Whispers Through a Megaphone Read Free

said Sadie, marching into the kitchen with a cocker spaniel attached to her leg. “I need a coffee.”
    “I’ll make it.”
    “This bloody dog’s driving me insane. You can take him out this afternoon.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Why not? I need to get the food and drink for tomorrow. It’ll take me ages.”
    His birthday party—something else he hadn’t wanted. But it wasn’t really for him. Sadie liked to surround herself with as many people as possible on a regular basis, otherwise his continued presence came as a shock.
    “What do you know about Stan’s girlfriend?” she said, finishing her coffee while the spaniel licked her face.
    “Are you sure he has a girlfriend?”
    “I hope she’s not dull, like that girl he brought to the barbecue last month.”
    “I thought she was perfectly nice.”
    “He can do better than perfectly nice . She had no ambition.”
    “Sadie, she’s a teenager.”
    “When I asked where she wanted to be in five years’ time, do you know what she said?”
    Ralph stood up, trying to decide whether to wash the dishes or go upstairs. “What?” he said, running the hot tap.
    “In a swimming pool.”
    “Maybe she loves swimming.”
    “In five years’ time she wants to be in a fucking swimming pool? She could be in one now , Ralph. What kind of ambition is that? It’s like saying you want to end up on a toilet.”
    “Sadie—”
    “And do you know what else? She said her favourite restaurant was Frankie & Benny’s.”
    His wife was oblivious to her own snobbery. Ralph blamed this on her parents, a lecturer and a mathematician who discussed current affairs, played the banjo and made home-made pesto, all at the same time. They were brilliant, quick, sarcastic. They lived in France and never visited. No child could ever emerge from their narcissism without hating herself, and Sadie had converted her self-loathing into something more tolerable: snobbery.
    Ralph’s mother had been a housewife. His father worked for an upholsterer. It was no worse than Sadie’s background, it was just different, but try telling her that.
    “Whatever,” he said.
    “You sound like Arthur. Is that his hoodie you’re wearing?”
    “Of course not. I don’t go around wearing our sons’ clothes. I bought this last year for running, don’t you remember?”
    “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you run,” she said, head down, fiddling with her phone.
    Ralph went upstairs, leaving a bowl of washing-up water that was supposed to smell of lavender and lemon, but actually smelt like the passageway between Asda and the car park.
    Sadie Swoon @SadieLPeterson
Off to MK’s this pm for the works: colour, cut, massage.
Spirits need lifting!
    Kristin Hart @craftyKH
@SadieLPeterson Coffee afterwards at Monkey Business?
We need to talk
    Mark Williams @markwills249
@SadieLPeterson You’re gorgeous as you are #IfonlyIwere10yearsolder
    Sadie Swoon @SadieLPeterson
@craftyKH Coffee sounds great, meet you at 5pm?
    Upstairs, Ralph was confused.
    “Well blow me, I’ve forgotten why I came up here,” he said to no one.
    Blow me . He almost Googled this phrase once, to discover its origins, but decided against it when he imagined the kind of sites that might pop up. He tried not to utter these words, especially when working with female clients, but saying blow me was something he had inherited from his father, alongwith narrow shoulders and a pert little bottom. Frank Swoon had been famous for his buttocks. Women wolf-whistled as he walked down the street. “Oh you do make me swoon, Mr Swoon. Just look at those little cheeks.” It was the kind of comment a man would have been slapped for.
    Ralph’s confusion ran deeper than trying to recall why he had come upstairs.
    In fact, it was chronic.
    He was perpetually bewildered. He knew less about his own desires these days than his clients knew about theirs. Compared to him they were models of sanity, able to sit in front of him once a week and articulate their