Free Double Vision by Pat Barker Page B

devoted his whole working life to that particular delusion.
    ‘What’s this?’ Adam asked, holding up a skull with two long, orange-coloured teeth in the front.
    ‘A mouse,’ Stephen said.
    ‘How do you know it isn’t a shrew?’
    He didn’t, of course.
    ‘You’ve got plenty of books,’ Justine said. ‘Why don’t you look it up?’
    Stephen stood up to go. She came to the door with him, looking, he thought, prettier than she had the other night. He did find her attractive, though by now he was so frustrated he would have found almost any young woman attractive – and his definition of ‘young’ was becoming more generous by the day. But this one was too young, and much too close to home. If things went wrong – and how with a twenty-year difference in age could they not go wrong? – it could become very messy. And they wouldn’t be able to avoid seeing each other.
    Thinking like this implied he stood a chance, whereas in fact she probably thought of him as even more decrepit than her father. At best as a nice, kind, avuncular figure helping to amuse Adam.
    Not a pleasant thought.
    He set off down the frosty path, raising his hand to wave to her as he reached the gate, feeling the withdrawal of warmth and light as a minor but real abandonment.

Eight
    The phone was ringing as he opened the front door of the cottage, and he ran into the living room to pick it up. As soon as he heard Nerys’s voice, he caught the brown fug of his breath rising from a suddenly bilious stomach. Nerys sounded controlled and strident, spoiling for a row. She’d had an offer for the house, she said, and she thought they ought to accept it. The papers were full of a slowing down in the housing market, well, they’d been talking about that off and on for months, hadn’t they, but this time people did seem to think it was actually going to happen, so –
    By ‘people’ he suspected she meant Roger. Roger-the-lodger, the sod. ‘How much?’
    ‘One and a half million. The estate agent says they’ve got the money. What do you think?’
    ‘Grab it.’
    ‘That’s what I thought. Well,’ she said breathlessly, ‘I’ll go ahead, then, shall I?’
    ‘Yes. And thanks, Nerys. I know you’ve had all the work.’
    ‘That’s all right.’ She managed to sound gracious and aggrieved at the same time. ‘Are you well?’
    ‘Yes, fine. And you?’
    ‘Fine.’
    Somehow in a plethora of ‘fines’ they managed to get off the phone. It must be over, he thought, replacing the receiver, if they’d reverted to being polite.
    He’d hardly put the receiver down, when the phone rang again. He jumped to answer it, superstitiously afraid it might be Nerys ringing to say the sale had fallen through, though if so it must’ve been the shortest negotiation in history – but it was Beth, sounding resentful, as she always did when asking a favour. She gave generously – she was always dashing about doing some good work or other, letting this, that or the other cause eat into her scanty free time – but she’d never learnt to ask or receive gracefully, so it was a slightly petulant-sounding Beth who explained that Justine’s car wouldn’t start, and she couldn’t stay over because it was her father’s birthday, and they were going out for supper, so could he possibly run her home? Beth would have done it herself, of course, but Adam was in the bath and couldn’t be left. Stephen cut her short, saying it was no bother at all and He’d be up to the house in a couple of minutes.
    Fortunately, he hadn’t started drinking. One of his health ploys was to put it off till later and later in the evening.
    Justine was waiting at the gate, Beth just visible at the crack in the front door. ‘Goodnight,’ they called to each other. ‘Have a nice evening,’ Beth added.
    Stephen waved, but didn’t get out of the car.
    As Justine settled into the passenger seat and pulled the seat belt across, he said, ‘I don’t know where you