In a Good Light Read Online Free PDF Page A

night – my weeknight off – and we would meet up for a drink.
    We never discussed his family. He made no complaints about his wife’s failure to understand him, as adulterers are widely believed to do. In fact he made it clear that he was not prepared to take any risks that might cause her suspicion or pain. ‘You know I’ll never leave my wife,’ he said, right at the outset, to which I replied, ‘I’ll never leave my brother,’ and we laughed out loud, to find ourselves in such perfect accord.
    Since Rowena told the other girls that I am an ‘Artist’ they have stopped calling me Sad to my face. I can’t see the logic of this: some of my favourite artists were famously sad: Van Gogh, Dora Carrington, Mark Rothko . . . Rowena herself keeps badgering me to do some freelance (and, I suspect, free) artwork for the restaurant, principally a giant mural of the Italian Riviera on the back wall. I’ve tried explaining that I’m a miniaturist: I don’t do big pictures. It’s detail that’s my thing.
    She was on about it again that night, while I was in the staff loo, struggling into my waitress costume, which was slightly crushed from having spent the day in a plastic bag in my car boot. She’s one of those people who doesn’t find a toilet door any barrier to conversation.
    â€˜You could do it the week we’re away,’ she was saying while I buttoned my shirt and peered at my face in the mirror, which was lit by a single, flickering neon strip. ‘The paint smell would have gone by the time we reopen.’
    â€˜Have you got a coat hanger?’ I interrupted. My green linen suit was hitched over a hook on the door like a giant tea-towel, and I didn’t want anyone drying their hands on it. I heard her footsteps retreat and then advance and a wire hanger was thrust under the door.
    â€˜I’ve got a teacher friend who could lend you an overhead projector,’ she went on, undeflected. ‘If that’s how you do it.’
    â€˜Mmm,’ I grunted, dabbing face powder over the remains of that morning’s foundation. The gold compact was my mother’s, and my grandmother’s before that. It had a particular smell, sweet and cloying, like the inside of an old lady’s handbag. All at once I could see mum’s dressing table backat the Old Schoolhouse, with its set of tortoiseshell brushes and her few cosmetics, so infrequently and inexpertly applied.
    â€˜We’ve got to do something about that light,’ I said as I emerged, zipping up my skirt. ‘It adds on about ten years.’
    â€˜I think I’ll just take down the mirror,’ said Rowena. ‘Until this frizz grows out.’ She was recovering from one of those deep-fried perms, which had reacted badly with her previous regime of bleach and colour, to leave her hair as brittle as spun sugar. It looked as though it might melt in the rain.
    â€˜Listen. Have you ever got back in contact with someone after a long silence?’ I asked her.
    She put her head on one side to consider, happy to abandon the matter of the mural. She is used to my strategy of refusing to engage with topics that don’t appeal.
    â€˜No, I can’t say I have,’ she said finally. ‘I think I’m probably still in contact with everyone I’ve ever known, apart from my ex-husbands, I mean. I sort of collect people.’
    â€˜Well, I seem to mislay them,’ I said, as we made our way upstairs to the restaurant. I explained about coming across Cassie. ‘So what’s the best way of tracing an address?’
    â€˜You could get her number from Directory Enquiries, if her surname isn’t too common.’
    â€˜I’m not sure I want to phone in the first instance. I’d rather write.’
    Rowena chewed her lip. ‘Do you know anyone corruptible who works for the police or the DVLA?’
    I raised my eyebrows. ‘I