The Girl Who Passed for Normal Read Online Free

Italy for David —for if not for him she couldn’t think why — and David was not there. She felt her lips twisting on her face, leaping and writhing as if they had a life of their own, trying to hide the fact that they were wounded.
    She took a cigarette from her handbag and lit it quickly. That was better. She inhaled a couple of times, then stood up and went back to David’s study. She opened the top drawer of his desk, where he kept his letters, and saw the letter she had written him. She took it out and read it.
    My dearest love,
    I’m coming back soon! Things here have sort of resolved themselves. Three days ago I had a long talk with mother. I told her what the doctor had said, that he couldn’t do anything more, and that it was just a matter of waiting to see what happened. She didn’t seem at all upset, just nodded and smiled and said she’d realized that, that it was just a question of time now; that she’d reached the end, etc. So I said to her that I was thinking of flying over, just for a weekend, to see you and see how you were. That really upset her! She said I mustn’t go off and leave her, that if I went she’d die within hours, that I couldn’t do that to her. So I said O.K., I won’t go, and she immediately seemed happier, almost smug — so much so that it made me wonder if she really was feeling all that sick, and whether it wasn’t that she enjoyed having me there, and wanted me to stay. I wondered whether, in fact, she had any intention of dying. So I had it out with her and she got really angry, saying that she had always known that you would have a bad influence on me, that you had made me hard and selfish, etc. etc. Then I got angry, and we were both shouting away for about — it must have been twenty minutes — and then, suddenly, I looked at mother and I knew, and she looked at me andknew I knew. She’d been faking all the time! She was just feeling miserable and lonely, so she decided she wanted me to come home and look after her. I think perhaps she did have a mild heart attack earlier, but I went to the doctor again the day before yesterday and asked him whether it was possible mother had been faking the whole thing and he said yes — that when she called him and said she was having an attack it was the first time he’d seen her for about ten years, and though there was something wrong with her heart it was something that could have been wrong for years and years, and could go on being wrong for years and years — and, in any case, he said that mother being the size she is, it would be pretty strange if there wasn’t something wrong with her heart. He did say, however, that if she felt miserable enough to persist in playing the role of a dying woman for three months there was something wrong with her, if not necessarily with her heart, and that I should have pity on her and not rush off immediately. So I went home and told mother that I would be leaving in two weeks’ time. She took it without a murmur, and yesterday and today we’ve been really quite friendly. So! This morning I bought my ticket. I’m going to come back by train. I leave London on the morning of November 14th, and arrive in Rome at about 3:30 on the afternoon of the 15th — perhaps you could call the station to check that, and if you’re not doing anything … it is a Sunday. I can’t tell you how happy I am! Apart from that, I haven’t been doing much. The weather —
    She put the letter down. He had received it and read and put it in his drawer, and she had been quite specific about the day and the time. She picked the letter up again and pressed her lips together. It was a horrible letter. Perhaps David had thought that. Perhaps she had hurt him by hintingat what her mother had said in their twenty-minute shouting contest. She shouldn’t have mentioned it. He had always known her mother didn’t approve of him; she always thought he was too lazy, or too cynical, or too “brilliant,” and not