The Good Parents by Joan London Read Free Book Online Page A

smoothing and diving. Her whole body came
     alive again to meet his, soft with relief.
    Something, a mouse scrape, made her eyes fly open and she turned her head a fraction and caught a movement, a glitch on the
     known horizon of the frosted glass of the partition, a blur that rose up and became an eye peering over the top, startled
     to meet hers. Mr T, on tiptoe.
    If he’d just arrived, she would have heard the roll of the handle of the door from the corridor, the click of its closing.
     Even lying back like this, she would have registered the brief suck of new air. She knew by heart the full repertoire of sounds
     of this place.
    They must have come in together.
    ‘Don’t look like that,’ Maynard was saying, smiling wide, consciously, like a celebrity, holding the glass of water for her.
     He helped her sit down on the chair. Everything looked different, as if the light had changed. His skin was thin and dragged
     across his bones. A half-smile she’d never seen before hovered on his face, top teeth resting on bottom lip. Eyes flickering
     with nerviness and deep down knowledge of himself. He was saying something about closing the office, that he and Mr T were
     starting a new venture up north. ‘Don’t look like that,’ he said again in a low voice. ‘I just asked him to wait while I spoke
     to you. Then one thing led to another. I’m sorry, I’m a bit pissed. I didn’t know he’d
watch
.’
    But he’d been about to make love to her. He would have.
    He went into the waiting room and shut the door behind him.
    She’s going to pieces, she’s going to make a scene
.
    The door to the corridor slammed closed.
    Maynard came back into the office. ‘He’s gone, Maya. He’s waiting downstairs.’ He crouched down beside her. ‘Listen, why don’t
     you come with us?’
    She could keep her job, he said, and have a bit of a holiday in a warm climate to boot. Whatever that old boot was, he said,
     trying to make her laugh as if she were a kid. Could she leave at once, was that possible? He’d call to see if there were
     still seats on the plane. Just come as she was. She could buy what she needed when they got there. He talked cheerfully and
     fast, helping her up by the elbow. And all the time, in the shine of his eyes, like tears, there was regret, that made her
     even sadder.
    OK? he said. He fetched her coat and helped her put it on. He seemed like a friend, but he was not a friend. Everything had
     slowed and darkened. There was a drumming in her ears.Strange to see the brightness outside the windows, like a world she’d just left.
    He put on his jacket and picked up his briefcase. Did she want to leave a message for her housemate? Celia, was it? He wasn’t
     very good with names. Often called her Myra in the beginning. She couldn’t focus, her mind looped and slid away from something
     she had to remember. Something important. He ushered her out ahead of him. Her legs went one after the other as if they didn’t
     belong to her anymore.
    For some reason all she could think of as she went down the stairs was the little back room that she hadn’t cleared out for
     her parents.

2
The House
    T he key was under the little Buddha by the fishpond, where Maya told them it would be.
    The house was a surprise, a narrow brick townhouse, wedged in between two nineteenth-century cottages. Its weathered, slatted
     wooden fence stood right on the footpath. Looking up, through fronds of bamboo, you could glimpse French doors opening onto
     a small balcony. Inside the gate was a dwarf courtyard jungled over with bamboo, and it was somehow comforting to make out,
     amongst the matted trunks, the little fat familiar figure meditating beside a swampy pool.
    Inside, putting their suitcases down, they both said
oh
at the same time. They were looking out from a landing into one large, high-ceilinged room, set lower than the entrance,
     three steps down. Behind its economical façade, this house expandedinto family-sized