The Two of Us Read Online Free PDF Page A

dear heart, but the only thing to pass my lips was a rather thin Merlot.’
    El shrugs petulantly. Earlier this year he invested a considerable amount of breath and effort in trying to convince Phil to find a new boyfriend. As well as the physical symptoms,
Huntington’s disease subtracts character and personality, it wears down logic and reason and social inhibition in its victims. Add to this that El has always revelled in the inappropriate,
and the result can be sad, funny and deeply confusing. But there was more to El’s dispassionate matchmaking than his disease or his devilment. He understands that he is dying, and that before
the end comes he will be diminished beyond recognition. The problem, as El sees it, is that he could last another ten years, by which time Phil will be well into his fifties – hence various
nonsense like El ‘dumping’ Phil and enrolling him on dating websites ‘w. . . w. . . while he’s still y. . . young ’nough to find som’ne else.’ As romantic
gestures go, it’s about the best I have ever witnessed.
    ‘F. . . Fisher got dumped,’ says El.
    Phil cocks an eyebrow.
    ‘No Fisher did not,’ I say.
    ‘Yet,’ says El, without even a hint of difficulty.

Chapter 3
    I’m half asleep on Esther’s sofa when my mobile rings and snaps me rudely back to reality – well, to
Columbo
:
Sex and the Married Detective
,
which is as near to life as I’m in the mood for this Thursday.
    I haven’t organized my friends into a strict hierarchy since I was in the second year of high school, but if I were inclined to it’s hard to imagine Esther anywhere outside of the
top three. We’ve lived above and below each other for over five years, we exchange Christmas, birthday and Easter presents, and we share the same taste in daytime television, which,
considering my job means a lot of free daytime, is no small consideration. My 63-year-old downstairs neighbour is not really one for going to the pub, drinking eight pints and chatting up the
girls, but she always has a good selection of biscuits. Esther’s husband, Nino, retires in November, and soon after that they are exchanging the noises, smells and threats of Brixton for the
serenity of the Italian countryside. I don’t imagine they will miss Brixton one bit. But I’ll miss them, Esther in particular, and I will miss her deeply. Without her I’d have
gone crazy this past week.
    It’s been around ninety-six hours since I last saw Ivy. We’ve talked briefly and sent occasional texts establishing little more than we were either recently awake, or soon to be
asleep. I tell Ivy I miss her, and she tells me ‘you too’, but it seems more like a courtesy than an actual fact. She was working Monday and Tuesday, but when I suggested we meet up on
Wednesday, Ivy was ‘catching up with friends’. Today she has ‘things to do’. More important and appealing things than me, it seems. Esther has supplied hot drinks and
sage-ish advice, from suggesting Ivy is married, to Ivy is on her period. Her latest theory (we’d been watching reruns of
Spooks
) is that Ivy works for MI6 (‘Well, sweetheart,
someone has to’).
    I pull my still-ringing phone from my pocket. And somehow I knew it would be Ivy, just as surely as I know this is the call where she tells me it’s over. I mouth the word ‘Ivy’
to Esther, even though I have yet to answer the phone so there is no good reason to whisper. Esther hits pause on the remote, and begins the process of extracting herself from the sofa. It’s
a slow process and I’m worried Ivy will get bored and hang up, so I place the flat of my foot against Esther’s broad backside and push her to a full stand. ‘Thank you,
love,’ she says. ‘And good luck.’
    I answer the call.
    ‘Hiya,’ I say with a drummed-up lightness that sounds as manufactured as the phone I’m speaking into. ‘Happy Thursday!’ I add, stupidly.
    ‘Hey,’ says Ivy.
    This is the first time she has initiated