Where Love Lies by Julie Cohen Read Free Book Online

I’m meant to travel with, the one I’m meant to be with for ever. That even though I might have had a doubt or two, that can be over now.
    I reach across the pillow and stroke his face with my hand. He shaved before he came to bed and his face was smooth against mine while we made love. For thirty, Quinn is quite young-looking,and he usually tries to keep a bit of stubble on his chin and upper lip so that people don’t think he’s younger than he is. Apparently the editor of a local newspaper needs to have a certain amount of gravitas. He shaves at night before he goes to bed, and only every few days. I found this careful ritual fascinating when we first got together. It was as if he were the opposite of every otherman I’d ever met, all of whom shaved in the morning.
    This Quinn, this clean-shaven man, only exists here with me at night. By the morning his chin will have become rough; his skin is pale and his hair is dark and the stubble shows through within hours and feels like fine sandpaper. Smooth-faced Quinn is mine alone.
    It’s one of the surprises of our marriage. My slender, courteous husband, thelocal-newspaper editor, softly-spoken and knowledgeable, is nearly another person in my arms in the dark. He is more solid. He feels taller and wider than he looks.
    Drifting into sleep, I think about the myth of Cupid and Psyche. How Psyche only met her husband Cupid at night in bed, in the dark, and was never allowed to see him during the day. And then how Psyche grew more and more curious toknow what her husband looked like. One night she was rash enough to light a candle. For a moment she saw him – the most beautiful man imaginable, the God of Love – and then a drop of wax fell from the candle onto his skin and awoke him, and he flew away and she lost him for ever.
    But that’s only a myth, with a moral: beware of curiosity. I don’t need to be curious about Quinn. I know all thereis to know. And finally, I feel the way I should.

Chapter Five
    DR JOHNSON WRAPS THE blood-pressure cuff around my arm and pumps it up. ‘All good,’ he says, letting the air hiss out. ‘Everything all right in yourself?’
    ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, fine.’
    I nearly cancelled my appointment, but I scheduled it six months ago. I forget about appointments on a regular basis, so it seemed rather wasteful not to turn up to one that I actually remembered.
    What will Quinn think, I wonder. He will have noticed the pack of pills on my side of the medicine cabinet emptying, and he will have seen the appointment written on the calendar. Will he ask whether I kept the appointment? And what if I say that I did?
    After all, just because I’ve been given a repeat prescription for birth control pills, it doesn’t mean I have to take them for the full six months.Or indeed that I have to take any of them. They’re just handy things to have around.
    Dr Johnson sits back behind the desk. He is the picture of a village GP: sparse white hair, tweed jacket. He has been treating Wickhams for ever. ‘Migraines haven’t come back?’
    ‘No,’ I say, as I always do. ‘Not since I was a teenager.’
    ‘Lucky you.’ He clicks a button and the prescription prints itself out.But he’s planted a seed in my head.
    ‘I have been smelling things.’
    ‘Smelling things?’
    ‘Like cologne, or a flower. I’ve smelled it a couple of times now. Quinn couldn’t smell it. It was really strong for about two or three minutes, and then it completely disappeared.’
    He narrows his eyes through his glasses. ‘That is odd. No headache associated?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘How often did you say it’s happening?’

    ‘Just twice, I think. Both times I was outside and it was really strong. I thought it was flowers, but then I thought it must be perfume. I even followed a woman because I thought she was wearing it. And then it disappeared.’
    ‘Did you have auras with your previous migraines?’
    ‘I don’t think so. I didn’t smell anything when I used to