(2013) Collateral Damage Read Online Free

series of blue and white road-signs. He couldn't believe his luck when she
agreed to marry him and live in a converted cottage in what he liked to think of
as the country but was known to the General Post Office as part of the West Midlands
conurbation. For a few weeks she had even found herself a job in Birmingham, with
a small advertising company whose accounts were mostly to do with the motor trade.
Then, having completely re-organised the office and made one young man entirely
dissatisfied with provincial married life, she tired of it. 'I think I'd like to
be a kept woman for a while, darling,' she explained.
    She still spent a fortune on clothes, but they were usually paid
for from her income, which came from a trust fund set up by her maternal grandfather.
Dove gathered he had made a fortune by doing something unspeakable in southern Africa.
Her parents, a brigadier and his wife, lived in a converted oast-house in Kent.
They didn't much care for Dove - 'no background and far too polite' - but at least
he was white. They had never quite got over the time Emma brought a West Indian
mechanic home and wanted to establish him in the garage business.
    'Hypergamy - the act of marrying above your
station. That's what you're about to do,' Roger Day, the English teacher
and his closest friend at school, had said after he first met Emma.
    Well, he'd been wrong, hadn't he? And so had a lot of other people,
thought Dove, reducing speed to avoid sodomizing an articulated truck which had
decided to leap into the centre lane. It had worked out all right.
    She went to London rather more often than he would have liked,
but that was to be expected: she liked to shop and when it came to clothes there
was no denying that Birmingham wasn't London.
    Now a very pleasant weekend lay ahead. They were going to meet
in Frenchie's pub in Soho where they would drink kir, and afterwards they would
have dinner at Bianchi's in Frith Street. Emma had introduced him to both places.
Tomorrow, if she'd finished her shopping, they'd probably look in at a couple of
exhibitions he had noted in last week's Observer. There was a play they wanted to
see in the evening. After dinner, best of all, slightly drunk and full of good food,
they would go to bed.
    They were staying at a flat near Sloane Square which belonged
to one of Emma's friends. Dove wasn't sure who they were or whether they would be
there or not. As a rule, her friends made him feel uneasy. It wasn't that he couldn't
handle them. On the contrary, being a bit of a prig he often felt morally superior,
but they represented part of her life that he knew nothing about
and, more important, did not want to know anything about . Most of them he
failed to recognize as individuals, but saw only as a backcloth to his wife. Emma
had neglected to mention the names of these people near Sloane Square on the telephone,
an omission that was entirely in character.

 

 
 
    4. Emma

 
    Emma was in bed with Toby - one friend whom Dove would have remembered.
She liked having sex in the afternoon. She always said it took the tension out of
the evening. Emma usually 'had sex', too, rarely made love. She was peculiarly honest
about things like that.
    'Oh God, do you mean, do you really mean,' Toby was saying, 'that
I have to vacate my own bloody flat for you to cavort over my finest linen with
that dreary husband of yours?'
    He was doing his best to sound indignant, but he was feeling
much too pleased with himself to convey any real reproach. It had been a bit demoralizing
when Emma rushed off and got married like that. Then a couple of months later she'd
started drifting back down to London and they'd hopped between the sheets again
just as naturally as if nothing had happened. 'Do you have an open marriage?' friends
asked. 'More ajar,' said Emma. Of course, Toby suspected that he wasn't the only
one on her itinerary, but it was nice to be included. She didn't even seem to mind
that he had run out of coke. But he