Opportunity Read Online Free Page B

a
silvery sheen and the air just above it was a haggard yellow.
The cold light on the water only made it seem cosier inside.
People rushed in, folding their umbrellas and shaking off the
water. Inside, in the crush and heat and chatter, there were
tables loaded with books for sale, long queues for tickets and
coffee, people filing into sessions or gathering for signings. I
walked in and stood for a moment, feeling myself gently
bumped and buffeted by the crowd. There was a smell of wet
wool. I was nervous about my forthcoming session; this gave
me a feeling of inertia, of uneasy, drowsy luxury. I could have
sneaked off to one of the rooms upstairs and lain across the
bed drinking, sprawled and stalled, while time went on
somewhere else without me . . .
    I stood still, calming myself. I looked across the crowd. I
saw a man standing against the high windows, the grey sea
behind him. I wasn't sure until he moved and looked towards
me. He was older and heavier, slightly stooped, but it was him.
After all these years. The memory came rushing back. I
remembered a scene long ago: a hotel room, the opened minibar,
myself much younger — a beautiful, blonde younger self.
The yellow light on the walls. The expensive linen. The rain
drifting past the windows and outside the canyon made of
city walls, the browns, the tans, the desolate spaces. Shirred
water on a roof far below. No sound, the concrete silence. The
bed where he lay, where he lounged and smiled. I saw him.
And I saw him. Long ago, in the room of my nerves. And
here, between the hotel pillars! And there, appearing again,
and walking up the stairs now, a programme in his hand.
Walking up the stairs to where a crowd was gathering: for An
Hour With Celia Myers. The woman he . . . The woman whose
marriage . . . Long ago, in the room where he lay, where he
grinned and smoked and made a joke, I'd looked out at the
darkening city and thought of my husband Joe, at home, not
knowing. At home with our daughters.
    I followed him up the stairs. I looked at his back, his
shoulders. Let's call him Martin. Long ago I fell in love with
him, and went to bed with him, and Joe found out and left me.
And then Martin told me: 'I don't love you. I love someone
else. I love another woman.'
    Joe and I got back together after a while, but things were
never the same. And now he's dead I look back and think
about what our life would have been like. I know it would
have been better if I'd never met Martin.
    He had joined the queue. He was going to my Hour With.
It was impossible. I couldn't allow it. I would yank him out of
the line. 'I'm not having you sitting there ruining my hour.
Smirking. Making your smartarse jokes.' I moved towards
him. I used to yearn to hurt him. I had such violent dreams.
But I only did it on paper in the end. On paper, and in my
head.
    'Celia! Celia!' Now here came Sarah, weaving though the
crowd. 'Celia, I've been looking all over for you. Come this
way. What can I get you? Water? Coffee?'
    She hustled me to the Green Room. I let her push me gently
into a chair. I stared at the coffee she put in front of me. I
thought about the affair, how it had felt back then. I had been
happily married with two children. I met Martin at a party.
He made me laugh. He sent me witty notes. Some of the things
he wrote were quite beautiful. We started meeting secretly. I
remembered the hotel room. My nerves. The rain drifting
past the window, the yellow light inside. The joy and the fear.
I was right up at the sharpest, sweetest peak of feeling. I'd
been married for so long, a hard-working mother for so long,
and then, suddenly, I was back in the time when feelings
overwhelmed me, when everything was vivid.
    He felt none of those things — I know that now. He'd never
been married. He didn't have the sense of 'coming alive again'.
He was just doing the same jaded thing he'd always done:
having a fling. After a while he told me he loved someone else.
Just like that. He didn't mince words. I