The Photographer's Wife by Nick Alexander Read Free Book Online Page A

his side so that he can look back at her. “Hard day in Photoshop hell, honey?” he asks.
    “It just makes my back hurt,” Sophie says, twisting and rubbing her neck. “My desk is too low or something. I think I need one of those weird, Swedish chairs. Can you give my back a rub?”
    Brett smiles lopsidedly and as usual the result is both creepy and sexy at the same time. “Sure,” he says, scooting to the side of the bed.
    As he bends to pull open a drawer, Sophie tries not to look at the pale folds of skin around his belly.
    First he pulls a little bag of white powder from the drawer and wiggles it at Sophie. “Do you want a hit?” he asks.
    Sophie shakes her head. “Maybe later,” she replies. She is aware that since meeting Brett she has been taking a lot of coke and she’s not entirely happy about it. She had decided not to partake tonight but can already sense her resolve weakening.
    Brett shrugs, drops the bag and pulls a bottle of Body Shop massage oil from the drawer. “Fully prepared for all eventualities,” he says, waving it at her instead. “Impressed?”
    But something else has caught Sophie’s eye. “What are those?” she asks, rounding the bed and pulling the drawer fully open. Inside, stuffed at the back behind the underwear, are a pair of chrome handcuffs, a dog collar and a large, pink dildo.
    “Those,” Brett says, pushing the drawer shut again, “are for later, when we get bored.”
    “When we get bored?” Sophie repeats, hesitating between being offended that he assumes that they will get bored and feeling flattered that he thinks there will be a later.
    “Look, do you want this back-rub or not?” Brett asks.
    And Sophie really does , so she nods and crawls onto the bed, then because her back hurts, she rolls to her side momentarily so that she can wedge a pillow beneath her belly, effectively lifting up her haunches just enough that the pain stops.
    “Hum, nice,” Brett says, running a hand up her inner thigh.
    “You promised me a massage ,” Sophie comments, speaking through the pillow.
    “Yes, right. Sorry Mistress. Massage,” Brett says with spoof seriousness as he slathers his hands in massage lotion and starts to work Sophie’s shoulder blades.
    “Ooh, that’s cold,” Sophie tells him. “But don’t stop. It’s good too.”
    As soon as Brett’s bulge presses through his boxer shorts against her bottom, Sophie knows that neither of them is going to be satisfied with a back rub for long. Well, at least we’re not bored yet, she thinks.

1944 - Shoreditch, London.
     
    It is only ten o’clock but Barbara is walking home. Her teacher, Mrs Pritchard, has failed to turn up and the rumour amongst the children is that she is dead.
    Above her, in the blue spring sky, Barbara is vaguely aware of the buzzing of a doodlebug, another of the hundreds of daily flying bombs that have been raining destruction on them for months now. The air-raid warning sounded just as Barbara was passing back out of the school gates but she doesn’t care. The sirens are almost constant these days and unlike the bombers, which needed the cover of nightfall to do their dirty deeds, the doodlebugs fall day and night. No one seems to care about the air-raid warnings anymore because caring about them simply isn’t compatible with any other activity. It’s impossible to go to the shelter every time and once that pattern has been broken, there doesn’t seem to be any point in going there at all.
    The buzzing above continues and the frequency of the sound peaks overhead then begins to drop away, which means that the danger is now heading into the distance. Someone else will be listening for the splutter when it runs out of fuel. Someone else will have ten seconds to throw themselves to the ground, hands over ears. Someone else will feel the blast rip overhead and then will stand and carry on walking down the street, perhaps exchanging a raised eyebrow with a passerby at the fluke of having