Plastic Read Online Free PDF Page B

help yourself, it stops you from thinking about anything important. Now you’ll have to do some thinking.’
    ‘Gordon, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to do it but perhaps I’m under more stress than I realised, I mean about us –’
    ‘You were doing this when you had no stress at all, June. God, all you have to do for a quiet life is make the bed and vacuum occasionally, buy a few bits of shopping. It’s not brain surgery, is it?’
    My immediate reaction was to wonder if Gordon would force me to pay my debts. All I had in my current account was what I entered by standing order every month. I had spent all my savings. I had no idea how much I owed. The thought that I was suddenly accountable was frightening because I had seen the shoes on my last little outing.
    They weren’t Jimmy Choos or Manolo Blahniks, just a French designer I’d never heard of. But they were the most beautiful pair of shoes in the world, pearlised stilettos, a catwalk one-off in my size. I knew I was too fat-legged for them, and had nowhere to wear them anyway. Logical thinking doesn’t belong in the world of women’s footwear.
    The electronic shutters were already coming down in the shop window, and in the time I took to prevaricate over this podiatric pulchritude, the store shut. They weren’t even expensive – although now, of course, they were far beyond my downgraded purchasing power. There aren’t many perfect things created in the world, but the sight of them gave me hope for humanity. Men have as much chance of understanding the sex-appeal of impractical shoes as I have of grasping quantum physics, all that stuff about the non-binary existence of numeric multiples. Actually, I did watch some programmes about that.
    I didn’t want the shoes. I needed them. It was like crack. And now I would never have them. I would remain a housewife only more so, shopping at discount supermarkets and buying clothes in economy shops while my husband doled out housekeeping and openly philandered and I’d never own anything nice again, and all the lack of stress in the world wouldn’t make up for being turned into a prisoner. I don’t know much about prisoners, but I know they don’t have lots of nice things to compensate for being incarcerated.
    ‘Go and get me the kitchen scissors,’ Gordon instructed.
    He sat in front of me cutting the credit cards in half and then in quarters before dropping them in the bin with a flourish. I managed to keep one back because it was tucked in my bedside drawer. Unfortunately it was a World Of Wood discount card, due to expire in a month’s time, but until then it was good for all my urgent beech flooring needs.
    ‘I’m leaving you, June.’
    ‘Is it because of her?’
    ‘No, it’s because of what’s happened to us.’
    ‘But we’ve never tried to talk about our problems.’
    ‘There’s nothing to talk about. I’m selling the house. I made an appointment with an estate agent.’
    ‘You’ve already put this place on the market?’ I was aghast.
    ‘I’ll be showing the first prospective buyers at six o’clock tonight. They’ve got a Chinese name, but you can’t have everything.’
    ‘You can’t just suddenly do that. This is my home. We need to talk about it.’
    ‘I’ve been thinking about it for some time, I was just looking for an opportunity to tell you.’
    ‘I’ve been here. You’re the one who’s always working late. I can’t believe you could do this.’
    ‘I’ve been having money troubles. There’s been a credit crunch on, or haven’t you noticed? The pound’s in the toilet, nobody’s buying our shoes.’ His defensiveness returned to anger. ‘Why did I put up with this for so long? How could I have been so stupid?’ He indicated the white china clowns, silver-plate candlesticks, opalescent leopards and poodles, the little glass windmills and water-wheels, the ruffled regency ladies and dandies I had made it my duty to collect and keep clean, and managed to sound hurt