The Burning Air Read Online Free PDF Page A

that
stubble
on his upper lip?
    “All right, Sophie?” He had dropped the “Auntie” from her name years ago. He rubbed his legs. “My knees are literally going to snap off. That’s not a back seat, it’s a shelf.”
    Sophie looked out the window. Next to their tank, Matt’s sports car was a silver bullet.
    Will and Matt greeted each other in the usual way, a loose uneasy sequence of handshake, hug, and punch. Both men were dark-haired, but Matt was stocky like a boxer while Will was as wiry as a marathon runner. Side by side, they looked like doctored photographs of a notional average man, one slightly stretched horizontally and the other vertically.
    “Can I interest you in a beer, old boy?” said Will.
    “I wouldn’t say no, old boy.”
    “Can
I
have one?” said Jake. Sophie turned to Tara, who shrugged a loose approval, or gestured that this battle was long lost, it was hard to tell.
    “Sure,” said Sophie. “Just outside the back door.”
    “I might have some wine after all,” said Tara. She combed her scalp with her fingers, trying to make her hair look tousled, part of her lifelong campaign against a tidy fall of straight fair hair that never needed color or styling. Sophie smiled to find herself smoothing down her own hair. Having achieved the desired degree of dishevelment, Tara flopped onto the long maroon Chesterfield. Matt joined her, lying parallel. Sophie and Will occupied separate armchairs. The contrast between the two couples was obvious to Sophie. Would Tara pick up on it? She and Matt seemed more of a couple than they did although—no,
because
—they weren’t shackled together by four children. They didn’t even live together, although Tara, when discussing it, had begun to append a “yet” to that statement.”
    There was some idle catch-up about the kids, the shape the weekend was to take, the forecast fog and what time Felix was going to arrive. Matt and Will, who had established a jovial rivalry in the kitchen, revealed to each other the recipes they were going to cook for supper on Saturday night. Matt had brought his own chef’s knives down from London, as he couldn’t work with the ones here in the barn. Will went one better, producing something that looked like a little chrome fire extinguisher.
    “What the fuck’s
that
?” said Matt, leaping back as a jet of blue and orange flame shot several feet across the kitchen.
    “Blowtorch,” said Will. “Crème brûlée. You can’t get the right finish under the grill. It’s a professional one. I go straight to the wholesaler now, it’s the only way to get the quality.”
    “You could power a rocket with that,” said Matt, examining the torch and releasing another jet.
    “Makes you feel like Zeus, doesn’t it?” said Will. Matt set the blowtorch down on the worktop and looked forlornly at the pestle and mortar he had brought down.
    “I think this is the metrosexual version of mud wrestling,” said Tara, rolling her eyes. “Can you see Dad and Uncle Richard discussing the perils of making cheese soufflé in a range?”
    “Ha! Hardly,” said Sophie, and then to Will, “I want that somewhere the boys can’t reach it. Or even see it.”
    Matt started describing the process of preparing langoustines in garlic and tomatoes to Will in mouthwatering detail.
    “Every time he makes one of his
MasterChef
creations, he spends an entire week’s food budget on the ingredients,” murmured Tara.
    “I don’t even want to
know
how much he spent on that flame thing. And whenever they create one of these five-course banquets, I end up cooking a parallel supper that the children actually want to eat,” said Sophie.
    Overhead, there was a sudden creaking of beams followed by a few heavy footfalls, and the sound of Rowan throwing up, repeatedly. Sophie hoped he was in his own bathroom—hoped he had made it to a bathroom at all.
    “Is that one of the kids?” asked Tara.
    “Dad’s drunk.”
    “Dad?”
Sophie was vindicated