We All Ran into the Sunlight by Natalie Young Read Free Book Online Page A

were painted scarlet. More than anything, he wanted her to soften, to calm. He refilled her glass with wine.
    The convivial owner with the black eyes was passionate about the wines. Stephen asked him questions. Everywhere , Kate thought, he did this; he made himself known. It was part of his charm, his warmth. To develop a relationship that would hold them all in the arms of the evening , and squeeze.
    ‘We’re keen to sample as much of the local stuff as we can.’
    ‘The soil is very rough in the hills. For water, the roots of the vine have to work very hard; they have to go very deep. A beautiful wine.’
    The owner swooned a little beside their table. He was Jewish, he told them, while making a joke. Stephen and Kate were nothing. Christians once, for a few months. Meetings with the vicar. Readings from the Bible and bridesmaid dresses. But the nativity scene got lost in a box, in the roof. They didn’t have children to revive their religions and their lives were taken up: work, dinners, the gym, theatre, friends. And now, out here, she thought, they were busy trying to unlace themselves, trying to be free.
    Kate lifted her glass to her lips. London was a blur. It was the mystery of her early life that she wanted to try to remember. Who she was before she started working and met Stephen and moved into his flat. She wanted to know why it was she had begun to feel excitement again, ripples of it, that travelled through her for no apparent reason. It felt inherently childish, something pure, to do with the joy of life and it made her want to kick free; she needed to figure that out now, what was doing it, why now.
    She reached under the table for her handbag and the phone that had signalled a text from a friend. ‘How’s paradise ?’
    Kate showed the phone to Stephen and he lifted his glass high in the air. The light was shining on his forehead and when he laughed his nostrils flared, which made him look smug, and strange.
    The waiter brought cognac. He spoke to them in English . Behind the bar, he had postcards of bullfighters, a woman with her hands folded on her pubis, her lips in an ‘o’. Kate smiled patiently and tucked her hair behind her ears. She drank the cognac. At the gallery now, they would be running around hanging twenty-foot paper cages from the ceiling on thick iron chains. The cages would swing in the air and crash into each other, their hanging disturbed by the air from a turbine. But the cages would do well. The show would run and run. Even Kate’s mother would make a point of coming up to see it. It would take the long-suffering Portuguese neighbour all morning to get them ready. Then the neighbour would be made to drive up to London, to push Kate’s mother in and round. There would be a smear of bright pink lipstick and a grey chignon. She would sit in the corner and say nothing. She would sit in the corner and say nothing and stare at the cages though her large dark glasses.
    Outside the restaurant the wind was picking up, fluttering  the awning. Soon they would be back in their village, the bedroom in its loft, with the windows on the chateau. Kate decided that she would not return to the courtyard in the morning. She would stay with Stephen and sleep late. Let her body rest beside him. With a little more effort, she thought, she could make things lovely again between them. They would go into town, buy warm, fresh pains au chocolat from the baker and eat them out of paper bags as they strolled through the market. Stephen would choose the salami spiked with garlic. He would say the cheese was marvellous and she would enjoy his pleasure. She would buy some duck and cook up a meal so that they could eat together – husband and wife – in their walled garden, licking their greasy fingers and laughing together under the stars.
    ‘Have you been to this part of France before, Madame, Monsieur?’
    ‘We came here on our honeymoon. But by mistake, as a matter of fact,’ said Stephen. ‘We flew