Nyctophobia Read Online Free PDF Page A

European tour, spreading largesse before she heads back to New York. She leaves tomorrow. My daughter is going with her until the end of the school holidays. She loves having Bobbie come to stay, so long as she can return her.’
    ‘So you’re divorced.’
    ‘I would have hoped it was obvious. I wouldn’t have let you kiss me otherwise.’
    ‘But you were flirting.’
    He held out his hands. ‘You have me there.’
    ‘Your wife, is she American?’
    ‘From Colorado originally. Maddie was very smart, very ambitious, now she’s very successful and very driven. When I met her she had just arrived in Manhattan. But you know, New York is a city that takes over some people. Five years after we married I took her to Madrid. She hated every second of being there and told me she was going back to NYC. I said I didn’t want to, so she asked for a divorce. Bobbie was seven. I think we had both realised by that time that our lives had taken a wrong turn. It was just over two years ago.’
    I stopped before the building entrance. I couldn’t let him come up because the corridors reeked of disinfectant and the flat was a mess. I said, ‘I’d ask you up but my mother –’ It was hard to explain the situation. I had more confidence with men of my own age. A sharp remark could always nail the young ones in place but Mateo was different. It was as if he saw who I was, and still didn’t mind.
    He had the good grace to gloss over my excuse. ‘Are you doing anything the day after tomorrow?’ he asked. ‘If not, we could make a day of it. Saturday, I’m not working.’
    ‘Neither am I.’ I didn’t tell him that I was not working any day.
    ‘Perfect. Then I’ll pick you up at ten o’clock.’
    This time I agreed without thinking twice.
    ‘Good.’ He stopped and looked about himself as if mentally ticking off boxes. ‘So – here. The day after tomorrow. Ten. Till then.’
    I don’t really remember much about the next few meetings. All I know is that the more I learned about Mateo, the more I liked him. He was generous and thoughtful, and had high expectations of life which he seemed able to realise without stamping on other people, and that made him very appealing. I soon learned that he could also be opinionated and stubborn and rather old-fashioned, but he understood his own limitations. Best of all he took everyone at face value, regardless of age and social standing, with the freshness and innocence of a younger man.
    In a carefully chosen selection of expensive bars and restaurants, the kind he sensed I had never been able to afford, we talked late into each night about pretty much everything, although I was careful to avoid going into my past. I know it was cowardly, but I’d spent a long time building up my defence mechanisms, and they weren’t easy to dismantle. Besides, Mateo was seriously old-school Spanish Catholic – albeit one with an eye for much younger women – and I didn’t want to give him any reasons to think less of me.
    We began dating in earnest. I realised that because of his job I would be spending a good deal of time alone, but he called me at the same time every night from wherever he had to be. I learned to be patient because I had never met anyone like him, and wasn’t sure if I ever would again.
    We made love on our seventh date. I tried so hard to please him that I made the whole thing awkward and embarrassing.
    Seventeen weeks later, we got married. Yeah, I know, a shock to me too. Mateo’s parents lived in New York’s Upper West Side near his ex-wife, and showed their disapproval by finding excuses not to attend our wedding ceremony, which was performed at Islington Town Hall in North London. My mother came along with Sandy, and they spent the day finding ways to suggest that I wasn’t good enough for such a saintly man. I stopped talking to Anne after she darkly warned me that Mateo would leave once he knew about my past. I’d wanted to tell him everything but it was