Married Love Read Online Free

metaphorical wedding night – I don’t actually mean that one night in particular. Behind the first door, the torture chamber; behind the second door, a lake of tears, and so on. Behind the last door were his other wives, alive and well. Well, the first one isn’t exactly alive, but I could tell you all about her.
    — I’d forgotten there was a first one.
    — Danish, actress, had problems with her abusive father, drank.
    — He goes on about them?
    — Not really. They’re just his life – they crop up, as you can imagine. There’s a lot of life behind him to crop up. Don’t forget, once Valerie was the one he ran away with.
    — I’d never thought of it like that.
    — Were the babies my revenge? Poor Ed, I’ve nearly killed him.
    Lottie lay down on the floor, head to toe with Noah, holding her glass on the soft mound of her stomach, tilting the viscous red drink backward and forward as she breathed.
    — Do you know what I did the other week? I was so angry about something – can’t remember what – that I drove up to the recycling depot with the babies in the back of the car to throw my violin into the skip for miscellaneous household waste.
    Noah sat upright. — The one Mum and Dad bought for you? Didn’t that cost loads of money? Thousands?
    — I didn’t actually do it. I looked down into the skip and got the violin out of the case to throw, and then I put it away again. Apart from anything else, I told myself, I could always sell it. And it’s possible I might want to start again, when this is over. But probably I won’t, ever.
    — Is Edgar any good? Noah demanded drunkenly, suddenly aggressive. — I mean, is his music really, actually any good?
    — Noah, how can you ask that? You’re not allowed to ask that.
    Although Lottie protested, the question seemed intimately known to her, as if she had thrown herself too often against its closed door. — How can I judge? I can’t tell . I think he’s good. He’s writing something at the moment, for strings. It’ll get a premiere at the Festival. It’s something new, different. Actually, I think it might be lovely.
    Just then they heard Edgar’s deliberate slow step on the stairs, his key in the door to the flat.
    — He pretends this new piece is for me. But I know it’s not about me.
    Edgar stood squinting at them from the doorway, getting used to the light; his khaki hooded waterproof and stooped shoulders gave him, incongruously, the toughened, bemused aura of an explorer returned. Noah imagined how infantile he and Lottie must look, lying on the floor among the toys with their bright red drinks, and how uninteresting youth must sometimes seem.
    — We’re finishing up that Bacardi, Ed, Lottie said, enunciating too carefully. — Do you want some?
    Edgar’s eyes these days had retreated behind his jutting cheekbones and sprouting eyebrows; something suave had gone out of his manner. He said that he would rather have a hot drink. Forgetfully he waited, as if he expected Lottie to jump up and make it for him. When he remembered after a moment, and went into the kitchen to do it himself, he didn’t imply the least reproach; he was merely absorbed, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. Noah saw how hungrily from where she lay Lottie followed the ordinary kitchen music – the crescendo of the kettle, the chatter of crockery, the punctuation of cupboard doors, the chiming of the spoon in the cup – as if she might hear in it something that was meant for her.

Friendly Fire
    SHELLEY WAS HELPING out her friend Pam. Pam had her own cleaning business, but her employees were so unreliable that she ended up doing half the work herself. She’d been hired to do a scrub-off – meaning a thorough cleaning, right down to basics – at an industrial warehouse somewhere at the edge of the city. Shelley had agreed to go along; it was a few weeks before Christmas, and she could do with the extra money. When she went outside to wait for Pam it was still night,