The Forever Girl Read Free

tell.”
    She was full of such information. She could predict when a storm was coming. “You watch the birds, you see. The birds – they know because they feel it in their feathers. So you watch them – they tell you when a storm is on the way. Every time.” And she could tell whether a fish was infected with ciguatera by a simple test she had learned from Jamaicans who claimed it never let them down. “You have to watch those reef fish,” she explained. “If they have the illness and you eat them then you get really sick. But you know who can tell whether the fish is sick? Ants. You put the fish down on the ground and you watch the ants. If the fish is clean, they’re all over it – if it’s got ciguatera, then they walk all the way round that fish, just like this, on their toes – they won’t touch it, those ants: they know. They’ve got sensitive noses. You try it. You’ll see.”
    Amanda said to David: “It could have been very different for Margaret.”
    “What could?”
    “Life. Everything. If she had had the chance of an education.”
    He was silent. “It’s not too late. She could go to night school. There are courses.”
    Amanda thought this was unlikely. “She works here all day. And then there’s Eddie to look after, and those dogs they have.”
    “It’s her life. That’s what she wants.”
    She did not think so. “Do you think people actually want their lives? Or do you think they just accept them? They take the life they’re given, I think. Or most of them do.”
    He had been looking at a sheaf of papers – figures, of course – and he put them aside. “We are getting philosophical, aren’t we?”
    They were sitting outside, by the pool. The water reflected the sky, a shimmer of light blue. She said: “Well, these things are important. Otherwise …”
    “Yes?”
    “Otherwise we go through life not really knowing what we want, or what we mean. That’s not enough.”
    “No?”
    She realised that she had never talked to him about these things, and now that they were doing so, she suddenly saw that he had nothing to say about such questions. It was an extraordinary moment, and one that later she would identify as the precise point at which she fell out of love with him.
    He picked up his papers. A paper clip that had been keeping them together had slipped out of position, and now he manoeuvred it back. “Margaret?” he said.
    “What about her?”
    “Will she have children of her own?”
    She did not answer him at first, and he shot her an interested glance.
    “No?” he said. “Has she spoken to you?”
    She had, having done so one afternoon, but only after extracting a promise that she would tell nobody. There had been shame, and tears. Two ectopic pregnancies had put paid to her hopes of a family. One of them had almost killed her, such had been the loss of blood. The other had been detected earlier andhad been quietly dealt with.
    He pressed her to answer. “Well?”
    “Yes. I said I wouldn’t discuss it.”
    “Even with me?”
    She looked at him. The thought of what she had just felt – the sudden and unexpected insight that had come to her – appalled her. It was just as a loss of faith must be for a priest; that moment when he realises that he no longer believes in God and that everything he has done up to that point – his whole life, really – has been based on something that is not there; the loss, the waste of time, the self-denial, now all for nothing. Was this what happened in a marriage? She had been fond of him – she had imagined that she had loved him – but now, quite suddenly and without any provoking incident, it was as if he were a stranger to her – a familiar stranger, yes, but a stranger nonetheless.
    She closed her eyes. She had suddenly seen him as an outsider might see him – as a tall, well-built man who was used to having everything his way, because people who looked like him often had that experience. But he might also be seen as a