Alligator Playground Read Free Page B

skill if she didn’t. ‘The idea of sadness after sex must have been a liberal middle-class invention, like socialism or anti-smoking, or not eating meat. Anything to stop people enjoying life.’ Gratified at her laughter, he lit a cigarette. ‘This is the first weekend I’ve had off in months. I get up at six, and am never in bed before midnight.’
    ‘It certainly keeps you fit,’ she said languidly.
    He flicked his ash towards a butterfly. ‘I spend an hour at the gym every day. Otherwise, I’d seize up.’
    ‘You certainly didn’t get anywhere near it then.’ She wanted to sleep in a big white bed with him, but stood to smooth the aches in her hips.
    He straightened his collar. ‘We’d better go, I suppose, or they’ll wonder where we’ve got to.’
    He wasn’t there when she next went to Charlotte’s, and she had almost grovelled to get invited. She had to push aside foul Norman Bakewell, who ragged her all through a lunch that would only have been good if you were peasant-hungry. He taunted her at Tom’s absence, as if his wormy novelist’s mind guessed every detail of their encounter.
    Walking towards the wood made the distance seem twice as long. She was depressed and chilled in the damp glade, rain trickling from the foliage. The half-hour with Tom had been so perfect, she might have known it was too good to recall. Her mac was like wetmuslin on getting back to the house. Luckily, Norman Bakewell was asleep in the lounge, though sending up vinous fumes and the stink of foul cigars.
    Home dead beat from work, she picked up the phone to hear Tom’s unmistakably nasal tone. ‘It’s been a long time, far too long, but can I come and see you?’
    A month had gone by, and while knowing his number she had waited rather than do him the honour. The stab of wishing they had never met came now and again, but their idyllic summer’s day would return in smell and touch, visual detail flooding in so that the innermost part of her belly yearned.
    ‘When?’ she asked.
    ‘Now.’
    He came out of the lift wearing Reeboks, jeans, and a Gap shirt. A copy of The Big Issue showed from one pocket of his blue cashmere overcoat, and a bottle of White Horse stuck its neck out of the other.
    ‘I’m serious.’ He sat by her on the couch, a drink cupped in his free hand. ‘I can’t ever forget you. I love you, and want to see you all I can. The trouble is, I’ve been rushing here there and everywhere these last weeks, and couldn’t find a minute to get in touch.’
    She was glad, having been too often on the point of ringing him. ‘Is your wife away tonight?’
    ‘Nothing like that. I’m working late. I always am.’
    She sipped whisky and Evian, and fought away laughter at noting that Evian backwards spelled ‘naive’. She felt mischievous. ‘Does she have a lover?’
    ‘She could, for all I know.’
    ‘Would you mind?’
    He laughed. ‘I’d kill him, maybe.’
    ‘Suppose he played squash as well? But would your wife kill you?’
    ‘I’d expect her to try, even if only to prove she loved me, or because I’d made the elementary mistake of letting her find out. It’s never an accident when someone does. There’s malice in it, you can bet. If you really care for each other – I mean, beyond love – you make sure the other never knows. Carelessness in that situation is sheer stupidity, maybe even hatred, or to get revenge.’
    Men are all the same, she thought, though she’d never had a lover with the wit to speak so openly, which threw her so much off balance that she could only join in, and give up wondering what he meant by caring for somebody beyond love. ‘What about those who have affairs by mutual agreement?’
    He followed her into the kitchen. ‘It ends in disaster, which must have been what they wanted.’
    She put two pizzas in the microwave. ‘Hungry?’
    ‘Starving,’ as befitted, she thought, someone who spoke in such a way. ‘You seem to have had plenty of