Without Consent by Frances Fyfield Read Free Book Online Page A

it. He never does though.’
    The pause this time was distinctly awkward. The hostess stood up to refresh the tea.
    â€˜Well aren’t you the lucky one?’ she said, not unkindly. Everyone knew that Brigid, even in the maturity of her late thirties, was one brick short of a load. ‘After all those years. It must be a wonderful thing to have a man who still wants you.’
    Brigid knew how she must have sounded: boastful instead of bruised. And her Aemon such a handsome man, too. Barrel-shaped, with the kind of ruddy complexionwhich suggested rustic honesty. A big man with vivid blue eyes and a fine crop of hair, like his brothers. And his daughters, playing with their cousins for the summer. She had failed them all.
    She went home via the church, where confetti drifted across the steps and the traffic roared by. God help her; it was only a small thing to bear, wasn’t it? Sex, marriage, her own existence.
    At the junction of the main road and the avenue which led to her home, she faltered and made an excuse to detour to the shops. It wasted another twenty minutes. The front door to the apartment block was a door of glass, which threw her own reflection back at her with warped accuracy, like a silly mirror at the funfairs of her childhood. She bent in the middle; her forehead was huge, the carrier bag enormous and the necklace round her neck too bright. Nearer the door, as she climbed up the steps, she became a small neat woman with an overlarge bosom and overtinted red-blond hair which was nothing but an artificial imitation of what it had been. She looked capable enough, but with shoulders too narrow for a body to cry upon and a dress with a pattern as busy as the confetti she had seen.
    From the windows of the apartment Aemon had built, she could see downhill to the bowl of London. In the near distance were the gasometers of St Pancras. Touches of green between rooftops; railway lines sneaking out from the vast sheds of the station, suggesting freedom. All she had to do was go, but there had been a touch of cold in the morning air, an early-warning sign of a summer on the wane. Brigid did not want to be up here; nor did she wantto be down there in those streets, either. Even in those shaded areas of green which showed the coolness of a square or a park.
    Too soon for a drink, or was it? Drink, bath, warmth within and without. Ablutions and alcohol to rid herself of the dreadful guilt about taking pills and going to the doctor. Confessing things she should only confess to a priest, without hope of redemption now. No, no drinkies, not yet. She had will-power sometimes; it was the will itself she lacked.
    I f Helen West was resenting the superior will-power of Rose Darvey, Anna Stirland resented it more. Rose had a talent for subversion which was nicely complemented by her appetite for conflict. Anna could see that someone might rue the day when Rose had been persuaded to train for the law, even though the day when the child would qualify was still a long way off. She could imagine Rose filling the courtroom with her own version of heavy breathing and an office with the same. The effect on her fiancée’s family was exhilarating: they were weak with love for her.
    Because of Rose, Anna had agreed to meet Helen West. OK, she had liked Helen on one meeting, but she would have preferred another context for the second. Anything to get Rose and Rose’s future mother-in-law off her back: she should have kept her mouth shut. Anna was rehearsing the lines to make this less embarrassing, such as, I’m sorry, this is all a big mistake, fuck off. The sheer lack of imagination in her own nervous anger infuriated her all the more, but at the same time, there she was, tidying inexpectation of a guest who would notice. Dusting surfaces already clean, looking at the whole doll’s house with a critical eye, as if she were selling it. Some chance – she’d sell it if she could – she hoped that