The New Woman Read Online Free Page A

last.
    The rain was a torrent as I walked down the basement steps. I dropped my bags beside the dustbin. The security light flickered into life, glinting on falling drops. Water coursed down my face.
    I fitted my keys into the locks. The bottom deadlock first, and then the Yale.
    ‘This is it,’ I said out loud.
    I’d made my choice. I wouldn’t see how Kate’s life turned out, or Simon’s. I wouldn’t see my grandchildren grow up. I wouldn’t grow old with Eilish. Perhaps she’d be angry for the rest of her life, like the woman on the train. It was better than the alternative. Probably.
    The Yale turned with a quiet click. The door gave way under the pressure of my hand. The security light went out.

Four
    Eilish
    After Kate rang off, I danced a little jig. Well! This sounded like very hopeful news. Luke and I disliked Owen more every time we saw him, though we made herculean efforts to hide the fact. There was something infuriating about the boy’s mousy nondescriptness. Kate was a free spirit and yet he tried to stifle her with his manipulative poor-me-I’ve-had-a-rough-childhood clinginess. He’d even brought a crazy little dog home from the RSPCA, in a blatant attempt to play mums and dads. Kate took the bait (‘He’s never had any happiness, Mum’) but Luke and I saw right through the ploy. Our abiding terror was that a real baby would be coming along next.
    The whole thing was baffling. Ever since adolescence, Kate’s been a feminist of the old school. If Owen had been a rugby-playing banker with a square chin and a Range Rover, she wouldn’t have touched him with a barge pole. It seemed ironic that she’d let a needy, controlling boy rule her life just as surely as any bullying mobster.
    I hummed a few bars of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ as I tipped salad out of a bag and warmed up yesterday’s lasagne. Mm- hm! Owen was on his way out, all right. I couldn’t wait to tell Luke the glad tidings when he phoned.
    But he didn’t phone. Every half-hour or so I tried his number, only to get voicemail. Maybe his battery was flat. His charger was here, in the kitchen.
    After supper I opened my roll-top desk and designed the invitations for our party. By midnight I still hadn’t heard from Luke, so I turned in. I read for a while in bed, wearing the honey-coloured silk slip he gave me on our last anniversary. He actually bought it himself, in the lingerie department of House of Fraser. Now, that shows real courage! A lone man, an alien among all that underwiring and cleavage-boosting, tackling false-eyelashed assistants. He’d been so pleased with himself.
    After turning out the lamp, I reached across to his side of the bed and pulled his pillow under my head. I always stole it when he was away. It smelled of him: deodorant, soap and . . . Lukeness. It was the next best thing to cuddling the man himself.
    A thousand tiny streams were rippling across the skylight. Putting the window directly above our bed was one of the few things Luke had insisted upon for Smith’s Barn. ‘I’ll lie and look up at the stars,’ he said. ‘Insomnia will be a privilege.’
    I was sinking into the depths of sleep when my bedroom door creaked.
    ‘Don’t you dare, Casino,’ I whispered. ‘Master isn’t home.’
    A weight landed on my legs, followed by kneading and enthusiastic purrs. Bloody cat . Ah, well. It was nice to have the company. I reached onto the bedside cabinet for my reading glasses and checked my phone yet again. No text. No missed call. Not to worry. Luke would be asleep at the flat by now. My stomach grew a little colder.
    For a long time, I lay gazing through the watery glass at the blurred glow of the moon. Our bedroom was small and misshapen, crammed under the sloping roof of the barn. Charlotte was born in this room. On this bed. Died here too, a few minutes later. Luke and I also seemed to die for a while. I can understand why tragedy breaks couples apart: agony obliterates love for a long,