What Becomes Read Online Free Page A

his evening would be eaten up – back to the hotel after and head straight for bed. Double bed. Only one of him. No need to pick a side: her side, his side. He could lie where he wanted.
    She preferred the left. He’d supposed this was somehow to do with the bedroom door being on the right. Any threat would come in from the right and he would be set in place to meet it. Frank had thought she was letting him guard her while she slept: Frank who was perfectly happy on whatever side was left free, who might as well rest at the foot of the bed like a folded blanket. It didn’t matter. He didn’t mind.
    Really, though, she didn’t expect Frank to defend her. Her choice had nothing to do with him. In fact, they’d had other bedrooms with the door in other places and with windows that could be climbed through, you had to consider them, too – their current window was to the left – and she’d still always lain on the left. She liked that, or was used to it, or had given it some importance which couldn’t be altered now. Her book, her water glass, they were left.
    She hadn’t read on their last night, at least he didn’t think so. He’d waited for her in the kitchen with the soup and she’d never come down. He’d cleaned up his blood and repotted the plant and listened to the sound of the water draining from her bath and her naked footsteps on the landing, not moving towards the stairs. Then he’d decided his first cleaning hadn’t been thorough and he’d scrubbed the place completely – work surfaces, floor, emptied out the fridge and wiped it down, made it tidy. The cupboards needed tidying, as well. That took quite a time. Finally, he decanted the rest of the soup into a container, washed the pot, looked at the container, emptied it into the bin and washed the container.
    It was two in the morning when he was done.
    And when he had slipped into bed he had expected her to be sleeping, because that would be best.
    â€˜What were you doing?’ Only she wasn’t asleep, she was just lying on her back without the light on and waiting to ask him, ‘What were you doing?’
    â€˜I . . . cleaning.’
    â€˜What’s wrong with you.’
    And Frank couldn’t tell her because he didn’t know and so he just said, ‘I understand why people look at fountains, or at the sea. Because those don’t stop. The water moves and keeps on moving, the tide withdraws and then returns and it keeps on going and keeps on. It’s like –’ He could hear her shifting, feel her sitting up, but not reaching for him. ‘It’s like that button you get on stereos, on those little personal players – there’s always the button that lets you repeat – not just the album, but the track, one single track. They’ve anticipated you’ll want to repeat one track, over and over, so those three or four minutes can stay, you can keep that time steady in your head, roll it back, fold it back. They know you’ll want that. I want that. Just three or four minutes that come back.’ Which he’d been afraid of while he’d heard it and when he’d stopped speaking she was breathing peculiarly, loudly, unevenly, the way she would before she cried. So he’d started again, because he had no tolerance for that, not even the idea of that. ‘I want a second, three, four seconds, that would be all. I want everything back. No stopping, I want nothing to stop.’ Only he was crying now, too – no way to avoid it. ‘I want her to be –’ His sentence interrupted when she hit him, punched out at his chest and then a blow against his eye causing this burst of greyish colour and more pains and he’d caught her wrists eventually, almost fought her, the crown of her head banging against his chin, jarring him.
    Afterwards they had rested, his head on her stomach, both of them still weeping, too loudly,