The White Tower Read Online Free Page A

liked to look at the clothes gently drying in the sun and wind. I particularly liked to do this if someone else had hung them out.
    While waiting for Brook, I’d moved all of Ivan’s stuff onto one of the desks, and re-arranged the other to suit myself. Ivan tended to take over any space he occupied—it simply didn’t occur to him that I might prefer to have my corner left exactly how I wanted it. Prunus blossom from our garden was in a bowl on the corner of my desk. Neither Peter nor Ivan teased me any more about working with my nose against a bunch of flowers. Ever since Peter was born on a rainy September night almost ten years before, a few months after my mother died of cancer, I’ve liked to pick flowers and keep them near me.
    I made copies of the photographs. I’d left all the inside doors open so I could hear Brook and Katya returning from their walk. A soft knock on the front door told me they were back.
    Brook was looking sheepish and trying not to grin, an expression that meant everything had gone perfectly from his point of view. I peered around his shoulder at the tight bundle of baby, blanket, woollen cap, as neatly and perfectly wrapped into the stroller as an expensive chocolate.
    â€˜She stayed awake for most of it,’ Brook said, as though I was criticising him for the fact that my daughter was asleep.
    I handed him back the photographs, then said, ‘Turn around.’
    Brook raised an eyebrow, but did as I requested.
    â€˜It’s new.’
    Brook smiled over his shoulder. ‘Forty bucks at Target. End of season.’
    â€˜It suits you. A jacket like that you can wear right through till December.’
    â€˜That’s what I was thinking.’
    â€˜I didn’t notice because—’
    â€˜Because you were too wrapped up in this.’ Brook waved the envelope of photographs, then turned it around in his hands the way he’d once turned the Akubra hat he’d worn to cover his baldness.
    â€˜Did you say anything to Bill about my case?’
    â€˜Didn’t know it was a case.’
    â€˜About Moira Howley.’
    â€˜Nope.’
    â€˜Oh,’ I said. ‘I might need to see him.’
    â€˜Shouldn’t be a bother.’
    â€˜Thanks,’ I said. ‘It was nice of you to take Kat for a walk.’
    â€˜Favourite way of spending my day off.’
    â€˜How’s Sophie?’
    â€˜Fine.’
    â€˜Are you seeing her today?’
    â€˜We’re having dinner at the Taj Mahal.’
    â€˜Oh very posh,’ I said, and laughed when Brook went red.
    â€˜Jealousy does not become you Sandra,’ he said with mock ­pomposity, leaning forward to kiss me goodbye.
    For so long Brook had been branded by his illness. Now he stretched and pulled, smiled and limbered, out from underneath the brand. His body was smooth, his greying hair neatly cut into his neck and around his ears. Yet I knew he dressed carefully and admired this trait in others because there was that in him which couldn’t be smoothed out, which might ambush him still. This was what gave his eyes a shadow no matter what the time of day. Fear had put down roots as strong as cancer, and came to the surface more or less according to its own inclination. Brook dressed smoothly because crumpled was the best he could hope for underneath.
    . . .
    That night Ivan and I sat up in bed talking about Niall.
    â€˜I wonder why he did it.’
    â€˜Maybe he was inventing a past for himself,’ Ivan said, fiddling with the doona, folding a corner, letting it loose, then re-folding it. ‘And ­suddenly he was struck by the futility of it. Poor little fucker just could not see the point. The guy has to get a few points for originality. A bit of theatre, no? But his mother will suffer. You can’t do anything about that.’
    Ivan abandoned his fidgeting and fixed me with his black eyes, but just then I saw Moira Howley more clearly than I