Where Love Lies by Julie Cohen Read Free Book Online Page B

really kind.’
    ‘About what?’
    ‘About our trying for a baby.’
    Quinn’s face transforms into something beautiful. ‘Are you—you aren’t pregnant, are you?’
    ‘No, but I’m going to stop taking the pill. Dr Johnson was worried about it maybe causing headaches. But – but Iwanted to stop anyway. You’re right. It’s a good idea.’
    ‘Oh, Felicity,’ he says, and he pulls me into his arms. He kisses the top of my head. ‘I am so, so happy, love.’
    I can feel his happiness pouring through his body into mine. He’s nearly trembling with it.
    ‘So am I,’ I say. Now that the decision has been made for me, I feel lighter. I hug him back. ‘I’m happy too.’

Chapter Six
    I’M STANDING IN the bedroom ironing Quinn’s shirts. The unironed ones lie jumbled in a basket beside me, and the ironed ones hang cool and crisp in his wardrobe. Quinn doesn’t mind ironing his own shirts, but I like doing it. It’s relaxing: passing the hot iron over the cotton, smoothing out the wrinkles, pressing collars and cuffs flat and sleeves into perfect columns, tucking thepoint of the iron into gathers and around buttons. The room smells of warm fabric and Quinn underneath. Radio 4 plays in the kitchen, sending its murmur up the stairs to me, a counterpoint to the rain outside.
    I place the iron on the board and reach for a hanger. Molly insists on wooden hangers instead of metal or plastic ones; she gave us about a hundred of them when we moved in. I never knewthere was a difference between hangers, but apparently there is. As there is a difference between types of detergents and oven cleaners, brands of flour and salt, shower scrubbers and thicknesses of towel. Domestic harmony involves a world of knowledge, and Molly carries it constantly in her head, along with the dates of birthdays, anniversaries and holidays major and minor. Sometimes I think abouthow tidy her brain must be, everything filed away and labelled, like the shelves of her pantry.
    Slipping the hanger into the sleeves of the shirt, I smell perfume.
    I turn around to check if anyone’s come into the bedroom, but there’s no one there. It’s the same perfume as before: strong, flowery, exotic, familiar. According to Dr Johnson, it hasn’t come from anyone; it’s come from my own head,a strange type of migraine.
    It doesn’t feel at all like the migraines I used to have when I was a teenager. I used to spend the whole day in a darkened room with a wet cloth on my forehead. I used to shrink from light and be unable to eat. My migraines have mutated from painful to fragrant. Lucky Felicity.
    I inhale. I can smell what’s really around me: cotton and hot metal, detergent and dust,faint remains of burnt toast. But the flowery scent floats over it all, stronger and more insistent. I hold my nose and I can still smell it, somehow. Sweet and velvety, warm and tropical, a hint of spice and honeysuckle. A round, ripe scent, full and soft and strong.
    And I know it. It makes me smile. Where do I know it from?
    Without anyone else to distract me, and without having to search forwhere it’s coming from, I can concentrate on it more. I close my eyes and I see flowers: white with a yellow heart, five perfect petals like a child’s drawing. There are clouds of them, with waxy green leaves, heaped up around a chair. The flower heads nod slightly in the breeze from an open window.
    Frangipani. The flowers are called frangipani.
    That summer, in London, there were armfuls ofthe blossoms coming into the house every day for weeks, endless perfume and beauty. Cut, they wilted in the heat and their limpid petals released still more scent every evening, crushed underfoot on the unfinished wooden floors, and in the morning came the fresh blooms. It was the summer of frangipani and …
    And then the feeling sweeps over me. The feeling that something wonderful is happening,that everything around me is beautiful and significant, that I am teetering on an even greater