Saving Agnes Read Online Free PDF

love, but in the gentler, narcissistic skills of self-acceptance.
    â€˜You’re like a black hole,’ he said when he left. ‘You consume me.’

Chapter Six
    â€˜I hate Sundays,’ said Nina, her entire body appearing to go limp with exhaustion at her aversion. ‘They were obviously designed by someone who thought stimulation was a row of closed off-licences and a feature-length episode of
Songs of Praise.’
    â€˜But isn’t that the point?’ Agnes shifted back into the shade. ‘I mean, for some people Sunday is the most interesting day of the week.’
    Their garden was no Eden, but at least it got the sun and was the uniform khaki colour which generally passed for green in London. Agnes and Nina sat on two deckchairs Merlin had found in the cellar. Bloated flies straying from next door’s garbage-infested garden revolved around their heads, droning against a monotonous bass-line of traffic from the Blackstock Road.
    â€˜Name one.’
    â€˜The Archbishop of Canterbury.’
    â€˜Name another one.’
    â€˜Look, all I’m saying is that maybe – well, maybe you feel that way because there’s something missing from your life.’
    â€˜Jesus Christ,’ said Nina from behind the shield of her newspaper. She was angry, but for reasons unconnected with Agnes’s position on the decline of Christian beliefs in the western world. ‘Are you telling me that
I’ve
got a problembecause I don’t want to spend half my weekend dancing round an altar with a bunch of God-squad maniacs or filching money off innocent people for the bloody Seventh Day Adventists, or even hanging out with a load of lapsed Catholics whingeing on about the bloody meaning of life for that matter?’
    Agnes groped for her sunglasses. Her white face felt porous and blasted in the sunlight. In this grim square of atrophied horticulture she felt like no living thing.
    â€˜I mean,
are
you?’ Nina persisted.
    An explosion of exhaust from the road just then caused them both to jump. Agnes felt an acrid tide of sweat prickle over her. Her heart was beating fiercely.
    â€˜Not necessarily,’ she said.
    Agnes and Nina had had company the night before. While neither guest had specifically confirmed their reservation, Nina had been either confident or peremptory enough to warn her housemates of her putative night of passion several days in advance. Agnes, forced by her indirect nature to run the gauntlet of suspense in such matters, had been unable to make a similar promise. She did not suppose, in any case, that the presence of an additional love-interest would be cause for conflict. A discreet form of apartheid was normally employed on such occasions which kept things from taking on the aspect of a production-line. The trouble had started when, the next morning, these carefully segregated individuals had succeeded in encountering one another in the kitchen and had revealed themselves to be old friends from college. Despite their mutual surprise at the unexpected nature and location of their reunion, they immediately formulated a plan.
    â€˜Do you come here often?’ one of them was heard to ask the other as they left together to find breakfast.
    Agnes had consoled herself with the thought that any doubts which might have been lingering in her own lover’s mind from the night before would, at least, have been partly compensated for by the events of the morning after.
    â€˜Just as long as we’ve got that straight,’ snapped Nina.
    Agnes picked up the business section of the Sunday papers and applied herself to learning the art of mergers.
    Rumour had it that as a child Agnes had once been discovered walking with her eyes shut and one arm outstretched beside her.
    â€˜Agnes, what on earth are you doing?’ her mother had cried nervously. They were on a family walk, and their bewilderment as they stopped and stared had eddied uncomfortably through