Illegal Liaisons Read Online Free PDF Page B

started, immediately on edge.
    “It’s me,” he heard.
    “Megi?” He barely calmed his voice. “Your number hasn’t come up.”
    “I’m calling from work. Listen, I’m not going to manage to take Antosia riding today. I’ve got to hand in the report by tomorrow.”
    “I’ll take her, no problem.”
    “Thank you, darling!”
    Pssss … The air started to go out of his scented visions of Andrea.
    “Are you there?” asked Megi.
    “I love you.” He heard his own voice.
    “And I love you,” she reassured him hurriedly. “I’ve got to finish. Got a meeting.”
    Jonathan arrived at the school too early. The playground was still empty, although a hubbub had started in the building like in an enormous beehive. He sat down on the wall next to a few mothers.
    “… a trip to the farm, they’re asking parents to help look after the children,” a beautiful Italian was saying in a heavy accent. At a distance it sounded as though she were speaking in her own language. “But I can’t go. I’m frightened of poultry and farm animals.”
    “Do you swell up?” The Japanese woman spoke English like a five-year-old, syllable by syllable.
    The Italian fell silent for a moment, disorientated.
    “I’m not allergic,” she explained. “I simply panic.”
    The Japanese woman froze and Jonathan observed the Italian; madwoman or not, she really wasn’t bad.
    “And I find live fish repulsive.” A third woman joined in, her accent flat, Finnish. “And stuffed animals.”
    “I dislike open spaces,” admitted the Japanese woman, “and closed rooms.”
    Jonathan considered the technical aspect of this paradox and heard the familiar voice of the farmer from Ohio.
    “
Dupa
[ass/pussy],” the American greeted him.
    “Good afternoon,” replied Jonathan, making room for him on the wall.
    “How are things with you?”
    “Great. And you?”
    “What a day, what a day …”
    “We’re looking for parents who might be willing to go with the children to the farm,” the Italian began, as she approached them with the Japanese woman. “The school’s arranging a trip but they need someone to keep an eye on the children. With all those animals about. Maybe you could help?”
    “Me?” the farmer made sure.
    “You,” the Japanese woman nodded. Unintentionally, the concentration with which she spoke English made her sound cruel.
    Once in the car, Jonathan asked the children how school had gone. They started telling him as he wondered how old Andrea could be. Probably over thirty, the age at which true women blossom, when the manner of a woman is superimposed on the looks of a girl – the thing that excited him most.
    He overtook a Peugeot which was manoeuvring clumsily and registered the noise coming from behind.
    “Stop arguing,” he muttered automatically.
    “Then tell him to stop copying me!”
    “I’m not copying her.” Tomaszek was cross.
    “And what did you do today, son?” Jonathan changed tactics.
    “We copied squirrels,” answered the boy.
    “Ha, ha,” said Antosia. “Hiding nuts?”
    Jonathan pulled away from the lights. Andrea was shapely and slim while also being so appetizingly full-figured that he wanted to squeeze her.
    “No, no!” Tomaszek grew more and more annoyed. “We walked behind them, you know, behind them …”
    “You followed them?” Jonathan prompted.
    “Exactly!”
    He didn’t even know whether she had any children. He knew it had not left a trace on her figure; nowadays forty-year-olds looked better than twenty-year-olds. Megi, having given birth twice, had a better figure than before. Why then, when thinking about his wife, had he for some time been changing the letters in the word “sexy” to “sensible”?
    Andrea had small breasts and beneath them a narrow waist and round hips.
    “Daddy, the lights.”
    “Yes, yes, the lights.”
    “They’re green,” Antosia explained patiently. “You can go.”
    “Oh, right!”
    Objectively, it was easy to admire Andrea.