The Post-Birthday World. Lionel Shriver

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       Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

       Epigraph

      chapter one

      chapter two

      chapter three

      chapter four

      chapter five

       chapter six

       chapter seven

       chapter eight

       chapter nine

       chapter ten

       chapter eleven

       chapter twelve

       about the book

       Praise for The Post-Birthday World

       About the Author

       Also by Lionel Shriver

       About the Publisher

       chapter one

      What began as coincidence had crystallized into tradition: on the sixth of July, they would have dinner with Ramsey Acton on his birthday.

      Five years earlier, Irina had been collaborating with Ramsey’s then-wife, Jude Hartford, on a children’s book. Jude had made social overtures. Abjuring the airy we-really-must-get-together-sometime feints common to London, which can carry on indefinitely without threatening to clutter your diary with a real time and place, Jude had seemed driven to nail down a foursome so that her illustrator could meet her husband, Ramsey. Or, no—she’d said, “My husband, Ramsey Acton.” The locution had stood out. Irina assumed that Jude was prideful in that wearing feminist way about the fact that she’d not taken her husband’s surname.

      But then, it is always difficult to impress the ignorant. When negotiating with Lawrence over the prospective dinner back in 1992, Irina didn’t know enough to mention, “Believe it or not, Jude’s married to Ramsey Acton.” For once Lawrence might have bolted for his Economist day-planner, instead of grumbling that if she had to schmooze for professional reasons, could she at least schedule an early dinner so that he could get back in time for NYPD Blue. Not realizing that she had been bequeathed two magic words that would vanquish Lawrence’s broad hostility to social engagements, Irina had said instead, “Jude wants me to meet her husband, Raymond or something.”

      Yet when the date she proposed turned out to be “Raymond or something’s” birthday, Jude insisted that more would be merrier. Once returned to bachelorhood, Ramsey let slip enough details about his marriage for Irina to reconstruct: after a couple of years, they could not carry a conversation for longer than five minutes. Jude had leapt at the chance to avoid a sullen, silent dinner just the two of them.

      Which Irina found baffling. Ramsey always seemed pleasant enough company, and the strange unease he always engendered in Irina herself would surely abate if you were married to the man. Maybe Jude had loved dragging Ramsey out to impress colleagues but was not sufficiently impressed on her own behalf. One-on-one he had bored her silly.

      Besides, Jude’s exhausting gaiety had a funny edge of hysteria about it, and simply wouldn’t fly—would slide inevitably СКАЧАТЬ