Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel by Dorothy Koomson Read Free Book Online Page A

even if I was the jealous type. He’s aware of their attention—he’s a man, after all—but he isn’t interested. In his post-Army, bar manager days, he slept with any woman who looked in his direction, and had no shame about it. He was like a sugar addict let loose in a world full of every variety of cake, and he did not restrain himself. He sampled, devoured, indulged in—basically gorged himself on—every crumb that came his way, so by the time we went on our first first date, he had decided he wanted steady, filling home cooking. He had lost his taste for sugary, empty goodies and was ready to settle down, get married and have children. Even though I wasn’t, he was very open about being willing to wait for me to catch him up.
    During the breaks in our relationship, I expected him to go back to his old ways but he never did. And that was why he never flirted with any of these women: he really had lost his appetite for cake.
    “Did you just come off shift?” Melissa asks him.
    “Yeah,” Keith mumbles uncomfortably. Keith doesn’t talk about his work—not even to me. I know he works in the police force and that he sometimes wears a uniform and walks the beat. I also know he, more often than not, doesn’t walk the beat. Once a year, I don my finery and accompany him to the annual police ball, which is held up in London. But I couldn’t tell anyone his job title, I couldn’t give even a basic answer to what he does on a day-to-day basis. He leaves work behind when he leaves work. He refuses to carry the weight of what he has seenand experienced with him into our lives. (It’s this secretiveness that makes Leo think he’s a spy.)
    “Do you think Leo will want to be a policeman when he grows up?” Melissa asks. “Take after his father in more ways than one?”
    There is a puzzled pause from Keith. “Leo’s my stepson, you know that, right?” Keith asks her, his tone serious and slightly concerned. “He might act like me sometimes, but he doesn’t take after me. Not genetically.” I feel him look from her to me. “I’m right, aren’t I, Lucks, he doesn’t take after me?”
    “Apart from the PlayStation obsession and the fascination with farts and fart jokes, no, he doesn’t take after you,” I supply without looking away from Leo.
    “If anyone, he’s more like you, and your dad, isn’t he?” Keith says to me.
    He’s more like his father
, I think as I say, “I suppose.”
    “Nova would never go into the Army or join the police, can’t see her father ever doing that either, so I doubt Leo would join the police, because he’s not like me.” My husband, steadfast and practical and romantic, is oblivious to the fact that Nurse Melissa obviously wishes the ground below her feet would open up and swallow her.
    Any irritation I feel toward her is replaced with pity, because I know what’s coming: a riveting lecture on Keith’s theories about the types of people who feel compelled by their personality to serve their country and society, as opposed to those who find themselves forced into those jobs. I’ve heard the theory several times, but that’s what I get for living with the fantasy—along with his inability to watch a soap without judging the characters because they are flawed and he has a strong sense of right and wrong that he cannot suspend even to watch fiction;him dismissing my strong belief in the esoteric world; and him secretly believing I should be responsible for the housework because I’m a woman. Even though Nurse Melissa has been flirting with my husband, right in front of me, I decide to rescue her. No one deserves the lecture if they’re not at least going to get a shag out of him. “Thanks, Melissa, for staying with Leo,” I cut in, “we’ll see you later.”
    “Oh, yes, yes, see you later,” she says eagerly and dashes out of the room.
    Keith takes his seat on the opposite side of Leo’s bed. We always sit in the same places, even when the other one isn’t