What She Left: Enhanced Edition by T. R. Richmond Read Free Book Online Page A

than what this was. He reached under the bed and pulled out a tray with more cocaine on it. ‘Time for a top-up,’ he said.
    I started collecting up my clothes and dressing. Can it really only have been a couple of years ago that I’d genuinely believed that sleeping with someone was such a massive deal? I felt a little ache for that me. At the very least I would have liked to have remembered whether I’d taken my own clothes off or if he had.
    ‘Seriously, don’t go. I’ll be lonely if you go.’
    He did a line then prepared another one and smiled at me.
    ‘Everything OK?’ Mum had asked the morning after I first slept with Josh. She knew he was staying; she and Dad liked him. Better the devil you know, was Mum’s view. They’re all devils, Dad reckoned. The few months we were dating, he and Dad would shake hands when they saw each other – the two men in my life. Ask each other: How’s school? How’s work? Did you see the Man U game?
Men are so similar and yet so different
, I’d thought, watching them one day: their incompatible shapes – Josh skinny, nice skinny, and Dad rounder. It had crossed my mind that this must be adulthood: my first boyfriend. ‘Never let anyone treat you as if you’re less than precious,’ Dad had said, but Ben, Ben with his cloying aftershave and his pink-flecked skin from where he’d shaved, was doing precisely that.
    I sat down on the edge of his bed. My head thumped. I recalled the assignment that was already three days overdue that I had to finish today and the shiny, spacious silence of the library. Looked at the cocaine, at Ben, then back at the cocaine; maybe I was still a bit tipsy. I thought:
Mum and Dad would be horrified, but it’s no big deal and I’ve already done it once
– it was last night when I crossed a line, now would just be
again
. It occurred to me what the word of my next diary entry would be. It was a no-brainer – coke.
    ‘That’s my girl,’ Ben said as I angled my head downwards.
    It felt so good I could have cried.



Part II
     
----
     

NO WORD FOR WHAT WE ARE

Letter sent by Professor Jeremy Cooke,
17 February 2012
     
    Good afternoon, Larry,
    I used to think I’d make old bones. Was convinced I’d be one of those old boys who shuffles along the high street in a cap and coat regardless of the weather. Who loses track of time and looks suddenly and startled at his watch then mutters. Who, when he tries to speed up, resembles some mechanical object put together wrongly. Who doesn’t notice blobs of snot on his nose, spittle on his chin; has a vacant wateriness in his eyes and steadies himself on tables and chairs, as if against an increasingly fast-spinning, ever-more incomprehensible world. But obviously not. It’s a spot on my prostate: a hard, cancerous spot. The doctor and I traded best- and worst-case scenarios and hearing him articulate words with which I either wasn’t familiar or had certainly never associated with myself – ‘biopsy’ and ‘metastasis’ and ‘Finasteride’ – I decided to get flowers for Fliss on the way home: a huge bouquet with asters and iris and baby’s breath. Maybe cook a roast: pork, that’s always been her favourite. She knows, of course, but you should, too. This last bout of appointments have made me realize quite how lucky I’ve been to have had her by my side all these years.
    I wanted to spend my retirement pottering, Larry. Pottering around the garden with my trowel, around antiqueshops in Winchester, around the house with my coffee cup that says:
World’s Grumpiest Man
. I rather fancied temporarily discounting my fossil fuel concerns and buying an old sports car, tinkering under the bonnet. Was going to get a pair of overalls – not sure I’ve ever had overalls – and would have left oily fingerprints on the kettle. Even, God forbid, if I’d ended up in a home, lined up along a wall with the other inmates as if we were waiting for a firing squad or sat in circles turning over