Winterwood Read Online Free Page B

over and over. She'd just sit there, rapt, with
     her tense shoulders up, as off he went, the little snowman waltzing, right out across the rooftops of the world.
    The new Kilburn flat we got off the housing association - it really looked fantastic now. The things that woman Catherine
     could do with interiors — she had completely and utterly transformed the place. And Imogen, by all accounts, was the playgroup
     star. They were always telling me what a character she was. They really were such beautiful times. All the more reason I was
     completely unprepared for it when I came home one day after buying a present, a polly pocket for Imogen's birthday, and discovered
     Catherine in our bedroom with a man.
    Once, having been mugged outside a pub in Hackney, I had realised, to my astonishment, that in such situations the anger you
     expect is not what you feel. In its place this banal and bewildering numbness. That was what I felt as I stood there, turning the polly pocket around in my hand.
    I had no idea who he was. I had never laid eyes on him before. I remember thinking he looked Greek or perhaps Turkish. In
     fact he was Maltese.
    We had these pink roses Catherine had planted in the garden: twining away there, so delicate and fragile. All I could see
     were those baby-pink roses, spreading right out across the neatly tonsured grass.
    I continued to write my articles, regularly submitting them to various magazines. But I didn't, unfortunately, have very much
     success. Which isn't all that surprising. They were hopelessly digressive and quite badly written, in retrospect. I just couldn't
     seem to keep my mind on the subject. Sometimes the pen would literally fall from my hand. Once, sitting at my typewriter,
     I could have sworn I saw Imogen, naked and blue, shivering with the cold, trying to catch my attention outside the window.
     It seemed so real I almost cried out. Before realising, at the last moment, that she was safe and asleep upstairs in bed,
     with her favourite duvet tucked up to her chin - the one with Zippy and Bungle, her friends out of Rainbow. It was stress that was making me think like that. I knew it was. That was what I told myself. You could hardly expect to experience
     marital difficulties without there being some outward manifestation of your inner anxieties, I reasoned.
    I decided to work harder at keeping us together. We'd been through too much to let it slip now. That was my state of mind,
     essentially, at the time. That was how I viewed our situation.
    Then one day I came home and the house was deserted. There was a note on the mantelpiece saying Catherine's solicitor would
     be in touch. You should never lift your hand to your wife. It's wrong, pure and simple. It's like something a throwback from
     the mountain might do, and nothing can excuse it in any circumstances.
    The hearing took place in early 1989, and after that, they returned to Dublin for good. Now on my own, London began to seem
     quite threatening and disorientating. It seemed, quite wilfully, to slide back its once-genial mask, coldly disavowing its
     formerly benign past. I was taken aback. I hadn't been expecting that. And it distressed me deeply — I won't deny it.
    I'd wake in the night, in the iron grip of unease. Having sensed this chilling presence in the room.
    I could feel it standing stock-still beside me. It was a horrible time.
    But spending my days drinking wasn't going to help things. I knew that. But nonetheless it didn't stop me doing it. I'd promise
     myself I would reform my ways. I'd wake up and say: 'Today I'm going to make the effort.' Then, almost immediately after this
     welcome and invigorating surge of new strength, I'd find myself helplessly thinking: They're gone.
    And, before I knew it, would be sitting, as before, in some anonymous poorly lit pub. Some half-forgotten Irish labourers'
     bar where the curtains hadn't been washed in years, where Enya music played on a loop and old men wilted in