The Third Wife Read Online Free PDF Page A

Thanks to you.’
    She took his hand in hers and shook it. Her hand was cool and slick. Adrian felt a sudden swell of panic as she loosened her grip on him, something primal and base. He wanted to say:
Don’t go! Have more tea! Ask me more questions! Don’t leave me here!
    Instead he patted her shoulder, felt the downy softness of her immaculate woollen coat beneath his fingers, and said, ‘Lovely to meet you, Jane. Do take care.’
    ‘You too, Adrian. Good luck with everything.’
    He closed the door behind her and went immediately to the window to watch her leave. He shared the back of the sofa with Billie, watching as Jane turned left and then stopped and, quite unexpectedly, pulled from her neat handbag a packet of cigarettes. He watched her take a plastic lighter from another section of the bag and light a cigarette with it, inhale, replace the lighter, shut the bag and walk away briskly towards the high street, a ghostly shadow of smoke trailing behind her.

Five
    In the context of Adrian’s many children Beau was very, very small, but striding out of his classroom door, towering over his classmates, he looked like the tallest boy in the world. Adrian scooped him up from his feet and squeezed him hard before depositing him back on to the tarmac.
    Beau looked behind Adrian. ‘Is it just you?’ he asked, passing Adrian his school bag.
    ‘Yes. Just me.’
    ‘Are we getting Pearl, too?’
    ‘Yes, of course we’re getting Pearl, too. It’s her birthday!’
    ‘Where are we going?’
    They squeezed themselves through the crowd of children and parents blocking up the infants’ playground. Adrian smiled at the occasional familiar face. He had Beau’s hand inside his, small and dry, like a good-luck charm. ‘It’s a surprise.’
    ‘For Pearl’s birthday?’
    ‘Yes. For Pearl’s birthday.’
    ‘Is Otis coming?’
    ‘No. He’s doing something at school. So it’s just you, me and Pearl.’
    Beau nodded approvingly.
    Pearl looked haughty and regal, as she always did, standing tall amongst her classmates, her hands in the pockets of her padded coat, peering disconsolately from under her big bear-shaped furry hat across the sea of heads, as though she couldn’t think what she was doing in this place. But as her gaze caught his, her face softened and she skipped like a small child across the playground towards his open arms.
    ‘Daddy!’ she breathed into his overcoat. ‘What are you doing here? Mum said Cat was getting me. She said you were busy, that you were coming for dinner later.’
    ‘We were both lying,’ he said. ‘So that I could surprise you.’
    Pearl smiled.
    ‘Happy birthday, baby girl.’ He kissed the top of her head.
    ‘Thank you,’ she mumbled, smiling embarrassedly at a passing friend.
    He walked his two youngest children to the bus stop outside the school.
    ‘Where are we going?’ said Pearl.
    ‘We are going to the cinema. To see something called
We Bought a Zoo
. And then Mummy, Cat and Otis are going to come and meet us for dinner.’
    Beau punched the air and Pearl smiled enigmatically.
    ‘Is that nice?’ he asked.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Pearl, brushing her arm against his affectionately. ‘It’s good.’
    Adrian smiled with relief. In the language of Pearl, ‘good’ was equivalent to any number of superlative, multi-syllable adjectives and he basked momentarily in the warm glow of her approval. They sat on the top deck of a bus that crawled through the school-run traffic heading south down Upper Street. Adrian held Pearl’s bear hat in his lap and stroked its ears, Beau stood up at the rail watching the road below and Pearl sat upright, as she always did, as she had since she was a tiny child, staring imperiously at the shops, answering Adrian’s questions politely and kindly, but without enthusiasm.
    Adrian stared at her profile, during a lull. She looked so like Caroline: all beauty without any pretty, all lines and angles and carpentry. She’d never been a chatty child,