How to Be Good by Nick Hornby Read Free Book Online Page A

him?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Why not?’
    I don’t say anything; I don’t know why not. Except that I didn’t want anything to leak out of this conversation into the real world. I just wanted my brother to come into this little weird bubble I’m in for an evening. I wanted empathy, not action.
    â€˜What would make a difference to you?’
    I know the answer to this one. I’ve thought about it, and I’m word-perfect.
    â€˜I don’t want David to be David any more.’
    â€˜Ah. Who do you want him to be, then?’
    â€˜Someone different. Someone who loves me properly, and makes me feel good, and appreciates me, and thinks I’m great.’
    â€˜He does think you’re great.’
    I start to laugh. It’s not an ironic laugh, or a bitter laugh, although surely if there was ever a moment that justified bitter laughter it would be now; it’s a belly laugh. This is one of the funniest things I have heard for months. I am not sure of many things at the moment, but I do know, with every atom of my being, that David does not think I am great.
    â€˜What? What have I said?’
    It takes a while to compose myself. ‘I’m sorry. Just the idea that David thinks I’m great.’
    â€˜I know he does.’
    â€˜How?’
    â€˜Just . . . You know.’
    â€˜No. I really don’t. That’s the whole point, Mark.’
    Â 
    It’s true that I don’t want David to be David any more. I want things to be structurally the same – I want him to have fathered my children, I want him to have been married to me for twenty years, I don’t even mind the weight and the bad back. I just don’t want that voice, that tone, that permanent scowl. I want him to like me, in fact. Is that really too much to ask of a husband?

3
    I come home from work and David almost skips out of his office to greet me. ‘Look,’ he says, and then proceeds to bow at me vigorously, as if I were the Queen and he were some kind of lunatic royalist.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜My back. I don’t feel anything. Not a twinge.’
    â€˜Did you go to see Dan Silverman?’ Dan Silverman is an osteopath that we recommend at the surgery, and I’ve been telling David to see him for months. Years, probably.
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜So what happened?’
    â€˜I saw someone else.’
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜This guy.’
    â€˜Which guy?’
    â€˜This guy in Finsbury Park.’
    â€˜In Finsbury Park?’ Dan Silverman has a practice in Harley Street. There is no Harley Street equivalent in Finsbury Park, as far as I know. ‘How did you find him?’
    â€˜Newsagent’s window.’
    â€˜A newsagent’s window? What qualifications has he got?’
    â€˜None whatsoever.’ Information delivered with a great deal of pride and aggression, inevitably. Medical qualifications belong on my side of the great marital divide, and are therefore to be despised.
    â€˜So you let someone completely unqualified mess around with your back. Smart decision, David. He’s probably crippled you for life.’
    David starts to bow again. ‘Do I look like someone who’s been crippled?’
    â€˜Not today, no. But nobody can cure a bad back in one session.’
    â€˜Yeah, well. GoodNews has.’
    â€˜What good news?’
    â€˜That’s his name. GoodNews. Capital G, capital N, all one word. D. J. GoodNews, actually. To give him his full title.’
    â€˜DJ. Not Dr.’
    â€˜It’s, you know, a clubby thing. I think he used to work in a disco or something.’
    â€˜Always useful when you’re treating back complaints. Anyway. You went to see someone called GoodNews.’
    â€˜I didn’t know he was called GoodNews when I went to see him.’
    â€˜Out of interest, what did his advert say?’
    â€˜Something like, I don’t know. “Bad Back? I can cure you in one