Free The Third Wife by Lisa Jewell Page A

promise of a return to his beloved city.
    But still, he thought, as he turned the familiar corner to the house he’d once lived in, it had been a golden time in many ways. It was hard to look back on the early years of living with any of his children without being filled with a sense of wonder and awe. And it was such a pretty house, the prettiest on the street. He paused to admire Susie’s hard work in the front garden, a little parterre area in the middle, beds of campanula and amaryllis around the sides, a laburnum tree in full weighty bloom growing lasciviously over the entire front of the house.
    ‘Darling,’ Susie greeted him on her doorstep wearing a droopy sundress and Velcro-strapped sandals, her greying hair tied back with a scarf. Susie had been like a mannequin when he’d met her. He’d felt compelled to touch her, just to confirm that she was indeed flesh and blood. But she’d never been comfortable with her flawless beauty and had begun covering it up within weeks of getting together with Adrian. She’d more or less embraced the degradation of her body brought about by pregnancy and childbirth and was happier now in these early stages of middle-agedness, the colour leached from her hair, the lines riven through the plastic-perfect skin, the general falling apart of herself like a vacuum-packed bag of rice punctured with a knife.
    She took the stocks from him with an extravagant display of appreciation and led him into the room at the back of the house that they’d always called the sun room, even when it was dark.
    She had tea set out in anticipation, and a bowl of fruit salad. The doors opened out on to the back garden, another riot of tasteful planting and heavy late-spring blossom. Everyone had told him he should sell this place when he and Susie had split up. Split it half and half. Take back what was rightfully his. And even though Susie had admitted to sleeping with half of Hove during the last year of their marriage, she’d only done that because she was being neglected by her husband who was too busy fantasising about an unattainable statuesque blonde window dresser from Islington called Caroline to pay her any attention at all. It was the garden that had stopped him. Susie’s garden. He couldn’t take that away from her too. So he and Caroline had lived in a house-share for two years, saving for a place of their own, the ‘oldest flatmates in town’ as they’d called themselves.
    ‘Where’s Luke?’ he asked.
    ‘God knows,’ said Susie, pouring them both tea. ‘I haven’t seen him all week. I need to talk to you about him. Actually I need to talk to you about you, too. I’ve been thinking about you a lot since Cat’s birthday at Caroline’s. I’ve been worrying about you.’
    Adrian stopped spooning fruit salad into a bowl to groan. ‘Oh God, Suse. Please don’t. I can’t bear being worried about.’
    ‘Bollocks,’ she said, taking the spoon from him and putting fruit into her own bowl. ‘You’re a big baby. You love being worried about.’
    ‘No, you see, that’s where you’ve always been wrong. I hate it. I’m actually a big grown-up man and I can do all my own worrying for myself.’
    ‘Hm,’ said Susie, unconvinced. ‘Well, whether you like it or not, you’re worrying me. You’re thin.’
    ‘I’ve always been thin.’
    ‘And you’ve got no sparkle in your eyes.’
    He groaned again. ‘Can we talk about Luke instead?’
    ‘No,’ said Susie. ‘I want to talk about you. What’s going on, Adrian? I mean, obviously you’ve been grieving. But there’s more, I think. More to it.’
    ‘I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about, Susie.’
    ‘Well. You never call any more. You always used to call. Cat says you’re distracted and weird. Luke says he can’t remember what you look like. Is it that guy? Caroline’s new man?’
    ‘What!’
    ‘I saw the way you reacted when he walked in. You went all sort of small.’ She made a small shape with