What She Wants. Cathy Kelly

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ turned and walked away, elegant in her shearling coat and buttermilk cashmere wrap, her pale hair gleaming as she walked. She waved as she got on the train.

      Hope fought a losing battle not to cry as she watched her sister disappear into the carriage. She wished she saw Sam more often; she wished Sam and Matt didn’t fight so much; she wished…she didn’t know what she wished any more.

      On the train back, Sam thought about Karl. She tried not to think about him these days. Karl. Even his name sent a shiver of remembered pleasure rippling through her. She’d met him at a sales conference in Brussels and they’d hit it off immediately. In fact, a lot of the record company women had liked the idea of hitting it off with the tall, blond Swede but he’d had eyes only for Sam.

      They’d delicately side-stepped around each other for the entire week, talking about their respective jobs (Karl was with the international office and travelled a lot) and sitting beside each other at dinner, but nothing more. It was only afterwards, when Karl arrived in London for two months, that they began to see each other properly. He had the use of a company apartment in the Barbican but he spent most of his free time with Sam, curled up in her bed in the old mansion flat she lived in then. They did things like Häagen-Dazs couples did in adverts: feeding each other take away food in bed, drinking wine while dressed in knickers and T-shirts, lounging around with the newspapers and watching old movies on late night TV.

      In spite of his cool, measured demeanour, Karl had been impetuous and deeply romantic at heart. He saw their future together and begged Sam to follow him to Paris where he was going to be based for at least two years.

      Something in Sam had recoiled at the idea.

      Give up her job to follow Karl, to be his girlfriend, his companion, a hanger on instead of a mover and a shaker? No way. He’d pleaded with her, pointed out that with her skills and experience she’d get a job in a shot, a better job, perhaps. But Sam was having none of it. She wasn’t going to be anybody’s accessory, their significant other instead of a person in her own right. She’d always wanted to stand on her own two feet and she wasn’t about to change the habit of a lifetime.

      It had taken a week of arguments before Karl had realized she meant what she said. That had been two years ago. Last she’d heard, he’d married a French woman who worked in the couture business. Now there was a job with little possibility for relocation. Let him try and move her to his next posting.

      A woman with a toddler got on the train and sat opposite Sam, the woman pale and make-upless, the toddler rosy cheeked and up to mischief.

      ‘Sit Lily, don’t mess, please,’ begged the mother. ‘It’s only for half an hour. We’ll get into trouble with Mr Train Driver if we don’t behave.’

      She produced several books for Lily to read.

      ‘Juice!’ demanded Lily loudly, clearly not bothered by idle threats about Mr Train Driver. To prove her point, she shoved the books out of her way and stared big-eyed at Sam.

      She was just like Millie, Sam thought with amusement, utterly sure of herself and determined to get what she wanted. How had poor insecure Hope ever produced such a confident child?

      The woman extracted a carton of juice from a huge shoulder bag, the same sort of bag Hope always seemed to drag around with her, Sam noticed. Mothers were all lop-sided from schlepping round giant shoulder bags that contained everything from toddler outfits to entire meals with plenty of toys, books and bumper boxes of baby wipes thrown in for good measure.

      Sam looked out of the window and tried not to notice Lily staring at her while sucking on her juice straw. The more Sam gazed out of the window, the more Lily leaned towards her, standing up on the seat beside her mother and leaning over the table until she was lying on it. Her big eyes were fixed on Sam, willing this new grown up person to look at her, intent on being noticed.

      ‘Lily!’ warned her mother.

      Lily moved back a fraction and stopped sucking on her straw. She inadvertently squeezed the carton and an arc of juice sailed up in the air like a fountain and then down onto Sam’s beige shearling coat.

      ‘I’m so sorry,’ said the child’s mother with a deep weariness.

      Sam, thinking of Hope dragging Millie and Toby around, desperately hoping they wouldn’t cover other people with orange juice or smears of chocolate, shook her head. ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘It needed to be cleaned anyway.’

      The woman shot her a look of such gratitude that Sam was pleased she’d been polite. Once, she’d have snapped about people not being able to control their children in public. It must be age creeping up on her. She was getting mellow now that she was on the brink of forty.

      Forty. She shuddered. It sounded so old. Karl would never fall for her if she met him now, she thought ruefully. It was odd thinking about him: he never crossed her mind most of the time. She didn’t miss him per se, just the experience of being with somebody. That was nice; cuddling up in bed with a man, having someone to share the day with, someone to occasionally buy coffee or milk when she forgot.

      She liked that side of things but not all the other hassle that went with it. All that crap they were forever talking about in women’s magazines or at women-only dinners: maintaining relationships, worrying about whether he felt happy or not, trying to keep the spice in your sex life…sheer hell. Sam couldn’t see why women were supposed to do all the hard work. Men carried on doing whatever they felt like while women did questionnaires to see if He was happy or if He would stray or if He needed to talk more. Why the hell bother? Sam thought. Let Him worry about Himself, she wouldn’t.

      What she needed was a virtual boyfriend: a sophisticated robot who could cuddle her, make love to her and ask her about her day at work, and who shut up when she was tired and who never said things like ‘I’ve been thinking about our future and I want to take up this job offer on Mars…’

      She grinned to herself. How weird that nobody had ever thought of it before. A virtual boyfriend would be perfect for millions of women. No emotional hassle but all the physical advantages.

      Lily smiled engagingly at her.

      Sam smiled back. ‘Sweet, isn’t she?’ she said.

      ‘When she’s asleep,’ Lily’s mother said with feeling.

      Back in London, Sam picked up some groceries from the nearest shop and cooked herself some vegetable pasta with organic pesto sauce. Stir-frying vegetables, boiling pasta and adding a sauce and some parmesan shavings was the nearest thing to cooking that Sam ever got.

      She piled it all onto a large white plate and sat down at the table with her favourite Nina Simone CD playing softly in the background and the Sunday papers spread out in front of her. But strangely, she didn’t feel hungry. Normally, she adored pasta and hoovered up anything with pesto sauce on it but tonight her appetite had deserted her.

      After a while, she gave up and shoved the almost untouched plate away from her. If she wasn’t hungry, it was her body’s way of telling her she didn’t need any more food. Anyway, after two days with Hope shovelling down Sally Lunns, she could hardly expect to be hungry.

      On Monday before lunch, Steve held a top level meeting where the subject was company cutbacks. Ten senior executives sat around the glossy boardroom table and focussed on their departments. All present looked outwardly unconcerned but quivered inside their designer jeans and hoped they personally weren’t for the high jump. All except Sam. She СКАЧАТЬ