Ricochet Baby Read Online Free PDF Page B

that’s what your trouble is.’
    ‘I didn’t know I had a trouble. You never told me before.’ Though she is not sure about this; when she thinks about it, he may have been hinting for a while. ‘I was asleep,’ she explains again. ‘Well half asleep anyway, thinking about you.’
    ‘You often see it in the papers. Women in bed next to their husbands, and some joker comes sneaking in and gets into bed with the pair of them and does the wife over. Husband wakes up, wham bam, there goes this joker on top of his missus. Oh, I was just asleep, she says. There must be a lot of women who get fucked when they’re asleep.’
    ‘You’re sick.’ She is not just angry, but full of revulsion as well. They look at each other, shocked and bewildered. They do not quarrel as a rule, and now they are having this sudden outburst, saying disgusting and appalling things. Roberta has begun to cry and she would give anything not to be in tears. She does not like to give people that satisfaction. She stopped crying about things years ago. Paul shakes his head slowly, trying to clear the bad things he sees.
    ‘Roberta, honey. What’s the matter with us?’
    He puts his arms around her and she is tempted to struggle, but, hating the way they have become instant strangers to each other, she longs more than ever for it be over. She lets him stroke her hair.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, over and over again. ‘Why don’t you have a bath and get into bed? I love you.’
    ‘It’ll be funny,’ she says, gulping for air. ‘Some day we’ll say, remember that night when the man who wore shortie pyjamas toante-natal classes pretended to be you, and I fell for it. I promise we’ll laugh about it.’
    He starts to laugh, and soon they roll around, helpless in their mirth, reliving the moment. They touch each other in small, reassuring ways.
    After she has had her bath and Paul has made her some Milo, Roberta sits on the edge of the bed, brushing her hair over her shoulders, letting the brush linger there, so that it catches the light for him. It’s rough, corrugated hair but it shines with a fractured fire of its own. During the day she braids it into a sophisticated French plait. Roberta doesn’t think of herself as pretty. She’ll be handsome, she heard people tell her mother when she was young, which is a way of avoiding the truth: she has a steep nose and a long chin that rules out prettiness, dark eyes narrowing at the corners, skin which is as firm and smooth as a dish of clover honey. She has a habit of curling her bottom lip over her teeth, trying to make her face look shorter.
    ‘Bess the innkeeper’s daughter was brushing her long black hair,’ Paul recites, and plunges his fingers into her thick, crinkly mane. ‘You won’t ever cut your hair, will you? You’ve got beautiful hair.’
    ‘My hair’s not black,’ says Roberta, wanting to move her head away from the firmness of his grip.
    ‘And the highwayman came riding, riding up to the old inn door.’ His fingers tighten.
    ‘I wouldn’t exactly call Sandy a highwayman.’
    ‘I didn’t know his name was Sandy,’ Paul says. He lets her hair fall. ‘Are you ready to put out the light?’
     
    I WAIT UNTIL his breathing seems even before I get up, though I am not sure. Our house is in the upper reaches of Ashton Fitchett Drive in Panorama Heights, a brand-new housing development beneath the experimental wind turbine. The turbine is what has drawn me to this place, the way it turns over and over, generating power with the breeze from the sea. Our house is new, three-bedroomed , two-storeyed, with pastel walls and blond pine timber, the nails neatly sealed so you can hardly tell they are there, double-glazed windows and deadlocks on the doors. This is what I wanted. Paul wanted to do up an old house in an established suburb, the way other young couples do, with a view toturning it over in a year or two’s time and making some money. But I have lived in old houses all