Straight Talking Read Online Free PDF

blame the other woman. She never thinks her man could have made the first move, or he’s simply a bastard and she should kick him out. A woman will always assume it’s the woman, even when that woman happens to be her friend, even when that woman would do nothing, and I mean nothing, to hurt her.
    I can see what would happen if we told Mel. She’d be shocked, silent, but then she’d pull herself together and thank us very calmly for telling her. And we’d never hear from her again. If we phoned her she’d be cool but distant, and she wouldn’t kick Daniel out, she’d believe his protestations that it was us, that we’d encouraged him, that he was only joking.
    And then, eventually, she’d find a new group of friends, new meat for him to hunt, and so the cycle would continue.
    “Why does he keep doing this?” Mel asks, out loud, but you know she’s asking herself. “Five years and I still have to do everything on my own, he never wants to be part of my life.”
    “God, he’s a bastard. Mel, this keeps on happening. It’s not going to stop, he’s not going to change. Don’t you think it’s time you had some space, just to reassess things? You’re young, you’re attractive, you’re wonderful. Daniel doesn’t appreciate you but somewhere out there, someone else will.” Great words coming from me, aren’t they? But you know, as I say them I believe it, I believe that Mel will find someone else to love her, adore her, appreciate her, just as I believe that I will too, that we all will. That there’s a lid for every pot, no matter how bent, misshapen, or ugly.
    “You’re right, you’re right. I know you’re right,” she says wearily. “But,” and I know what’s coming, what always comes after a row, “but I know he loves me, and we do have great times. Admittedly not often, but you don’t hear about the times he’s really sweet to me, the times he cuddles me in bed and tells me he loves me. I know you think he’s a shit but sometimes I think it’s me. That I make him behave this way.”
    “Mel, that’s crap. What, so you make him disappear for nights on end without telling you where he is? So you make him tell you you’re fat and you should lose weight? So you make him force you to go to everything on your own just so no one should think he was in a relationship?”
    “But he says I’m a nag, that if I wasn’t so demanding he would want to be with me more.” She’s wimping out, as she always does, and it’s the most frustrating thing in the whole damned world.
    “Mel, you’re a therapist, for Christ’s sake. Why is it you think this is all you deserve? Why are you putting up with second best? Do you not think you deserve someone who adores you? It can happen, look at Freya.”
    Freya used to be in the sisterhood, but she committed the unforgivable sin of getting married. Actually we were all delighted and more than a touch envious. We miss her but she’s our role model, she makes us believe, she makes us think we’ll find our lids, or our pots. Whatever.
    Freya met Paul on holiday. They were friends and then they were lovers. I remember meeting him for the first time, at Freya’s flat, just after I split up with Simon and I was dreading it, I was dreading seeing a happy couple, still in that stage where every sentence is punctuated with a touch on their loved one’s hands, or shoulders, or leg. Where they can’t keep their hands off one another.
    But when I met Paul, and saw them together, and saw that he adored her as much, if not more, than she adored him, I felt ridiculously happy and I left their flat smiling, filled with inspiration and hope. It can happen, and I realized that Simon hadn’t treated me like that, that it hadn’t happened, but that it could. That it would.
    “I know. I’ve got to leave him. But I’m so scared. I’m thirty-three, I want children, I want to get married. I don’t want to be on my own.”
    “But, Mel, isn’t it better to be on your own,