The Way We Were Read Online Free PDF

passed behind her chair to pour some wine, whilst at the same time addressing a remark to Val as she'd bent, flush-faced, at the open oven door. Before Val had straightened up he'd already moved on, filling his own glass now with the bottle he'd held in his other hand, and she, Liv, had sat for one heart-stopping moment as if immobilized by his touch. Something had happened then, for her at least, as if he'd shown that they weren't just good friends but that something more still existed between them. He'd made no other sign, no indication that anything had changed, and later she'd told herself that she was attaching far too much importance to what had, after all, been nothing more than a friendly gesture as he'd leaned to fill her glass.
    But why, she asked herself, had it excited her, filling her with a new kind of mad exultation? Because it reminded her of other more intimate caresses?
    â€˜It can be dangerous,’ her mother had warned.
    Liv shook her head in refutation: she would never do anything to hurt Val.
    She drove for a while, thinking about Val. If she were to be absolutely honest, Val wasn't exactly doing herself any favours just at the moment. The strain of having Penharrow ready for Easter had taken its toll on her patience: she'd panicked at the least thing, snapped at everybody and developed a series of bad headaches. It was to protect Val from nervous strain, Liv reminded herself, that she and Chris had spent even more time together, working every spare minute – and relaxing together too, while poor old Val lay on her bed in a darkened room knocked out by painkillers.
    Liv experienced anxiety, guilt and defiance all in one burst. Pee po piddle bum. She remembered the silly nursery jingle that she and Andy still chanted in moments of frustration, and grinned to herself. She was imagining things, letting the stress of the last week addle her brain. She turned down the lane into Blisland, driving slowly round the village green where daffodils blossomed beneath the trees, and parked outside Aunt Em's small pretty house. Picking up her bag and the cakes, she got out, locked the car and began to climb the steps up to the garden.
    Since Liv's telephone call (‘It's such a fantastic day, Aunt Em. Can I come and have coffee later on? I'll bring the cakes’), Em had been enjoying the especial pleasure that an unexpected treat bestows on the recipient. She was touched that Liv should want to spend such a morning with her when she might have gone shopping to Wadebridge or Truro, or simply spent it with friends of her own age. In the early months of widowhood after Archie's death she'd imagined such visits to be the result of kindness, even pity, though she'd been grateful nevertheless. Now, ten years on, she was able to accept that the young came to see her because they actually wanted to; she'd ceased to ask why. She'd quickly realized that such questions merely demanded a constant reassurance from family and friends, which was tiresome for them: much better to accept without question and simply enjoy it.
    How difficult it had been to make that act of acceptance: what a shock to realize that taking required a particular kind of generosity on her part. It was so much more satisfactory to be the bestower of gifts, the good fairy dispensing kindness, than to be the one who was obliged to be grateful. Gradually it occurred to her that it was her own perception of herself that influenced other people: she need not enter into a mindset that implied that because she was old and alone she was no longer worthy of other people's time or friendship. She was still worthy of love: gratitude was not needed here; with her work in her garden and greenhouse and in her little studio she was always busy.
    She still missed Archie quite dreadfully but she'd learned to manage the loneliness: twenty years as a naval wife had given her plenty of practice. Em smiled reminiscently, remembering how she'd clung to Archie in the