Suspect Read Free Page A

not?”
    “Because I like lather.”
    “What is there to like about lather?”
    “It’s a lovely sounding word, don’t you think? It’s quite sexy— lather . It’s decadent.”
    She’s giggling now, but trying to look annoyed.
    “People lather their bodies with soap; they lather their bodies with shower gel. I think we should lather our scones with jam and cream. And we could lather on suntan lotion in the summer… if we ever have one.”
    “You are sil y, Daddy,” says Charlie, looking up from her cereal.
    “Thank you my turtledove.”
    “A comic genius,” says Julianne as she picks toilet paper from my face.
    Sitting down at the table, I put a spoonful of sugar in my coffee and begin to stir. Julianne is watching me. The spoon stal s in my cup. I concentrate and tel my left hand to start moving, but no amount of wil power is going to budge it. Smoothly I switch the spoon to my right hand.
    “When are you seeing Jock?” she asks.
    “On Friday.” Please don’t ask me anything else .
    “Is he going to have the test results?”
    “He’l tel me what we already know.”
    “But I thought— ”
    “He didn’t say!” I hate the sharpness in my voice.
    Julianne doesn’t even blink. “I’ve made you mad. I like you better sil y.”
    “I am sil y. Everyone knows that.”
    I see right through her. She thinks I’m doing the macho thing of hiding my feelings or trying to be relentlessly positive, while I’m real y fal ing apart. My mother is the same— she’s become a bloody armchair psychologist. Why don’t they leave it to the experts to get it wrong?
    Julianne has turned her back. She’s breaking up stale bread to leave outside for the birds. Compassion is her hobby.
    Dressed in a gray jogging suit, trainers and a basebal cap over her short-cropped dark hair, she looks twenty-seven, not thirty-seven. Instead of growing old graceful y together, she’s discovered the secret of eternal youth and I take two tries to get off the sofa.
    Monday is yoga, Tuesday is Pilates, Thursday and Saturday are circuit training. In between she runs the house, raises a child, teaches Spanish lessons and stil finds time to try to save the world. She even made childbirth look easy, although I would never tel her that unless I developed a death wish.
    We have been married for sixteen years and when people ask me why I became a psychologist, I say, “Because of Julianne. I wanted to know what she was real y thinking.” It didn’t work. I stil have no idea.

    I walk to work every weekday morning across Regent’s Park. At this time of year, when the temperature drops, I wear nonslip shoes, a woolen scarf and a permanent frown. Forget about global warming. As I get older the world gets colder. That’s a fact.
    Today I’m not going to the office. Instead I walk past the boating lake and cross York Bridge, turning right along Euston Road toward Baker Street. The sun is like a pale yel ow bal trying to pierce the grayness. A soft rain drifts down and clings to the leaves, as joggers slip past me, with their heads down and trainers leaving patterns on the wet asphalt. It’s early December and the gardeners are supposed to be planting bulbs for the spring. Their wheelbarrows are fil ing with water, while they smoke cigarettes and play cards in the toolshed.
    Langton Hal is a squat redbrick building with white-trimmed windows and black downspouts. Apart from a light over the front steps, the building looks deserted. Pushing through the double doors, I cross a narrow foyer and enter the main hal . Plastic chairs are arranged in rough lines. A table to one side has a hot-water urn, beside rows of cups and saucers.
    About forty women have turned up. They range in age from teens to late thirties. Most are wearing overcoats, beneath which some are doubtless dressed for work, in high heels, short skirts, hot pants and stockings. The air is a technicolor stink of perfume and tobacco.
    Onstage Elisa Velasco is already speaking. A