Silver Wedding Read Online Free

an end. One of the nicer publishing reps was there as the shop closed. He asked her to come and have a drink.
    ‘I’m going to darkest Pinner,’ Anna said. ‘I’d better set out now.’
    ‘I’m driving that way, why don’t we have a drink en route?’ he said.
    ‘Nobody’s driving to Pinner,’ she laughed.
    ‘Oh, how do you know I don’t have a mistress out that way, or am hoping to acquire one?’ he teased.
    ‘We wouldn’t discuss such things in Rosemary Drive,’ Anna said, mock primly.
    ‘Come on, get in, the car’s on a double yellow line,’ he laughed.
    He was Ken Green, she had talked to him a lot at the bookshop. They had both started work the same day, it had been a common bond.
    He was going to leave his company and join a bigger one, so was she; neither of them had done it.
    ‘Do you think we’re just cowards?’ she asked him as he negotiated the rush-hour traffic.
    ‘No, there are always reasons. What’s holding you back, these moral folk in Rosemary Drive?’
    ‘How do you know they’re moral folk?’ she said, surprised.
    ‘You just told me there’d be no talk of mistresses in your house,’ Ken said.
    ‘Too true, they’d be very disappointed to know that I was one myself,’ Anna said.
    ‘So would I.’ Ken seemed serious.
    ‘Oh, come on out of that,’ she laughed at him. ‘It’s always easy to pay compliments to someone you know is tied up, much safer. If I told you I was free and on the rampage you’d run a hundred miles from me instead of offering me a drink.’
    ‘Absolutely wrong. I left your bookshop to the last specially, I was thinking all day how nice it would be to see you. Don’t you accuse me of being faint-hearted, hey?’
    She patted his knee companionably. ‘No. I misjudged you.’ She sighed deeply. It was easy to talk to Ken, she didn’t have to watch what she said. Like she would when she got to Salthill in Rosemary Drive. Like she would when she got back to Joe later on.
    ‘Was that a sigh of pleasure?’ he asked.
    With Joe or with Mother or Father she would have said yes.
    ‘Weariness: I get tired of all the lies,’ she said. ‘Very tired.’
    ‘But you’re a big girl now, surely you don’t have to tell lies about your life and the way you live it.’
    Anna nodded her head glumly. ‘I do, truly I do.’
    ‘Maybe you only think you do.’
    ‘No, I do. Like the telephone. I’ve told them at home that my phone has been taken out, so that they won’t ring me. That’s because there’s a message on the answerphone saying “This is Joe Ashe’s number”. He has to have it, you see, because he’s an actor and they can’t be out of touch.’
    ‘Of course,’ Ken said.
    ‘So naturally I don’t want my mother ringing and hearing a man’s voice. And I don’t want my father asking what’s this young man doing in
my
flat.’
    ‘True, he might well ask that, and why he hadn’t a machine of his own and number of his own,’ Ken said sternly.
    ‘So I have to be careful about not mentioning things like paying the phone bill, I have to remember I’m not meant to
be
on the phone. That’s just one of the nine million lies.’
    ‘Well, is it all right at the other end, of the line, I mean you don’t have to lie to this actor chap?’ Ken seemed anxious to know.
    ‘Lie? No, not at all, what would I have to lie about?’
    ‘I don’t know, you said all the lies you had to tell everywhere. I thought maybe he was a jealous macho fellow, you couldn’t tell him you went for a drink with me. That’s if we ever get anywhere near a drink.’ Ken looked ruefully at the tailbacks.
    ‘Oh no, you don’t understand, Joe would be glad to think I went for a drink with a friend. It’s just …’ Her voice trailed away. What was it just? It was just that there was an endless utterly endless need to pretend. Pretend she was having a good time in the odd club place where they went. Pretend she understood this casual relationship with his mother, his wife,