Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy Read Free Book Online Page B

sort of life together? She tried to get the thought out of her head. It wasn't going to happen. And anyway, there had been others before Cinta and there would be more after her.
    He asked her questions about the people she described. Questions that showed he was paying attention. She remembered that about him. It had been easy to discuss her work with him. Alan was a good listener. She had missed him when she had to go it alone through the humiliation of being passed over for the job. She refilled his coffee cup.
    “You might meet someone in this new job,” he said softly.
    “I must have met a hundred people this week.” She sighed.
    “No, I meant
meet
someone. You know, I meant get together with someone.” He was smiling enthusiastically. Wishing her well in the great big frightening world of relationships. She looked at him in amazement. Sometimes he could be impossibly insensitive and thick.
    “I don't think we should spend any time wandering around that remote possibility. It's nice of you to wish me well, but actually I find it unbearably patronizing.”
    “Patronizing? Me to you? You have to be joking! Clara, you've always been the brainy one. You
know
that.”
    “Leave it, Alan. Next thing, you'll be saying you married me for my fine mind!”
    “I did in many ways, but also because you were and are one of the loveliest women in the world.” He leaned over and stroked her cheek. The sheer unexpectedness of it made her flinch.
    “Al
an, please.”
    “Now don't tell me that you don't feel something for me. You're just lovely, Clara. Your hair is so fresh and shiny. You smell like a flower. Come here to me. Let me hold you.”
    Because she was so startled, Clara didn't fight him off as quickly as she might have, and there he was, holding her face in his hands and kissing her before she could escape his grasp.
    “Are you mad?” she gasped. “It's been five years.”
    “Since you threw me out, but I never wanted to go. I never went in my heart.”
    “Are you telling me that Cinta has thrown you out too?” She was looking at him in disbelief.
    “Not at all, but she has nothing to do with this. With us.”
    “There
is
no us, Alan. Get off me.” She struggled, but he held her all the more firmly.
    “This reminds me very much of the old days, Clara,” he said into her ear.
    She finally got away from him and ran across the kitchen, putting a chair between them.
    “What do you mean nothing to do with Cinta? You
live
with her. She's having your baby, for God's sake. You're here to ask me again for a divorce so that you can marry her.” Her eyes were blazing with rage. “What are you up to?”
    “I'm trying to get you to relax. You're so tense and strung out. Why can't you unwind and let me make you happy like I used to? For old times’ sake.”
    He smiled at her, handsome Alan, who was always used to getting his own way. He hadn't changed. Alan, who was already asfaithless to Cinta as he had been to her. Suddenly, like a focus in binoculars, everything became clear. This was a man worth spending not one more minute thinking about, second-guessing or trying to understand.
    “Right,” Clara said briskly. “It worked. You can go home and tell little Cinta that she has the divorce and the prize of you as a husband. And that you did it as you usually do, by suggesting that you screw me.”
    “That's not the way I'd actually describe it,” he began to bluster.
    “That's the only way it can be described and will be described.”
    “You're not going to say anything to the girls.” He was frightened.
    “Adi and Linda will be only slightly more embarrassed by the news than they already are by you having a child with a girl who is the same age as they are.”
    “Please, Clara …”
    “Go, Alan. Go now.”
    “You're just locking yourself away. You're still a fine-looking woman …”
    “Go while you are still able to walk.”
    Clara made a gesture with the chair as if she were going to use it as a