The Body of a Woman by Clare Curzon Read Free Book Online Page B

photograph off a side table and regarded it with interest. ‘She could be your own. You are so alike, particularly since you ave changed your air colour since theess.’
    Leila touched her head nervously. ‘Mine’s really dark brown. It was Chloe’s suggestion I should try tinting it like hers. In this photo she was only eight; it was taken seven years ago and she’s not so ginger now. Really dark red.’
    â€˜And you ave been married to the Professor ow long?”
    â€˜Just over nine years.’
    Pascal smiled: a melon-slice of white teeth. ‘The child bride.’
    â€˜I was a student,’ she said shortly, remembering. Aidan, though she hadn’t guessed it then, had an ongoing predilection for nubile eighteen-year-olds. But that was information she had no intention of sharing with this stranger.
    Perhaps by accepting the chair at the University of London Aidan really would change and cut free from his current entanglement at Reading. It seemed a vain hope, but he had managed to imply something like that, without actually admitting he was still in the throes of an amorous adventure.

    Not that amorous was quite the right word. Sexual, she supposed; love and romance being foreign to his nature. But in extramural sexual research the Professor was well qualified. It made her own situation the more hollow. She sometimes thought that if it hadn’t been for Eddie and Chloe …
    If. How bitterly ironic that she was reduced to a life of recurrent ‘If Onlys’.
    â€˜Leila,’ Pascal cooed. ‘Cohm back. You are miles a-weh.’
    â€˜I’m sorry.’ She waved towards the carrier’s crates. ‘There’s such a lot to be done.’
    â€˜But by a week tomorrow all will be streht and you will be looking for an escape from duty. See, I will leave my card. Ring me at any time before then and say you accept. Oo knows, we may even see the admirable Mr ’enman in action.’
    He gave her a jaunty salute with the empty teacup. ‘Coffee another time per’aps. I will see myself out.’
    She knew she wouldn’t take him up on the offer, because it wasn’t the sort of thing she did. Quite outside one’s wifely remit, she told herself.
    But why not accept? There’d be no harm in it. God knows, Aidan was never slow in picking up on an invitation to something he fancied. And if anyone else had invited her she’d probably have accepted like a shot. So was it because of Pascal himself that she hesitated?
    He was personable, amusingly eccentric, and she’d admit she found his easy familiarity attractive. Not handsome. Handsome men always left her rather uneasy. They had such an opinion of themselves, and since childhood she’d had this fear of being looked down on.
    She went back to unwrapping and washing the surplus china.
    So - Wimbledon. She would be glued to the television for the entire fortnight if she had the chance. But to be actually there, feeling the atmosphere, being a part of that involved crowd - that was something she’d never had the chance to aspire to.
    So it was a great pity - she told herself as she tore tissue paper
off a quite hideous dinner service - that she had to turn down the offer.
    She had prepared a fricassé of chicken in a sauce of liquidised pineapple, red pepper and mango for dinner, but twenty minutes after Aidan was due back he rang in to say he was tied up with some finals students. They were panicking over a paper they’d already taken and wanted to conduct an inquest. It could go on quite late. If so he’d stay there overnight, be back tomorrow evening.
    Leila stood with the phone cradled in her hands listening to the dialling tone purr after he’d rung off. She supposed there’d be a smidgen of truth in what he said. Probably one finals student, female, had gone weepy over the likelihood of getting a low grade. He’d find a way of consoling her. As he’d