Sabine Read Online Free PDF Page A

eyes and mouth and nothing further – and the rest of the body, sprung tight as a golf ball, was crying out for some kind – any kind – of release action. Touch me here, touch me there, Guillaume or Guy or Geffroy or whatever your name is, I beg, I beg.
    Chance? Deliberate malice aimed at me? No, nothing of the kind. I think I was Aimée’s hourglass, that is all, her monitoring device. In part for convenience’s sake, but mainly on account of the special responsibilities she had towards my father regarding my precious virginity, I think she used me as her timer. I think, as she lurked there in the shadows, getting whatever surrogate kicks came her way, I was the one she kept her chary little eye on. What is Viola’s partner up to? Kissing her neck still?
Bon,
then we can wait a little while. And where arehis hands? Ah, there they are, pressing her to him, linked behind her back. Wait a moment, is the left one perhaps sliding downwards a bit, edging its way towards the buttock? Well, buttocks are on the safe side, let it slide. (Oh, this music, how can young people nowadays stand it so loud?) And now? Now where is the hand going? Ah, where indeed? Now I can’t see it any more. What a pity,
quel dommage,
that means we must call a halt to things for this evening: hidden hands are busy hands. Now where’s that
sacré
light switch …?
    Was that the reason, Aimée? Was that how it was? Have I figured it out at last? I reckon I have. Bit late in the day, OK, but I reckon I figured most things out in the end. What do you say, eh, you evil old sprite?

IV
Sabine
    Sabine’s arrival among us is another thing I don’t remember with the clarity I’d like. The first image of her that ever hit my retina, for example. I’d love to have conserved that because then I could use it as a cardiologist does a base scan: hold it up to the light and check it against later images, and measure, from the changes in the way I see her, the day-by-day changing of my heart. How long, for example, did it take me to register that rare contrast between the darkness of her brows and eyelashes and the blondeness of her hair? A week? Less? More? And the honey-coloured bloom on her skin – how long for that to strike me? And the smoothness of the skin itself? And the long tanned legs, and the wide straight shoulders, and the graceful neck with its deep salt cellars at the base, and the little hollow in the middle that I’ve never known the name of? How long? How long? And how long before that hollow began to captivate me, before I began to have a secret urge to touch it, just briefly, just lightly, maybe without her even noticing?
    Sadly, though, there is no first image of Sabine, and the second and third and so on are missing in consequence, so I shall never be able to chronicle precisely my growing awareness of her presence. She just emerged at some point out of the smoke. (Much of it contributed by her, since in the Gitanes stakes she beat us all, even Tessa; small wonder the visibility was bad.) But if the missing picture should ever turn up, with its missing caption underneath, probably what it would show is a shapeless, ageless, sexless figure, not so much dressed as covered in a slightly conventy garb – navy-blue pleated skirt, white shirt, navy-blue cardigan – and the caption would say simply: ‘Grumpy butch French frump’. Such was my perceptive flair.
    However, I remember Marie-Louise’s departure, which was the cause of Sabine’s coming, because it was the evening of the stag party. Not to be confused with the other kind of stag party, definitely not, because, far from being an all-male gathering, that evening several French girls joined our ranks as well, including Marie-Louise herself, bringing the female component up to at least nine if not more. Unlike the dance parties, the outing was for some curious reason considered by Aimée’s circle to be safe