To Have and to Hold Read Online Free PDF Page B

the water. ‘Remember when I left Rosie in the greengrocer’s?’
    Ann thought for a moment, then she nodded. ‘She was very young. I suppose you just couldn’t believe you’d had one.’
    â€˜Something like that.’ Viv nodded. ‘How’s it been at work?’
    â€˜Nobody told me any jokes.’ She looked around. ‘Where’s the teatowel?’
    â€˜Over the hamster’s cage.’ Viv pointed to the dresser. ‘He only comes out at night, so they cover him up to make it dark. So he’ll wake up.’
    â€˜But if he’s covered up they can’t see him.’
    Viv laughed. ‘They haven’t figured that out yet.’
    Ann lifted the tea-towel from the cage and peered in. ‘He’s asleep.’ They laughed.
    Suddenly Ann felt such a longing that it took away her breath. She sat down.
    â€˜What’s the matter?’ asked Viv.
    Ann pretended she had seen something on the floor, and had just sat down to pick it up.
    Viv fetched the coal from the cupboard under the stairs. As she loaded the scuttle she remembered: she had lost the girls in Spain.
    Last summer . . . a wide, empty beach. She and Ollie arrived there early and left the girls for half an hour while they went back to their hotel to unpack. When they returned the beach had filled up with people, thousands and thousands of them. The girls had been swallowed up in the crowd of sunbathingbodies, none of whom spoke English. It had taken them two hours to find the girls, sitting quite still and shuddering with tears.
    She shuffled some coal on to the fire and said: ‘It was a nightmare.’
    â€˜I had a nightmare last night,’ said Ann.
    â€˜What about?’
    â€˜I can’t remember.’
    Viv sat on the table, swinging her legs and drinking a glass of wine. The meat was beginning to hiss in the oven but she hadn’t bothered to start the vegetables yet. She always did things at the last moment, whereas Ann would have peeled and prepared them all beforehand. How dull she seemed to herself, when she was with Viv. But then that had always been the case. Viv seemed to suck the colour from her. She should have become used to it now.
    On this momentous Sunday, before everything changed for ever, she remembered looking at Viv swinging her legs in her faded jeans. Her messy hair pulled up on the top of her head, artfully artless; her charming face – a snub-nosed prettiness which men had called kittenish until she answered them back; that indefinable air she always had, like many beautiful women, of being in the possession of a secret. It wasn’t just her looks. Heads turned towards her like flowers towards the sun. She made others, by comparison, seem half-asleep. Even more beautiful women looked blanker; her life came from within. Ann could bear this; she told herself so many times. For didn’t she love her?
    And besides, she had a husband of her own, who liked the way she prepared vegetables beforehand. And who said, infrequently but with some feeling, that he loved her.
    â€˜Wonder what they’ll talk about?’ said Ann.
    â€˜You can’t talk, playing rugger. That’s the point.’
    â€˜It’s ridiculous – all these years they’ve hardly ever been together.’
    â€˜We’ve been there, that’s why. And you know what we’re like.’
    Ann looked at her watch. ‘Better lay the table.’
    â€˜Don’t be subservient.’
    â€˜They’ll be hungry,’ said Ann.
    â€˜You sound just like my sixth form. They’re becoming so docile. It’s because we’re doing
Jane Eyre.
They’re getting worried they’ll be a failure in men’s eyes.’
    Ann paused. ‘I feel a failure.’
    â€˜Don’t ever say that!’
    â€˜Ken doesn’t say so, of course –’
    â€˜I’d kill him if he did.’
    â€˜He doesn’t. It’s me.’
    â€˜Oh