The A-Z of Us Read Online Free Page A

arms, a gesture that’s been his way of greeting me since university. I hesitate on the doorstep, terrified that any human contact will somehow soften the taut, agonizing control I’ve managed to exert over my muscles, mind and heart.
    But I know I need this.
    Ian steps forward into me, closing his arms around my narrow back, the plastic wrapping of the funeral flowers rustling crisply as he does so. He hugs me gently. I know this feeling, these arms, this scent of faint sweat and Right Guard.
    I close my eyes tightly, and let the tears come, finally, like soothing summer rain.

THE BEGINNING: 2
    Ian Thompson met Gemma Cook on his third day at Sheffield University. He wandered into the Freshers’ Fair looking for something to join (one of the many things he’d learned on his two-year ‘Gap’ travels through southeast Asia, Australia and the States, he believed, was that you couldn’t just sit back and wait for things to happen, you had to be proactive). Yet his fellow students, with their Kurt Cobain and Che Guevara T-shirts, their unkempt hair and slouching, affected poses seemed so naive, so full of themselves, that he couldn’t bear to sign up for anything – especially not the ‘Traveller’s Club’ with its long-haired private school boys and mis-spelled ‘Zimbwawbe’. Rather than helping him feel more connected to the other students, the Freshers’ Fair left him feeling even more alienated, more different, and, Ian admitted secretly to himself, even more superior.
    He entered the pizza-eating competition because he felt he had to sign up for something, and it would only last one evening. He was fairly confident of winning. Few people would be able to devour as much pizza as Ian Thompson, following his three-month stint at Zeppy’s in Hermosa Beach, California, during which he’d consumed an extra large Spicy American every night, without taking breath.
    Sitting down at the trestle table in the student unionon that first Friday night, Ian felt supremely confident, and vaguely hopeful (like most other male students in the bar, he had visions of finding an instant freshers’ week girlfriend). He was happy to see that five of the twenty contestants were female, including one slender brunette who glanced at him with a swift smile, sending flashes of tequila-charged excitement spinning around his belly.
    Yet the competition wasn’t quite what he’d expected. It was to be speed, not quantity. He almost gave up before the first round – he’d not planned to make a fool of himself. But the brunette glanced at him again, and the bell rang, and he discovered that the months at Zeppy’s had not been in vain. The pizzas were only small, after all. Ian crammed and gobbled and came second in the first round.
    The brunette came last, barely finishing a third of her nine-inch Margarita. Ian tried smiling sympathetically, but she pushed back her chair and hurried away from the table. He never saw her again.
    By the fourth round, there were only five contestants left, one of whom was female. She was blonde, with a pretty, gentle face, but a little on the heavy side. Ian preferred slim, small-titted women, preferably with some exotic blood in them. This woman looked consummately English, with her pale skin flushed with drunken embarrassment. She was gulping beer, trying to ignore the jokes and supportive cries of the small group of boys standing behind her. She seemed awkward, as if she had embarked on something she was regretting. Ian wondered if she was an only child, like him. As he stared at her, she glancedup, and he smiled at her. She looked away and then the bell rang once more.
    Ian folded and gulped and won the heat. The blonde came third, scraping into the semi-final. Behind her, the boys whooped and cheered, and she tried to smile more confidently, a forced smile that only served to emphasize her timidity. Ian wanted to speak up, to tell