Free A Hidden Life by Adèle Geras

Harry. It won’t happen again.’
    â€˜No worries. You coming too?’
    He held the door open for her and followed her down the dirty staircase. Out on the street, the sun had come out and a brisk wind was whipping up litter that whirled around their ankles. Harry suddenly leaned forward and taking the two ends of her scarf in his hands, tied them tenderly into a knot around her neck and tucked the ends into her coat. Then he touched her briefly on the cheek.
    â€˜Take care, Lou,’ he said, and waved at her as he walked away. Lou stood looking after him, feeling overwhelmed suddenly by how nice he was: how gentle and unscary. She liked the way he said her name.
    *
    Phyl was standing in the middle of her kitchen wondering what she ought to do first. Usually, the preparations for a full-scale family meal didn’t faze her a bit. She loved entertaining and still clung to the belief that she was a good cook, even after overhearing a remark Nessa made to Gareth a few years ago:
Oh, Phyl’s meals are fine, but they’re hardly imaginative. Just Delia Smith, right?
Who says, she told herself now as she went through a kind of running-order in her head for all she had to do, you have to be imaginative? What was wrong with tasty and delicious? And the recipes worked. Every single one did exactly what Delia said it ought to do and reading her books had been a comfort to Phyl since the day she married.
    She took the chicken pieces out of the fridge, ready to put into the marinade. Does anyone else besides me, she wondered, look at their life and wonder how it came to be the way it is? She fell in love with Matthew the first time she saw him. He’d brought one of his mother’s cats in for an inoculation at the vet’s surgery where she worked as the receptionist, caring for the animals she had to deal with and growing friendly with their owners. Matthew she’d adored from afar in a low-key, rather hopeless way, not expecting anythingto come of it. I knew him before Ellie did, she told herself. Then, one day, he’d asked her out to the cinema and she’d been so excited at the thought that she mixed up several appointments and nearly let Mrs Sanderson walk away with Mr Purdue’s dog, who’d been in for a small operation and was dozing in his basket in the recovery area.
    Phyl smiled and started on the potatoes. She had always found peeling them a relaxation. Potato Peeling Spa – there was a thought! Your hands in the warm water, the peeler running smoothly over the skin, the white vegetable emerging at the end of it. Matthew. She could remember exactly what she wore on their first date. He’d kissed her on the mouth as he said goodnight and she hadn’t been able to sleep. Phyl sighed. They’d only been out a few more times after that before he got snatched. That was how she thought of it. Ellie came along and blinded him. His mother pushed the two of them together in a shameless and blatant way. Ellie practically lived at Milthorpe. There was one time when she brought in a cat that had hurt its paw. She’d leaned over the counter and said, ‘I’m bringing this creature down as a favour to Constance. Matthew’s away this week.’
    I ought to have asked him point-blank, Phyl thought, remembering how helpless and hurt she’d felt. I should have said:
What do you feel for me? Do you feel anything?
I was a fool. I just let him slide away to marry her without uttering a squeak. Tears came into her eyes even now, after all this time, when she recalled that she’d practically made up her mind to sleep with Matthew just as the whole thing came to an abrupt end. She was a bit of a late starter when it came to sex. She, alone among her friends, was still a virgin and she hid this fact as though it were something to be ashamed of. She’d had boyfriends before Matt, but hadn’t liked any of them enough to undress in front of them and sleep