Other People's Husbands Read Online Free PDF Page B

hippy late sixties right through to what she called the ‘amusements’ that she’d indulged in during her three marriages. Would that be it for ever now for Cass, she wondered? No lovers, just half-forgotten pet rabbits to count when lying awake and weepily sleepless in this tiny, tatty flat?
    Paul. She could guess where he was now. He’d be in the Union bar playing pool and eyeing up the Sports Science students. He liked a firm, tight bum on a girl and where better to find one than on a sleek, springy athlete? He’d liked Cass’s; swore (though mostly when he was pissed) that he still liked it, but then the other night he’d asked her (and there had been, as he’d asked, an element of heading for a staircase in the pitch dark), did it always take this long to get back into shape after a baby?
    â€˜How the hell should I know?’ Cass had shrieked, out-raged by the question, screaming out insecurity of which he should have been more aware. She didn’t feel like a girl any more. She’d crossed over into woman-land, mother-land, and would never come back. Paul, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be in any way different since fatherhood. He was just the same silly what’s-the-hassle lad .
    She looked at the clock beside the bed. Charlie wouldn’t sleep much longer – it was hardly worth starting the essay now, and she’d only made half a page of scrappy notes anyway. If she started, it would either all be rushed rubbish or she’d have to break off and would lose the thread when she went back to it. She was taking Charlie over to her parents’ place for dinner too, which took out the whole evening and meant that yet again the work wouldn’t get done. Not that she minded, really – the thought of home food and home comfort and even sharing table space with her prickly know-it-all older sister was almost enough to make her sob with longing.
    This wasn’t working. Paul should have been home an hour ago. He’d promised that today he’d come back early and deal with all the surplus junk in the tiny space she could hardly call a hallway: the surfboards still sandy from his previous weekend’s trip to Croyde, the skis that had been there since February, the heap of smelly trainers. He’d turn up eventually, all dopey grin and ‘sorry’ in that annoying public-school drawl that became ever more incomprehensible and devoid of consonants the drunker he got. The sink was full of dishes (his), the bedroom was a junk shop of abandoned clothes (his) and cheap rubbish furniture (the landlord’s). Drawer fronts were coming apart and the wardrobe door was off, leaning against the wall. Cassandra and the baby were a tiny, tidy island in the middle of the chaos.
    â€˜Sod it,’ Cass murmured, looking at the debris. She didn’t want this disorder around her perfect new-minted child. Paul had promised he’d change, be more organized, keep things clean, respect the baby’s newness and fragility and make at least some effort to try and hit the standards aimed for, surely, by any parent. But the reality was that nothing had changed for him, unless you counted the way all the girls, many of whom would never previously have given him a second look, thought him ‘so sweet’ for the way he was with Charlie. How little it took – he only had to push the buggy into the college and they were all round him like flies on meat, going ‘aaaah, cute’ and not just at the baby. Other than that, well, life ticked on just the same for him – bar/football/getting wrecked/daytime telly/ Monster Munch.
    Cass reached under the bed and hauled out a couple of big bags. She packed quickly – there wasn’t much here that was hers, really. So many of her clothes still didn’t fit her that she’d left them at home in her old room, hardly able to bear to see them, let alone bring them back to this scuzzy little