The Other Side of You Read Online Free PDF Page A

gem and to hell with appearances. I admired him for this and it made me obscurely ashamed. Olivia’s glamour had an undoubted appeal, though the appeal had more to do, I think, with how I wanted to be perceived than with a more personal response. Denis’s gallantry was pure good manners: as a skilled diagnostician he recognised Olivia’s need for adoration.
    The Buirskis were already drinking wine in the Powells’ untidily hospitable sitting room. Olivia was incapable of getting anywhere on time. I suspected that this was because she liked to make a conspicuous entrance but also because while she was keen on her own shoes she was not much of a one for putting herself in other people’s.
    In general Olivia’s self-centredness was indulged. Dan, however, was an exception. He found my wife exasperating and didn’t conceal the fact. And this meant there was often an edginess between them which I would have to smooth down. He made a comment now as we entered the sitting room.
    ‘Sound the trumpets! The McBrides have graced us with their presence.’
    ‘Belt up, Buirski,’ I said, ‘and budge up. I want to hold hands with your wife.’
    Dan got up and went to poke the fire burning in the grate, which had been ripped out during a renovation of St Christopher’s and would have been dumped for rubbish had not Chris, who had no eye for herself but a magpie’s eye for useful household treasures, rescued it. Barbara Buirski moved along the chesterfield, bought by Chris for thirty quid in an auction, patting the place beside her for me to sit down. Bar was an ex of mine, someone I took up with during one of the ‘off’ periods with Olivia. She was characteristically good-tempered when I explained that Olivia was back and Dan, when I told him, said, ‘You’re mad! Bar Blake is terrific. I’ll have her if you don’t want her.’ And so far as I could tell they’d been happy together. He was right about Bar, she was terrific, but she never got into my bloodstream the way Olivia had.
    None of which prevented me from keeping up a flirtatious friendship with Bar. Dan seemed not to mind. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it. As for Olivia, I wondered sometimes if she would care if I slept with another woman. I couldn’t say as I’d not tested it, but certainly she was too secure in her own attractions to bother her head about my harmless flirting.
    Bar was a dermatologist, a very able one, Denis was a consultant in geriatric psychiatry and Chris, before she had the kids, had been a midwife. So when the six of us got together the conversation was often work-centred, which meant that Olivia, as the only one of us not medically qualified, sometimes played up. She’d been PA to, and mistress of, a high-powered MP when I met her. He’d dropped her like a hot brick when the press got wind of his extra-curricular activities and rapidly returned to the arms of his plain and uncomplicated Southampton wife. I imagine it was this jolt to her self-esteem which propelled Olivia into my unembarrassed arms.
    We met over a medical delegation she’d organised to the House of Commons, where I sat beside her at lunch. The button on the sleeve of my jacket got caught in the lace of her blouse. I’m deft-fingered, and I disentangled it with the occasional flamboyance which can visit me when I am not trying too hard. The episode, conducted across the table from the treacherous MP, acted as a tonic to Olivia’s wounded feelings. Looking back, I can see that her animated responses were designed to put the MP in his place, rather than to encourage me to take it. But she was attracted by my doctor’s status, and maybe, too, by my patina of cultural sophistication, though as is often the way, she liked the idea of this more than its manifestations. When we got toknow each other better, and she discovered that my flash of extroversion was atypical, I suspect she was shrewd enough to recognise that this had compensations: I was unlikely either to dump