The Bookshop of Second Chances by Jackie Fraser (e books for reading txt) 📗

want to have to explain it all the time.’

‘You could have told me.’

‘Yes, I could.’ I smile. ‘But I didn’t want to.’

He frowns at me. ‘Why not?’

‘I didn’t think it was any of your business. And then I thought it would be easier, since I know you didn’t really want to give me a job, and you might have thought it was… I don’t know, a reason not to.’

I see he’s thinking about this. ‘How long were you married?’

‘Fifteen years. Together for nineteen.’

‘That’s a long time.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you… How do you feel? About that?’

‘About my husband leaving me and shacking up with someone I thought was my friend?’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah, it’s not great.’

‘But… I can’t believe you’ve never mentioned it.’

‘I prefer not to talk about it.’ I smile again, amused by his shocked expression.

‘How did you find out? Or did he tell you?’

It’s funny he thinks I must have ‘found out’. That’s exactly what happened, of course.

‘No, I found out. He sent me a message by mistake.’

‘By mistake?’

‘He meant to send it to her.’

‘Oh. Shit. That’s–’

‘Yeah, it wasn’t my best day ever.’

‘How did you–’

‘It was a picture,’ I tell him. ‘A photograph. I recognized her rings.’ I waggle my own fingers. ‘She wears lots of rings, you know, she’s kind of…’ I think about Susanna, with her mass of curly henna-red hair and her chunky silver jewellery, turquoise, amber. ‘She’s a bit earth mother-ish. Quite recognizable, even if you can’t really see her face. Even if she’s rather unexpectedly sucking your husband’s dick.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Mm.’

‘Thea, I’m so sorry.’

‘That’s okay,’ I say, brightly, ‘you haven’t done anything, have you? Anyway, that sort of let the cat out of the bag. I thought he might apologize and so forth, but it turned out he liked her better.’ I clear my throat.

‘That’s awful.’

‘It is. But it’s also very dull.’

‘Dull?’

I look at the joint I’m holding and realize it’s gone out before I’ve even smoked any. I ask him for a light and he drops the red plastic lighter into my hand. I fumble with the wheel, my thumb pressing against it, hear the grating spin. I inhale and see the flame crackle, wondering when I last smoked a spliff. Millennium Eve? Since then, surely. Someone’s thirtieth? You could still smoke in pubs, then. Not drugs, obviously. I liked pubs better when you could smoke in them, or maybe I was just younger. Now pubs smell of toilets and chip fat and stale beer, where once they smelled of fags. But you can go out for the evening and not have to wash all your clothes. Swings and roundabouts, I suppose.

‘I’m hardly the first person to wake up one morning and realize they’re middle-aged and single and nothing’s going to be quite as they expected. It happens all the time. It isn’t interesting. That’s one of the problems,’ I add. ‘One of the things that makes it hard to work around – or through. It’s just so… It doesn’t matter how shit it is, or how crappy I feel. It’s impossible to have an original thought about it. It’s worse than falling in love, for clichés. Honestly, so dull.’ I sigh. I’m reasonably impressed with my ability to talk about this without crying.

‘Well, but–’

‘Anyway, the only thing duller than thinking about it is talking about it.’ I pause, considering. ‘I’m going to change my name back,’ I say. ‘I’ve never liked Mottram much. Hamilton’s much better.’

‘Hamilton’s a good name,’ he agrees.

I look at him, speculative. ‘So, um, have you ever been married?’

‘Me? God no.’

‘Or similar? Have you lived with anyone, or been engaged, or–’

‘No.’

I wait. Will he feel he owes me some information, or not? ‘That’s quite unusual, isn’t it? Really never even lived with anyone? But you do… sleep with people?’ I think of Jenny telling me about her friends who’d tried and failed to attract his attention; of him telling me about the assistants who used to fall in love with him, or vice versa.

‘Sometimes. I try not to. Or at least–’

‘You try not to?’ I blink at him. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met a man who’d say that.’

He looks a bit hunted. ‘Best not to get involved,’ he says.

‘Blimey.’ I wasn’t expecting that.

It’s his turn to sigh. ‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ he says. I look at him, encouragingly. He waits, trying to decide, I suppose, whether it’s a good idea to say whatever he’s going to say. He takes a deep breath. ‘I’ve slept with everyone my brother’s ever cared about.’

I stare. ‘Everyone?’

‘Well, not our mother. Or, you know, any other relatives. But all his girlfriends, or nearly all of them. And both his wives.’

And there it is, finally, the big reveal. I’ve known there was something, of course, since Alastair first mentioned it months ago. But I can’t really believe it. ‘Bloody hell.’

‘I know.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘I mean it’s not loads of people.’ He smiles a rather crooked smile. ‘Well. A reasonable number.’

‘I don’t think,’ I say, carefully, ‘that it’s the numbers that concern me.’

‘No.’

‘Can I ask… I don’t even know what to ask. Both his wives?’ I say. ‘Jesus.’

‘Yeah, that’s the worst, isn’t it? Although he’d already split up with Julia. His first wife. Before I–’

‘And the second one?’

‘Yeah, that was… No. No, it was my fault that time. Carolyn. I didn’t even like her much, not really. They were all his type, obviously, not mine.’ He smiles at me, a proper smile this time.

‘Edward.’

‘So yeah, um, for a long time, sex was mostly about revenge, for me, and that’s why I try to avoid it.’

‘Revenge? Bloody hell. Way to go from nothing to the most bizarre intimacies in, like, one fell swoop. Christ.’

I blow smoke at the edge of the parasol, where purple divides from the intense blue of the sky. I hear gulls, and the waves, a blackbird somewhere, a tractor or something in the distance. I take another pull on the joint and hand it back to him.

‘So go on,’ I say, ‘tell me why you slept with your brother’s wives.