Marry Me Read Free

were very sorry that she had slipped away, they had always thought I could have done better. It was so relentless that before long I began to wonder whether they had a point, and that I ought to aim quite a lot higher for my next marriage. Their visits continued, and eventually I whittled them down to a shortlist of six. When decision time came, I lined them up and got ready to make my final choice. They all had longer legs, more lustrous hair and glossier lips than my first wife, and none of them wore glasses or had a slightly haphazard nose like she had. Even so, I realised that none of them could ever take her place. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I miss her so much, and it just wouldn’t be fair on anyone.’
    â€˜Come on, girls,’ said the one with the most make-up on. ‘Let’s go. I always had a feeling there was something funny about him.’ Clutching their tiny bags, they stormed off, leaving me alone at last.

TWO
    Some years into our marriage, my wife asked me why, when there were so many different kinds of sex to choose from, I had only ever done the same two.

KINDNESS
    My wife told me she was adamant that our separation be amicable; that the last thing she wanted was for us to become one of those former couples who only had bad things to say about one another. These sentiments were so reasonable, and so eloquently expressed, that I found it impossible to disagree. Even so, I was unable to disguise my anguish. Until that moment I’d thought our marriage had been going really well.
    She saw how upset I was, and with her customary kindness she set out to soothe me. ‘Would it help you to see a picture of my new boyfriend?’ she asked.
    Without waiting for an answer, she reached into her bag and pulled out a photograph. He was incredibly handsome. Smiling roguishly in aviator shades, he was sitting at the wheel of a sports car, rolled-up sleeves revealing muscular arms.
    â€˜You can’t see his eyes in this one, but my God . . .’ As she saw the agony on my face, her dreamy expression changed to one of concern. ‘You do understand, don’t you?’ She held the photograph beside my face, and kept looking from one to the other. ‘It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?’

CARBON
    I asked my girlfriend to marry me, and she said yes. I couldn’t afford a diamond, so instead I handed her a lump of charcoal. ‘It’s pure carbon,’ I explained. ‘Now, if we can just find a way to rearrange the atoms . . .’
    She stared at the black lump in her palm, and I began to worry that ours was going to be the shortest engagement in history. She smiled. ‘We’ll put it under the mattress,’ she said. ‘Maybe we’ll squash it into a diamond over time.’
    It’s been there ever since. We check up on it every once in a while, and it never looks any different. I think we would be a bit disappointed if it ever did.

ROMANTICO
    When my wife returned from a holiday with her friends, I was impatient to look through her photos. I was dismayed to see that in most of them a tall, handsome man was by her side, and in quite a few they were holding hands and kissing. ‘Who’s he?’ I asked.
    She told me his name was Romantico, that they were very much in love, and that he was going to come and get her, to take her back to his country. ‘I want you to think of it as a fresh start for all three of us,’ she said. I tried to talk her out of it, but it was no use; all I could do was look on as she waited by the front door, her holdall by her feet. That was over six years ago, and she’s still waiting.
    As she stood there we arranged our divorce, and after a while I met somebody new, and remarried. At first my new wife was unsettled by her predecessor’s constant presence in our hallway, but over time she’s become used to her. We find it handy to have her there in case a delivery arrives while