Hunger Read Free

not told him about the sleeping.
    ‘There you are, then. And take her for some walks. Do you both good.’
    ‘Be part of the natural world.’
    ‘Exactly! You see?’
    His face was an open beam of satisfaction. He had taught her something. He liked to teach people.
    ‘Tuesday, but she wouldn’t get here till lunchtime. Give you a morning for work, won’t it?’
    She was not taking Yvonne to the supermarket. ‘You need this. You don’t tell me you manage without that? You don’t tell me you have never bought . . . ? . . . No, Paula, you shouldn’t ever buy that brand, they force-feed Third World babies with bottle milk . . . Put it back, pure waste of money, the own-brand is fine . . . But Adrian doesn’t like sausages . . . ’
    She went alone on the Monday morning. It was quiet. A few mothers with babies perched in the trolleys wheeled slowly round in pairs, chatting. Paula shopped without a list, without a system, enjoying the wander from aisle to aisle, looking at books and DVDs and make-up she would never buy, before homing in on all her usual stuff. She had coffee, filled up with petrol, bought a newspaper and chocolate from the kiosk. Sang on the way home.
    Yvonne would be here tomorrow, but she had done the shopping without her.
    Slowly the cottage had stopped being the cottage and become home. Things had found permanent resting places, the smell of mice had faded, the curtains hung straight. Adrian fell asleep during television programmes. She had begun to tame the garden. But whereas a house stayed as you left it, a garden ran away with you and after a week of hands burning from nettles and thumbs scratched with thorns, Paula lost heart and just mowed enough grass to sleep on. The rest ran riot.
    ‘That’s a mess,’ Adrian said. ‘When are you going to start on it?’
    ‘It’s nature.’
    He turned away.
    Five minutes later he was in bed, asleep.
    There was a full moon. She sat out on the grass, looking at the pale, ghostly light on some white phlox which had appeared by the hedge. There was a night scene in the children’s book she was illustrating. She looked carefully at the white petals. Her bloodless white hand. The silver stones on the wall. Something barked. Something rustled low down among the bushes.
    She felt happy.
    ‘I heard something,’ Yvonne said. She wore a black satin dressing gown with a scarlet dragon in raised embroidery on the back.
    ‘It’s always quiet here at night. Did you sleep well?’
    ‘Bit too quiet. You get used to traffic noise; I suppose it lulls you to sleep. But whatever it was woke me up and it was barely six o’clock.’
    ‘Adrian is up at twenty past.’
    ‘It wasn’t Adrian.’
    ‘What sort of noise?’
    ‘I wouldn’t have said it was a noise. A sound. More a sound.’
    Paula set the coffee pot down on the kitchen table.
    ‘But you slept all right on the whole?’
    Yvonne reached for the sugar. Her fingernails were painted navy blue, but the edges were chipped. Paula thought that if you wore nail varnish in startling colours you had to maintain them.
    ‘Adrian looks very washed out.’
    ‘It’s a long commute.’
    ‘Up so early, home so late. I don’t understand it.’
    ‘He loves being in the country.’
    Yvonne gave her an unpleasant look.
    ‘We’ll go for a walk later. I have to finish something off that I left to dry last night.’
    ‘Oh don’t pay any attention to me. I can amuse myself.’
    ‘No, but we will. Go for a walk I mean.’
    Paula noticed at once, as soon as she walked into the workroom. The drawing board had been moved, only slightly, but she would have noticed even a centimetre. And the side window was slightly ajar.
    It was not until later that she noticed that the chocolate had gone. She had eaten two squares and folded the paper over the open end of the bar. It had been on the table, to the right of her pencil pot.
    Yvonne wandered in.
    ‘Oh heavens, sorry, sorry. I always forget that you don’t.’
    She dropped the