Absolute Zero Cool Read Online Free Page A

going to work. The start should be the easy bit. If you’re finding it hard going now, it’ll be a nightmare when we get into the endgame.’
    He’s right, but somehow apologising feels a step too far.
    ‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I won’t be here tomorrow. We’re taking Rosie to see Debs’s parents.’
    ‘No worries.’
    ‘I won’t be back until Sunday evening.’
    ‘See you Monday morning, so.’
    ‘Monday, yeah.’
     
     
    Debs is standing inside the chalet’s patio doors with Rosie humped over her shoulder, patting the little girl’s back to bring up wind. I put the manuscript and coffee mugs on the counter and hunch down to meet Rosie’s gaze, but she’s glassy-eyed, blissed out after a long feed.
    ‘Y’know,’ Debs says, ‘it’s just as well no one else can see what I can see. I’d hate for anyone to think my husband was a mentaller who needs to put in a couple of hours talking to his characters to get set up for the day.’
    ‘Want me to take her?’
    ‘Good timing.’ She hands Rosie across, sniffing her as she goes. ‘I think she has nappy issues. And change her baby-gro, will you? Put her little kimono outfit on.’
    ‘The white one?’
    ‘No, the pink one, the one your mother bought her. She’s cute in pink.’
    ‘Hey boopster,’ I croon, rubbing Rosie’s back. She burps up a little creamy sick that dribbles down onto my shoulder. ‘That’s my girl,’ I say.
     
    •
     
    I have some sympathy for Orpheus. Perhaps this is why I am drawn to cellars, basements, caves and catacombs. There is, surely, a Freudian frisson to my fascination with vaults, crypts and bunkers. It occurs to me to wonder, on my regular perambulations through the hospital’s cavernous underground car park, if my pseudo-gynaecological expeditions mask a benign desire to regain the original comfort of the womb or a more malign instinct to pierce and penetrate. Do I descend to the netherworld to liberate Eurydice, or to ensure my presumptive gaze annihilates her hope forever?
    Orpheus had the good fortune to be created, by Apollonius Rhodius, an artist of sublime skill. In the original mythology, he is a valued member of the Argonauts who rescues his beloved wife from oblivion.
    He subsequently had the misfortune to be redrafted by Virgil, Plato and Ovid, who between them not only contrive a tragedy from our hero’s brave harrowing of hell, but in the process render Orpheus an ineffective coward who extinguished Eurydice.
    Their justification was that Orpheus lacked a true commitment to his wife. In other words, they believed he should want to die in order to be with Eurydice forever, rather than simply resurrecting her from death.
    Thus, as his love was not true, Orpheus was punished by the ever-mocking gods.
    In the dark corners of my netherworld, prowling the shadows of the hospital’s caverns, I wonder if any mortal should be expected to have the courage of the gods’ convictions, who have all of eternity in which to debate the theoretical pros and cons of the ultimate in self-sacrifice.
    Later, over dinner and a nice glass of red, I tease out the subtleties.
    ‘So you’re asking,’ Cassie says, ‘if I’d rather be rescued from hell or have you come join me?’
    ‘That’s pretty much it, yeah.’
    ‘Hard to say, really.’ She forks home some pasta and chews, considering. ‘We couldn’t just swap places?’
    ‘I don’t think Orpheus was offered that option.’
    ‘Typical. I’m betting it was a bloke who wrote that story.’
    ‘Actually there was more than one writer. But they were all blokes, yeah.’
    ‘There’s a shocker. So would you?’ she says.
    ‘Would I what?’
    ‘Swap places with me.’
    ‘That wouldn’t make any sense. Better I stayed alive and tried to get you out, no?’
    ‘No. I’m not offering that option. So would you?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Well, it’s hard to say, because you’re not in hell.’
    ‘K, we’ve just moved in together. How much worse