Love Is a Four Letter Word Read Online Free

polka-dot blouse. She didn’t come as a side order with the meal, you know. Here’s some bread and a woman for the evening.’
    Viv waved her away dismissively.
    â€˜She could be his cousin, come for a visit.’
    â€˜She could be the Dalai Lama in disguise, but let’s look at the most likely option first, shall we? Two people: one male, one female, in a restaurant, in the evening. Sounds suspiciously like a couple having a relationship to me. You ought to know. That’s what normal people do. I read it in one of the Sunday supplements.’
    *   *   *
    They walked as far as the cathedral together before their routes took them separate ways. How stunning it was lit up at night – and not a tourist in sight to appreciate it. By day, it was a magnet for Japanese groups following their tour guide bearing a rolled umbrella aloft like a drum majorette, and troupes of French schoolchildren sporting identical blue caps and matching plastic pouches round their necks advertising: ‘My passport and all my money. Steal me.’
    Bella walked across the bridge. The river glinted darkly below. A few boats bobbed gently, clunking woodenly against each other. It looked mysterious and exciting, the kind of night when your partner might turn to you and say, ‘Let’s go to Rome for the weekend – now!’ Did anyone really have a relationship like that? Viv frequently complained that she and Nick never managed to get away. And even when Bella had been with someone, they had never done spontaneous things like jetting off to the Continent on the spur of the moment or having sex on the kitchen floor or in the bath. Once, in a fit of horniness, she and Sean, her boyfriend before Patrick, had tugged down each other’s jeans and attempted to do it on the stairs. But the jeans were in the way and there seemed to be far too many knees involved in the proceedings, and after two minutes the step digging into her lower back was all she could think about. They’d had to stop and trip upstairs to his bedroom, their legs pinioned by their half-mast jeans, by which time much of their fiery passion had fizzled into a damp squib.
    It was just one of those pointless ideas they use to fill up the pages of women’s magazines: ‘Love-life lost its magic? Spice it up: initiate sex at unexpected moments and in surprising places.’ But they were always special magazine-world clichés about romance and sex, stuff like ‘Tuck little love notes into your partner’s pocketsfor him to discover during the day’ and ‘Surprise your man by whispering to him that you’re not wearing any panties when you’re out together.’ He’d just think you were going prematurely senile. What if you told him while you were tootling around Tesco’s hunting for decent olives? That would certainly be a surprise. Would he really be so overcome with excitement that he’d lean you back over the long-life milk? Or take you over a freezer filled with coffee Viennettas and Arctic Rolls? Wouldn’t that be awfully cold on your bottom? Would other shoppers ignore you – how English – and perhaps try to reach past your thigh, saying, ‘Excuse me, dear, could I just get to the mandarin cheesecake? See, I’ve my sister-in-law coming at the weekend.’
    A young couple wove towards her, stopping every few feet to kiss, veering erratically in their path like drunken crabs; an older pair, in their fifties she guessed, passed by holding hands. When she was first with Patrick, she had usually felt glad at the sight of other couples laughing and kissing and canoodling. There seemed to be a secret bond between them all. Sometimes, four pairs of eyes would meet and smile: ‘We know how good life is, don’t we?’
    Now, it just made Bella depressed. God, how smug couples were. If she were ever stupid enough to be in a couple again – that sounded