This Way Out Read Online Free

of her weakened arm. Now, after Derek had recovered from his nightmare, they settled down again: he on his right side as usual, Christine on her back. As usual he put his left arm round her, slipping his hand inside her nightdress.
    He had always been attracted to her breasts. It had been the fevered adolescent recollection of those soft twin cones, each with its delicate central eruption outlined by the cling of her clothes, that had first sent him bicycling crazily from Chelmsford to Southwold to renew his holiday acquaintance with Mrs Long’s daughter.
    Childbearing had of course changed the shape of Christine’s breasts, and maturity had rounded them, but their attraction for him had remained constant. Always, he had settled himself for sleep with his left hand cupping her right breast in an attitude of love.
    Now, as always, he slid his hand across her left breast, caressing its fullness in passing. As always, he opened his hand to encompass her right breast. Tenderly, but without pause – because to pause would be to betray his wife, allowing her to think that he felt the revulsion he denied – he placed his hand on the alien skin, part flat, part hollowed, part ridged with a long horizontal scar, that covered the place where her breast had once been.
    â€˜Darling,’ he whispered. ‘Chrissie darling …’
    Christine murmured something that he couldn’t hear. They lay in silence for several minutes, both of them mourning their loss. He felt her body stiffen against his, and knew that she was trying not to weep.
    He kissed her hair and whispered once again what he hoped would reassure her: that no one could tell from her appearance that she had had the operation, that her femininity was still complete, that dressed or undressed she attracted him as much as ever. But about their deeper cause for depression, the fear that she might die, there was nothing he could say.
    Christine’s surgeon had told them that the cancer might never recur, especially after the post-operational radiotherapy treatment; and indeed Derek’s cousin’s wife had had a mastectomy six years before, and was now leading a normal, active life. But then again, Christine had had a friend –
    The fear was always there, though they tried not to dwell on it. One-day-at-a-time was the way they had lived while Laurie was alive, and that was how they lived now. The exciting glimpse they had once had of a long and interesting future had after all been nothing but fantasy.
    What seemed to him particularly cruel about the drastic curtailment of Christine’s life expectancy was that she had already foregone so much for Laurie’s sake. And now their handicapped child’s bedroom was occupied by another dependant who, having accurately identified poor Laurie as a burden, was unable (or unwilling) to conceive that she herself might be an encumbrance.
    Derek felt no personal animosity towards Enid. That was probably why he never saw her face in his dreams. But on the rare occasions when he allowed himself to dwell on the fact that his mother-in-law would probably outlive his wife, he was filled with impotent anger.
    He was still raging inside his head when the sound came from what he thought of as Laurie’s room. It was soft at first, the mewling cry of a small baby with nothing in particular to grumble about. He held his breath, as he had done when their children were babies, willing it not to recur.
    Then it came again, louder, a rising wail that – like a demanding child’s – could penetrate the deepest sleep. Christine woke, and groaned. They held each other for a few moments, hoping that this would be one of the nights when the noise suddenly stopped. Instead it increased in volume, a prolonged eerie cry of oh oh oh … oh oh oh …
    Like Derek, Enid had begun to suffer from occasional bad dreams. Fortunately for his conscience – since she insisted on relating them in detail