Looking for Trouble Read Online Free PDF Page A

stained. The stitching was frayed, the laces grubby. ‘Well, they didn’t like me.’
    ‘So,’ she stretched out her hands, ‘they’ve no taste. Another?’ She picked up her glass.
    ‘Not yet.’
    Diane walked over to the bar. She was a big, fat woman. She insisted on using that description. After twenty years of being miserable on diet after diet, she’d rebelled. Joined a group formed after the publication of Fat Is A Feminist Issue and had come to like her size and to flaunt it. Tonight, she sported a bright turquoise and gold knee-length tunic with gold leggings. She walked gracefully, light-footed for all her weight.
    I stretched and twisted in my seat. My left shoulder ached. It’s the side I carry the kids on, the side that tenses up when I drive, when I’m worried.
    Diane set her drink down and tossed me a bag of nuts.
    ‘Well,’ she pronounced, ‘maybe this’ll be the one that got away.’
    I grimaced.
    ‘You can’t expect to solve every case, can you?’ She opened her own peanuts and picked a couple out.
    ‘But that bothers me...’
    ‘Perfectionist.’
    ‘No, it’s not that. If I’m taking the money, I want to make it worthwhile. Get some sort of result.’ I tugged at the packet of nuts. The plastic stretched but didn’t tear.
    ‘But if this lad’s disappeared, doesn’t want to be found, then maybe that’s the result. Missing without trace or whatever they call it. Anyway, there’s loads of times when people shell out money for no result.’
    ‘Such as?’ I tried using my teeth on the packet.
    ‘Estimates for work, eye tests when nothing’s changed, structural surveys; I had to fork out for three of those before I found a place that wasn’t falling down.’
    I grunted and made another attack on the peanuts. Shit. Salted nuts cascaded around the table and floor. I salvaged what I could.
    ‘Anyway,’ I sighed, ‘there’s that, and the phone isn’t exactly hot with clients, plus the children were driving me…’
    ‘Don’t talk to me about children,’ Diane groaned.
    I bit my tongue. Our relationship has weathered the difficulties of me having a child and she choosing not to, but it hasn’t always been easy. There’ve been times when motherhood has dominated my thoughts and feelings. When I’ve needed to talk about all the contradictions. But not with Diane. She’s happy with an occasional update. She has a rough idea of how hard it can be and she’s glad she’s not a mother.
    ‘It’s Ben,’ she explained. ‘We had a talk.’
    Ben and Diane had been going out for over a year. Their relationship had started off casually through a lonely hearts column and had gained in intensity. At New Year, Ben had suggested that they live together. Diane had declined. Since then things had been just as intense but edged with the unspoken agenda of commitment.
    ‘He wants children?’
    ‘He’s always denied it before,’ she began, ‘or at least said he wasn’t bothered either way. But, well, his sister’s just produced one and he’s all gooey-eyed about it. Wants to drag me along to the christening.’
    ‘You don’t want to go?’
    ‘It’s in Budleigh-Salterton, for Christ’s sake. Can you imagine it? Hours getting there and back. Church, family. I spent years getting away from all that. Why can’t he just leave things as they are?’
    ‘Maybe he wants to know where it’s going.’
    ‘Why do we have to be going anywhere? It’s a relationship, not a bloody day trip.’
    ‘Things get stale, Diane, if there’s no change on the horizon, no events looming.’
    ‘It’s been fine up till now.’
    I raised my eyebrows.
    ‘Oh, I know he was disappointed about not living together,’ she retorted, ‘but I thought he understood my reasons. Now he seems to be getting all broody. Not that he’ll admit it.’
    We carried on in this vein through another couple of rounds, till chucking out time.
    I was tucked up and dreaming before midnight.
    The bell kept ringing for last