Final Demand by Deborah Moggach Read Free Book Online Page A

always get a man’s sympathy by talking about her parents. This was the one thing they had done for her. ‘My parents never grew up, see. They were sixties kids.’ She told him how her father had bailed out when she was little, going to Ibiza and smoking dope, working on the boats, going off to Thailand to live with what’s-her-name.
    Phillip gazed at her tenderly. ‘Do you miss him?’
    â€˜Oh, there’s been plenty since him. No shortage of blokes when my mum was around.’ She thought of Raymond, creeping in at night when her mother was asleep. She would save the Raymond stories till later. ‘She’s been shacked up with five of them since then.’
    â€˜That the truth?’
    She nodded. ‘I wouldn’t lie about something like that.’
    â€˜What
would
you lie about?’
    â€˜What would
you
?’
    â€˜I asked first,’ he said.
    She gazed at the sliver of soap. ‘Sometimes I start with a lie, then I find out it wasn’t needed at all.’
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜Because it’s become the truth.’
    For once, she had spoken from the heart.
    Phillip left, to go home. She gazed at him over the landing as he descended the stairs. He was nearly forty; from here, she could see his thinning hair.
    Back in the bathroom she stood in front of the steamed-up mirror. In the condensation she wrote, with her finger,
N. TOMLINSON
 . . . She watched the letters weep.
    She longed for Phillip to spend the night. She wanted to wake up with him in the morning and lend him her toothbrush. Maybe he liked listening to the
Today
programme. She didn’t mind; she ought to know what was happening in the world. He could even bring his dog around; she liked all animals except the slithery kind. She lusted after him, she wanted to see more of him; it was as simple as that.
    She didn’t see him on Thursday; he was at a conference in London. By Friday she was missing him keenly. During her morning break she went to his smokers’ doorway but he wasn’t there. Taking the elevator to the twelfth floor, she sauntered past his office but his desk was empty. She didn’t dare enter; he had advised her not to, it might arouse suspicions. ‘Mrs Johns has eyes like a hawk,’ he said. Back at her desk Natalie rang his mobile but it had been switched off.
    At lunchtime, in the canteen, she saw Mrs Johns. Lips pursed, she was picking her way through a biryani. Natalie stopped at her table. ‘I’ve been looking for Mr Tomlinson.’
    â€˜He’s in meetings all day.’ Mrs Johns removed a piece of cinnamon bark and placed it on the side of her plate. ‘If you want an appointment, phone on Monday.’
    Outside there was a rumble of thunder. Natalie comforted herself with the knowledge, gleaned from Phillip, that MrsJohns’s husband had left her for a twenty-eight-year-old IT consultant.
    She sat down with Sioban, who closed the book she was reading,
Do It Yourself Conveyancing.
‘Did you know that the best way to get rid of wrinkles is to rub them with haemorrhoid cream?’
    I’m getting old, thought Natalie. I’m nearly thirty-three, there are lines between my eyes, soon I’ll be too old for anybody to love. Sioban’s bookmark was a boarding pass. Her security guard had taken her to Paris for an illicit weekend.
They
had spent the night together; they had woken in a strange hotel room and brushed their teeth in unison.
    All afternoon the storm raged. Over the blips of the computers and the hum of conversation – its volume always rose on Friday afternoons – over this Natalie could hear the rain lashing at the windows. Why didn’t Phillip phone? As yet they had made no date for the weekend. In fact, both weekends she had known him he had been busy, the first at a badminton tournament and the second visiting his parents in Keighley.
    At the time she just felt mild vexation. He was busy,