost meet in the middle of her chest.
    Laura also has lovely hair; naturally blonde and curly. She generally scrapes it back into a functional, no-nonsense ponytail. On the rare occasion when she lets it escape it bounces energetically around her face, in a mass of intoxicating ringlets which bring her sprinkling of freckles to life. Her curls defy the truth of her life as they insist everything is fun and merriment, one long crazy giggle. I think this is why she keeps her hair tied up; she doesn’t like to be sardonic. Today she is wearing a T-shirt I haven’t seen before and I feel it’s polite to acknowledge it. ‘Nice top.’
    Laura grins, ‘It is, isn’t it? I got it in Top Shop. You know how cool their stuff is.’
    I do. We used to shop there together. Saturday mornings would be spent pawing over the messy railsof disposable fashion. We would arm-wrestle for the last pair of (deeply unsuitable) purple hot pants. We’d take turns at guarding Eddie’s pushchair and trying on shimmery, flimsy tops and pretty embroidered skirts. It was a fun way to spend thirty quid.
    We don’t see as much of each other at weekends now. Laura and Eddie sometimes pop by on a Sunday morning but Saturdays are for me and Philip. I sometimes feel a bit guilty about this but Laura assures me there is nothing to feel bad about. She insists that I should spend time with my husband, that it is ‘only right’. I love being with Phil so in that sense it is ‘only right’ but somehow, when Laura says as much, she manages to sound more traditional than Mary Whitehouse.
    ‘Why do we meet here?’ asks Laura. ‘There are dozens of lovely little coffee shops in Wimbledon or Shepherd’s Bush and Starbucks is so soulless.’
    ‘Because it’s central for us both and we’ve tried the wee independents and they sell tepid instant coffee,’ I remind her.
    ‘Oh yes, why aren’t things like I imagine them to be?’ She grins.
    ‘Rough morning?’ I ask sympathetically. Despite the new T-shirt and almost permanent smile both Laura and I know that her lot is not a carefree one. It would be patronizing if I totally bought into her cheery persona.
    ‘Not especially. Except when I dropped Eddie off at kindie he clung to me and sobbed.’
    ‘I thought he was settled.’
    ‘He was. He is. He’s probably just playing me.’ Laura carries more Catholic guilt