The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine Read Online Free PDF Page A

thirty minutes. Today there was an unseasonal wind stirring the trees into a frenzy. I had no jacket with me and was walking fast to keep warm. A man with a pug dog and a golden Labrador was walking in front of me. The Labrador was pure noble dog, all fine head and loping walk. The pug, in contrast, was comical and looked as if he was hopping along the path, his short legs working very hard with never more than two feet on the ground at the same time. He made me smile. I suppose some of us are lucky to be born Labradors and some of us have to be pugs and make more of an effort to keep up.
    Halfway down the Broad Walk I felt a sensation of defin-ite wetness between my legs. I stopped at one of the benches and sat down, looked down, surreptitiously opening my thighs, and to my horror saw a spreading circle of watery red staining my pale yellow trousers. I’m still breastfeeding Billy so my periods hadn’t come back – until today. The trousers were fine cotton and absorbent and I could imagine the blood seeping up at the back. I didn’t know what to do.
    Either I had to run back to the ladies toilet in the park or carry on to work as fast as I could and sort it out there. I decided to carry on, trying to hold my bag in front of me to hide the stain. In fact, my bag is bright red leather, so it seemed like it was a bit of a beacon and I felt embarrassed and ashamed of my poor leaking body. There was the usual contingent of dog-walkers in the park shouting confident greetings to each other and I imagined their eyes boring into my back as a great red stain spread across my bottom. The last few yards to the office seemed much further away than usual.
    I reached the glass doors of our building, rushed past the receptionist, up the stairs and straight into the Ladies. I put on a towel from the machine. There was no one in there so I took my trousers off and tried to sponge the blood out with cold water. This just seemed to make it spread further and the trousers were wet now as well as stained. I was close to weeping as I felt like a child again, confronted by an adult world that was too much for me to master. I wanted to stay locked in the toilet cubicle, hiding from my team.
    Finally I got a grip of myself, came out and headed for my office fast. I saw that Aisha was wearing a long black cardigan. I asked her if I could borrow it and I felt better the moment I had it on. I was an adult again. I decided to go up the hill to Hampstead to buy a new pair of trousers and then I would drop in at my gym for a shower and change. Aisha and I had to reschedule the whole morning of meetings.
    I tried to tell Markus about it this evening. We were sitting at the kitchen table and I was making stuffed red peppers for dinner. I was pulling out the pithy white skin and chasing that last tenacious seed that always gets caught under the dome of the pepper.
    ‘I don’t understand why you got into such a state,’ he said.
    I put the red pepper down on the cutting board and tried to explain why it had made me feel so uncomfortable.
    ‘It was a bit like the shame a child feels when they wet their knickers at school. You know, you’ve drawn attention to a private bodily function.’
    ‘Even if someone had noticed, all they would think is that you’d had an unexpected period.’
    ‘Can’t you see that it was embarrassing?’
    What did I want from him? Empathy, I suppose. He has extraordinary eyes, long and narrow and slightly tilted up at the edges, and the clearest, iciest blue, like arctic waters. He was sharpening the kitchen knives on the sharpening rod, moving the blade back and forth with grace and precision. He always looked as if he was in control of his environment and I admired his expertise as he sharpened the knives. I started to peel and crush some cloves of garlic.
    ‘Someone told me today that Heja in my team used to be one of Finland’s top news presenters. Heja Vanheinen. Have you heard of her?’ I asked.
    He tested the