The Shadow Girls Read Online Free Page A

with you right now. There are other men.’
    Humlin felt a pang of jealousy arise in him and escalate to painful proportions.
    ‘What other men?’
    ‘Men. Any men.’
    ‘You mean you are prepared to leave me for some man, any man out there?’
    ‘I don’t want to wait any longer.’
    Humlin sensed that the conversation was spiralling out of his control.
    ‘You know, it’s not good for me to have these kinds of discussions so early in the morning.’
    ‘And you know I can’t talk about these things at night. I need my sleep because I have a job that starts early in the morning.’
    The silence travelled back and forth between them.
    ‘What did you do in the South Pacific anyway?’
    ‘I rested.’
    ‘You don’t seem to do anything else. Were you unfaithful again?’
    ‘I haven’t been unfaithful. Why would you think that?’
    ‘Why not? You’ve done it before.’
    ‘You
think
I have. That’s not the same thing. I went to rest.’
    ‘To rest from what exactly?’
    ‘I happen to write books, as you well know.’
    ‘One book a year. With about forty poems. What’s that – less than one poem a week?’
    ‘I also write a wine-tasting column.’
    ‘Once a month, yes. In a trade paper for tailors that no oneelse reads. Now,
I
could have really used a trip to the South Pacific to rest.’
    ‘I invited you to come with me.’
    ‘Since you knew I couldn’t get away. But I’m about to take some time off. There’s something I want to get started on.’
    ‘And what’s that?’
    ‘I’m going to write my book.’
    ‘About what exactly?’
    ‘About us.’
    Humlin felt an unpleasant pain in his stomach. Of all the things he had to worry about, the thought that Andrea might prove the more talented writer seemed to him to be the worst. Every time she brought this up he felt as if his very existence was threatened. He sometimes lay awake at night and imagined the sensational reviews of her new book, how the critics embraced her as a new talent and wrote him off as a has-been. For this reason he always devoted an extraordinary amount of time to her whenever her authorial ambitions kicked in. He cooked her dinners, talked about the inordinate amount of suffering and hard work it took to complete a book and had, up until now, always been able to talk her out of her plans.
    ‘I don’t want you to write a book about us.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I want my private life to remain private.’
    ‘Who said anything about your private life?’
    ‘If this book is about us, it involves my private life.’
    ‘I can call you Anders.’
    ‘What difference would that possibly make?’
    Humlin tried to take the conversation in a different direction.
    ‘I’ve thought about what you said.’
    ‘About being unfaithful?’
    ‘I haven’t been unfaithful. How many times do I have to tell you that?’
    ‘Until I believe you.’
    ‘And when are you going to believe me?’
    ‘Never.’
    Humlin decided to retreat from this topic.
    ‘I’ve been thinking.’
    ‘What about?’
    ‘That you’re right. We should have a child.’
    ‘Are you sick?’ Her voice was sceptical.
    ‘Why would I be sick?’
    ‘I don’t believe you.’
    ‘I’m not sick. I meant it. I’m a very serious person.’
    ‘You’re childish and vain. Are you serious?’
    ‘I’m neither childish nor particularly vain.’
    ‘Are you serious? You don’t think we should wait?’
    ‘I’m at least prepared to take it into serious consideration.’
    ‘Now you sound like a politician.’
    ‘I’m a poet, not a politician.’
    ‘If we’re going to have a baby, we can’t talk about it over the phone. I’m coming over.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘What do you think? If we’re going to have a baby we have to go to bed first.’
    ‘I can’t. I have a meeting with my publisher.’
    Andrea hung up. Humlin returned to the bathroom and looked at his face, looking past his suntan to the warm long nights on the Solomon Islands and Rarotonga. I don’t