The Light of Amsterdam Read Free Page B

two children would blame him and hate him for ever. One crazy, selfish act had released the spores that had infected her and there was no way back. And he’d just asked her if she’d seen the funeral!
    â€˜I’m going away, Alan,’ she said, turning to look at him again, her face steamed and shiny.
    He staggered to his feet. ‘Susan! Susan! When?’
    â€˜Next weekend.’
    â€˜Next weekend?’ God, she must have kept it a secret for a long time. Or else it must have advanced very quickly.
    â€˜There’s an easyJet flight. Back late on Sunday. It’s only a two-and-a-half-hour flight.’
    They were sending her abroad for treatment. And a bloody easyJet flight. Cut-price cancer care, low-cost lymphoma. He would write to the newspapers. He would go to Stormont, confront the minister at his desk.
    â€˜I’ll come with you.’
    â€˜Alan, what are you talking about?’
    â€˜I’ll come with you – you can’t do this on your own,’ he insisted. ‘It’s only right.’
    â€˜Alan, what are you on about? Have you been out on the town last night? Gordon’s coming of course. He’s part of this.’
    He fell back in the chair. He was to be replaced by Gordon right to the end and he winced at the sharpness of that hurt.
    â€˜Why didn’t you tell me before?’ he asked, conscious that his sense of grievance was insensitive and unreasonable but unable to shake off the unfairness that one poor press into clay was going to blank out over twenty years of marriage, every one of those years crammed full of a shared intensity of life that still felt real and not just yellowing pages pasted in some scrapbook.
    â€˜We’ve been thinking of it for a while now but it’s a big decision and I need to talk to you about it. It’ll involve selling the house.’
    She was going to marry Gordon. Her final throw of the dice. There wasn’t any time now for holding back so he said, ‘You’re going to marry Gordon?’ trying to stop incredulity seeping into his voice.
    Setting the wooden spoon on a saucer she came and sat at the table, staring again as if inspecting him. ‘Alan, is there something wrong with you? You’re not listening. I’m trying to tell you something and you’re not listening so if you could just be patient and take this in I’d be very grateful.’
    But his fear and eagerness had no capacity for patience and he blurted out, ‘You’re going into hospital? Why do you have to go abroad?’
    He watched her place both hands to the side of her face, shake it and simulate a scream. Then she reached out across the table and took both his but it was a gesture of restraint, holding them in the way a parent might the hands of a wayward child whose absolute concentration was required.
    â€˜Alan, I have no plans to get married to Gordon as of yet, and I am not going into hospital.’
    â€˜You don’t have cancer?’
    She shook his hands slowly from side to side as an emphasis to her words. ‘I don’t have cancer though why you thought this I don’t know. I haven’t done my face but I didn’t think I looked that rough.’
    â€˜You look beautiful,’ he said before he had worked out whether it was a good thing to say or not, but as soon as he said it he felt like a little boy, a needy little boy, and she dropped both his hands and sat back in the chair, quizzically screwing her eyes into narrow slits while she scrutinised him.
    â€˜You’re scaring me now. So please stop saying things that aren’t true and don’t make sense and just listen to what I have to tell you. Can you do that?’ He nodded as above their heads there was the low rumble of a guitar riff. ‘Now just sit back and, without interrupting, try to listen and take in what I’m saying.’
    He was still a child, a child about to be told a story by his mother, so