Something I'm Not by Lucy Beresford Read Free Book Online Page A

tricky!’
    I snap the cigarette I’m holding. My husband is engrossed in tickling the cat. I open my mouth and close it again. It’s hard to confess to the one you love that you feel threatened by cats, especially female ones; that you fear they are your rivals in love.
    I have to wait a good five minutes before Matt says, ‘Now bugger off, Tim. I want to hug my wife.’ He moves to sit on my step and pulls me towards him. I kiss his collarbone. He smells of sleep.
    â€˜You know now Dad’s gone, I’m going to have to—’ My throat tightens and I can’t speak.
    â€˜Get in touch with your mother? Yah, but not until after the funeral,’ whispers Matt, repeating what Audrey told us of Dad’s living will. ‘Be grateful for some breathing space.’
    The will instructs me to delay informing mother of his death. Matt reckons Dad wanted to stop her turning up at the crematorium.
    Matt circles me in the welcome billet of his arms. The sun is higher now, its golden wash sloping casually over the top of the garden wall. I am still in the shade, but a lozenge of light brushes half of Matt’s body, burnishing the tawny hairs on his skin, so that he appears as the luminous source of all that is good and safe in the world.

Chapter Eight
    L ATER THAT MORNING , the sky has changed. It is the weak blue and yellow of old people’s eyes. From my office on the first floor of a building in Bond Street, I watch thin women window-shopping, gorging on nothing more than the reflection of their own bodies. I turn back to my desk and finish a chocolate bourbon.
    Dominic arrives from a meeting. He sets his jacket across the back of his chair with a matador’s flourish. I smirk as he glances over to Nicole’s office to check whether she witnessed this performance; and I know Nicole is far too smart to let on. Several secretaries did see, however, and, although Dominic regards such women as plankton in the office food chain, it’s clear to me that their visible interest affords his ego minor consolation.
    Pleading the need to purchase a muffin (
we regret to inform you of the temporary closure today of the staff canteen due to a fire in the stir-fry console
), I hand a Dictaphone tape containing three candidate letters to my secretary Maxine, and wander out towards Piccadilly.
    Somehow I find myself in the courtyard of the Royal Academy. An old man wearing a raincoat the colour of pigeons is shuffling slowly towards the gallery steps, has already stopped twice to catch his breath. Suddenly he topples forward. All the sinews in my body tense; another man having a stroke. But then I see that actually he’s bending to rescue what is probably an insect from the flagging, carrying it cupped in his hands to a nearby urn for safety.
    *
    â€˜Excuse me for asking, but is it free next to you?’
    I half squint into the sun. I want to be alone. The shape looming before me, the source of this question, is male. His black shoes are shiny, with square buckles. The trousers are pinstriped – I shift my gaze away from the man’s pubic bone to his suntanned hands. In one he carries a beaker of coffee; a golden disc glints at the cuff, and is scrolled with initials. I take in all this information, make my snap judgement and try to write the man off, to get back to brooding about my dad and to having a good old wallow in self-pity.
    Yet I pause. The shirt sleeve at the other wrist flaps. A link is missing; the cuffs are actually frayed, as though they’ve been turned once too often. His skin is the colour Matt’s goes when we’re on holiday. And his accent is just a little too clipped. I’m shoving this man into a box, but the lid refuses to close.
    â€˜â€”only, there are so many kids here, it’s hard to know where to perch the old B-T-M—’
    The phrase makes me smile. I imagine the man learning English by watching the same old Ealing comedies I did