Oh Dear Silvia Read Online Free

that I was dead inside, that … I had ruled out the chance of joy ever again. For that night and every other night to follow. I had fully settled into my unhappiness and wore it comfortably. So comfortably in fact, that it was barely perceptible to others. It just fitted me so well. My suit of misery hung happily on me. So happily that she assumed I could have “a lovely night” in it. The loveliness she referred to was so extremely far out of reach for me. It was as far as … the bloody moon.
    ‘The sadness of it all hit me very hard, very suddenly. It virtually winded me. As I pulled away from the kerb, my mind started to chase me … towards … the bloody tipping point. I didn’t drive home. I drove up to Collicott Fields. I parked in the turning point at the end of the lane, you know it. It was still light enough to see, so I grabbed the fish-and-chips bag and the noose, climbed across the wall on that stile they have there, and headed up the field towards the wood.
    ‘No one was about, save a few sleepy cows who gave me that witheringly dismissive glance they do, and then they just resumed their serious chewing job. Four stomachs, apparently. Amazing. As I trudged across the grass, I could see the grove of ancient beeches at the far end of the field, gettingcloser and bigger, as if they were coming towards me to swallow me up. That’s just what I wanted, to be right inside that wood, away from the woodless everywhere else. Away from openness. As I approached the outer edge with the first trees, I could feel the structure of the ground beneath my feet begin to change. The floor of the forest is scattered with the detritus of the massive gnarly beeches, all their droppings. It became quite crunchy and I had to pick my way through carefully. Remember, it was twilight by now, so it was fairly perilous.
    ‘You know where I was going Silv. I headed straight for the massive queen beech at the centre of the copse. She is the mother of them all, I think, the giant shade giver, the oldest. Maybe even four hundred years, possibly.
    ‘You will remember her, you will have looked up past her great knotted trunk into her magnificent dense top foliage that amazing day Silv, all those years ago, y’know the first time. I couldn’t believe how young you looked. Easily fifteen years younger than you were. I suppose you must have been … What? … thirty-three or something when we first met, but with the filtered sun dancing on your skin, so … dappled and … sort of creamy, you looked like a teenager. You were smiling up at me, giving me permission to go further. Inside the wood, inside you. So breathless and … willing.’
    Ed looks at her.
    Yes, she’s still breathless. Different kind of breathless.
    That kind, back then, is such a turn-on, he remembers, whena woman can’t find enough breath to keep up. When she has to snatch air between waves of pleasure. Deep, guttural sexual breaths. God, he loves that sound. He hasn’t heard it for so long.
    So long.
    So …
    Long.
    He sighs and looks at her.
    ‘You were the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen that day, your nakedness in amongst those huge snakey roots. It was all … earth, or something. Overwhelming. Completely natural. The best kind of beauty. It was a better moment than any I’d ever had. Maybe even than I ever will have, Silv. It was … sort of … dunno … sacred? I know that sounds grand and I’m sorry to say I’m glad you can’t respond to it, because I can just hear your haughty derision now. Maybe deservedly. But Silv, I just want you to know how much it meant.
    ‘It was in that moment I genuinely believed in – you know – love, for the first time. Well, for the only time. I believed we would always be one, I wanted that. I thought you did too. I really thought you did. Did you Silv? I would like to know. Yep. Like to know when that all changed … Anyway, it was on that day remember, we carved the Latin initials: “CICA” for “Crescent