The Eidolon Read Online Free PDF Page B

and delicate in mine. “We’ll work it out, Robert. I’ll get some shifts in a café or something. There’s a waiting list for my class, so I’m sure I could run another one.”
    “It’s not going to be enough, though.”
    “Well, maybe you could go back to web design for a while, just until something else comes up.”
    I nodded and turned to the window where grey rain pattered on the glass.
    “Listen, let me make a phone call. I was going to go out tonight with Jacqui and Liz – I’ll let them know I won’t make it.”
    “Who?”
    “From my class.”
    “Oh. I didn’t know you socialised with them.”
    She shrugged, stooped to light a few candles. “You’re always late home.” Then she flushed and said, “Sorry.”
    “It’s okay.”
    She sat on the sofa, watching me, and I turned to look out of the window to the sodden street below. Jenny Randle’s Fiat Punto was parked below, like it always was. The car hadn’t moved since I saw it this morning, but my whole life had. And I had no say in any of it.
    “Maybe we should go away for a while,” said Cora.
    “I need to get some work, Cora. I’ve no income now, remember?”
    “We’ve got some savings.”
    “Yeah, as a last resort. I need to get another job.”
    “Well,” she said, patiently, “you might be in a better place to deal with things if you take a break.”
    “I’ve already paid for the trip to Tibet. That’ll be enough of a break.”
    “I meant with me. We could go back to the cottage.”
    A few weeks after Sarah died, I had taken Cora to a cottage on the coast. I thought the change of scene would help, and it did, a little. We had some walks on the beach, drank a lot of wine and I held her each night as she cried herself to sleep. Watching her suffer was almost unbearable. I kept wishing I could take it all for her, but there’s nothing you can do with invisible wounds. We were closer then than we had been in a while, but when we got home, we fell back into our separate lives.
    “Or we could go up to the pottery,” she continued. “It won’t cost us anything, apart from the travel. My parents won’t be back till next month.”
    Cora’s parents, Evelyn and Frank, had bought the old pottery along the glen from where I grew up, on the west coast of Scotland. He was an engineer and she was a social worker who had taken a pottery evening class one autumn at the local polytechnic. They saw the light, as they said, and packed it all in, in exchange for the simple life. Grow your own veg, brew your own cider, summer solstice parties. You get the picture. One harsh winter without running water made them realise that cities aren’t so bad and now they spend most of their time on city breaks. The longest they’ve been home since Sarah died is four weeks. Probably too quiet up there; nowhere to hide from their thoughts. I met Cora there seven years ago when I was up visiting my mum and she was helping set up the pottery. There was something about her that I couldn’t put my finger on, but we just clicked. We laughed a lot. She had a vibrancy about her that was infectious, mixed in with an intoxicating sense of calm. She had me hooked. It seemed like a long time ago.
    “Where are they off to this time?”
    “Barcelona. You know, we could go walking again, like we used to.”
    It was the first sign that she was in a better place, something I’d been hoping for, for seven months. Just in time for me to pass her on the way down.
    “That sounds good.”
     
     
    G RADUALLY WE SEEMED to switch roles. Now it was me who would wake up in the small hours, and she’d get up and sit with me, or make me a drink. She still carried her grief around with her, and sometimes her eyes would glisten whenever something triggered it, like a reference to family on the TV or a piece of music on the radio. But she seemed to box it away, in the way that a parent who’s hurting might box away their pain from their child, and smile as if everything is okay,