Kethani by Eric Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

go.”
    “What?”
    She stood, pathetic and frozen, in the snow. She shook her head. “I don’t want to go to the hospital. I’ll stay here.”
    “On your own?”
    She gave an apathetic shrug.
    “Look... there’s a spare room at my place. You can stay there until your mother’s released, okay?”
    She stared at me through the falling snow. “Are you sure?”
    “Go get some clothes and things. And lock the door. I’ll be waiting here.”
    I climbed into the car and watched as the lights in the house went out one by one. Claudine appeared at the front door, carrying a holdall and fumbling with a key ring. She climbed into the passenger seat and I set off up the track, turned right and continued along the lane until we reached my place.
    I showed Claudine to the bathroom, and while she showered and changed I prepared a simple pasta dish. I had experienced a rush of adrenalin while attending to her mother and waiting for the ambulance, and I realised that something of the anxiety was with me still. My hands were shaking as I set two places at the table. I went over and over what I would say during dinner.
    I was wondering what was taking her so long when I heard a voice from the lounge. “This is really a beautiful place.” There was a note of surprise in her voice, as if she thought that the domicile of a washed-up forty year-old teacher would prove to be an inhospitable dump.
    I crossed the kitchen and stood in the doorway, watching her as she moved around the lounge. She was barefoot, dressed in flared jeans, which were back in fashion, and a white T-shirt that had either shrunk in the wash or was designed to reveal a strip of slim stomach.
    She paused before the photographs of Caroline on the wall. She looked at me.
    “My wife,” I said.
    She said, casually, “I didn’t know you were married.”
    “I’m not,” I said. “Any longer. She died in a car accident two years ago.”
    She winced, ever so slightly. “Before they came?” she asked.
    “Just a month before,” I said.
    I joined her and stared at the photograph. Caroline smiled out at me. “She looked like a lovely person,” Claudine said.
    I nodded. “She was.”
    As if she feared that the subject might move us on to the reason why she was not implanted, Claudine drifted across the room to inspect the bookshelves.
    I returned to the kitchen and served dinner.
    We chatted as we ate, going over things we’d talked about before, school, local attractions, novels and films we admired.
    “You can phone the hospital later,” I said at one point. “I’ll drive you over tomorrow if you like.”
    She shook her head, not meeting my gaze. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not that bothered. She’ll come back when she’s better.”
    I paused. “What happened between you two?” I asked at last.
    She smiled up at me. She was so pretty when she smiled; then again, she had a certain sullen hauteur that was equally as attractive when she deigned not to smile.
    “Oh, we have never got on,” she said. “I was always my father’s favourite. I think she was jealous. They fought a lot—it might have been because of me. I don’t know.”
    “Are they separated?”
    Claudine looked at me with her oversized brown eyes. She shook her head. “You might have heard of him—Bertrand Hainault? He was a philosopher, one of those popular media intellectuals you don’t have over here, I think.”
    I shook my head. “Sorry. Not up on philosophy.”
    “My father took his life last year,” she said quietly. “He and mother were fighting constantly, but I think it was more than that... I don’t know. It was all so confusing. I think it might have been a protest, too—a protest at what they were doing.”
    Something caught in my throat. “He wasn’t implanted?”
    “Oh, no. He was opposed to the whole process. He argued his position in televised debates and in a series of books, but of course no one took any notice.”
    Except you, I thought, beginning at last