Worst Fears Read Online Free PDF Page A

went on teaching. They had no choice. They could not sell Elder House—no one wanted it—so they made the best of what they had. They were good at that: a stoical couple.
    Presently they slept. Downstairs the help still laboured, laying-up for breakfast, clearing away the students’ late-night coffee and biscuits. She was lucky to have the job. The countryside is pretty, Arthur would say, because there are so few people in it, and the reason there are so few people is because there are so few jobs.
    Abbie went into a cave and saw Ned behind a pane of glass, smiling at her. He sat on a rock like a merman. His legs had fused into a tail. Waves lapped up against the glass. She waved. He waved back. Abbie moved on, as if she were in an aquarium and there was something more interesting to see further on. It was a casual encounter, like a one-night stand.
    Abbie woke Arthur and told him what she had seen. “Ned won’t like having a tail,” said Arthur. “No chance of a leg-over now.” He went back to sleep.
    “It wasn’t a dream,” said Abbie. “It was a vision. I woke up before I had it.”
    She woke Arthur again.
    “All that wailing and screaming on Saturday night, all that commotion,” she complained. “Ned being dead was the least part of it. Even calling the ambulance was just to keep Jenny quiet. The reason I went to see the body was to convince myself he was dead.”
    “Did it?”
    “No,” said Abbie. “Not at the time. I believe it now I’ve seen him in the aquarium. He’s in a different place from ours.” She began to cry. Arthur woke up enough to comfort her. “You’re something,” he said. “Try and either wake up or go to sleep.” She woke up.
    “And what did Vilna mean by saying Ned was so good at it? What does Vilna know?” demanded Abbie. “She’s a monster. She’s competing for the status of most-bereaved. She’s the kind who moves in after a death and squabbles over who’s the closest, who’s suffering most. It’s disgusting. She’s ghoulish.”
    “If she’s a monster and a ghoul,” said Arthur, “why have her as a friend?”
    “Because there are so few people round here to talk to,” complained Abbie, and fell asleep. He, of course, could not.

6
    M ORNING. WITH NED NOT there Alexandra could stretch across the bed. She took what consolation she could from this. Nor was Sascha there to stalk into the bedroom, as was his habit, with his straight back, curly blond hair and censorious blue eyes, to start the day earlier than either she or Ned wanted. She must learn to extract Ned from these sorts of mental equations. Erratum : earlier than she wanted, drop the Ned. A kind of chilliness crept in from the periphery of the bed. What would she do for sex now? What had she done before she was married? She could hardly remember. Sex, it seemed, was as forgettable as a dinner out; set-asideable as a floppy disc. Relationships got remembered: they were there on the hard disc. Alexandra had the feeling Ned lay on top of her, forbidding such thoughts: a heavy but intangible weight: a consolation. They had been married for twelve years: fifty-two weeks in the year, sex on an average, she supposed, of three times a week. Rather less lately, since A Doll’s House had disrupted their lives but paid off the overdraft; but then more often at the beginning of the relationship to outweigh that. Five times a week, say, in the first two years before they were married: four times a week after that—marriage did seem to have a dampening effect: five to six times during late pregnancy—pregnancy, for her, did the opposite. Twice a week, even once a week, in the months after Sascha’s birth—three times a week on average seemed a good but conservative bet. Twelve times three times fifty-two fucks. One thousand eight hundred and seventy-two. Jesus., No wonder, on the most basic level, she now felt bereft. And never once with a condom. How much of Ned had she not absorbed, literally? The broken