The A-Z of Us Read Online Free

straight lines, the solid marks on white paper. The numbers, words and angles. The drawings reassured me. I breathed; out, in, out. As long as I concentrated on the A 3 paper and the mapped-out integral worlds delineated there, I felt okay.
    But you can’t look at plans for ever, Gemma. You have to look up and see the reality around you.
    The reality was that the house was in disarray, the builders wouldn’t return until after the bank holiday, and the project’s principle financial backer, my husband, was now living in a hotel, refusing to speak to me.
    It was a mess. A big fucking mess of a mess.
    I ripped the plans from the makeshift kitchen table, mashing them together like a schoolgirl crumpling paintings.
    Maybe my mother was right. Maybe I am bad to the bone. Maybe I deserved all this.
    I called Ian out of panic. I needed to hear his voice. I needed something familiar, a kind word. But most of all, I needed that particular form of male ambivalence I knew Ian would be able to offer. He would not judge me. He would simply try to help. I needed his energy, his overwhelming enthusiasm for giving assistance.
    The surprising thing was that the moment he answered the phone I wanted to smash the receiver down, run upstairs to the unmade bed and crawl under the covers, for ever. Suddenly, the last thing on earth I wanted to do was to tell Ian about Raj. To admit that I had failed.
    So I tried with all my might to be normal, to chat withhim as old friends do, and then he asked me if I was okay, in that soft reassuring voice that almost requested me not to be okay, so that he could take care of me, so that he could be my best friend once more and come to the rescue as he had done all those times in the past. I’d almost cried, but managed to contain myself at the last moment.
    â€˜Fuck it,’ I said to the empty house, as if these were the only two words I had left, the only words I’d ever be able to use again.
    And now I lie in the bath twisting my wedding ring round and round my finger. I’m terrified, I know that. I have always feared the unknown, a trepidation that worsened after my father’s death. As a little girl I always thanked my parents (silently) for producing me second.
    I used to ask Molly incessant nervous questions about what my future had in store. How high was the diving board you had to leap from to pass the swimming exam? Which teachers accepted late homework? How did a tampon work? What was it like to kiss? Was beer disgusting? Was a man’s penis really like an uncooked Sainsbury’s pork and onion sausage?
    To escape my fear, I plunged into romantic fiction – Catherine Cookson, Maeve Binchy, even Jane Austen, intoxicated by the adventurous heroines who laboured and loved, who acted as my surrogates, doing deeds of derring-do and high romance that I knew I’d never be capable of. The funny thing is, now I’m in my own story, I just wish I could turn to the end. To see what happens.
    The doorbell rings. For an instant I wonder if it’s Raj, returning to talk things through, a bunch of flowers inhand. My heart races. But Raj has keys, and he never buys flowers. That’s my job. I’m the ‘artistic’ one. Then I remember calling Ian, and I feel sick once more. I put my head under the water, but the bell keeps ringing.
    I open the front door in pyjamas and Raj’s big blue towelling bathrobe. Ian stands there, crutches and an
A to Z
map in one hand, a bunch of cheap chrysanthemums in the other, as if on his way to the funeral of someone he doesn’t know very well. He looks good, as always – tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed, square-jawed with a faint suntan, like a young Pierce Brosnan – despite the fact he’s wearing a pair of Adidas waterproof jogging trousers over a thick white plaster cast.
    â€˜What the hell happened to you?’
    â€˜I broke my ankle in Venezuela. It’s a long story.’
    Ian puts out his