Free Spring by David Szalay

when the meeting at which her final prep run was supposed to have taken place, at Fakenham, was abandoned due to waterlogging. That was while he was in Marrakech. Miller had said he would enter her for something else.
    ‘Fontwell, Wednesday,’ Freddy says.
    ‘Fontwell?’
    ‘It’s in Sussex.’
    ‘I know. What race?’
    Freddy shrugs. ‘He did tell me,’ he says. ‘Some novices’ hurdle. Do you want to get something to eat? A kebab?’ There is a kebab place on Earls Court Road that Freddy particularly likes. He is on first-­name terms with Mehmet and the others there.
    ‘No, I can’t,’ James says, looking at his watch.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I have to meet someone.’

5
    H e has been waiting for this moment, the moment when he sees her, for nearly a week now. She is already there, sitting at a small table with a vodka and tonic. And something is up—­when he tries to kiss her she moves her head to the side, though not enough to prevent their lips from smudgily touching. She seems unnaturally still, except for her eyes, which are nervously mobile. When he touches her she hardly seems to notice. There is, however, something strangely playful about all this. There is something strangely playful about the impish S-­shaped smile which sits in her small lips while he talks. That is probably why he is not worrying, not even about her visitor of yesterday night, whoever he was. Why he is even enjoying it. Why it is even exciting him. There is even something playful about the way that she will not let him kiss her on the mouth. Whenever he tries—­and leaning towards her, he tries often—­she smiles and turns her face away. They stay in the pub for two drinks—­she has another V & T—­and then she says she wants to get something to eat and they walk to a noodle place she knows on Upper Street.
    There, things are less playful. She seems sadder. She drinks water. They share a platter of fried pastry parcels. They each have a deep bowl of soupy noodles. They still only talk about insignificant things—­for some reason, he is explaining to her how the stock market works. Though she lets him take her hands in his, she looks down at her empty soup bowl when he does. He notices her rosy, tattered cuticles—­they are even worse than usual. Her hands are usually a fiery pink, weathered by soap and water, wrinkled on the knuckles, the nails snipped very short. So different from her feet, which he has told her more than once are the prettiest he has ever seen—­small and smooth, with soft pretty toes, and the same even ivory hue all over.
    When he tries to kiss her, she turns her head away again. There is nothing playful about the way she does it now, and for the first time he looks pained and says, ‘What is it?’
    Instead of answering, she asks him whether he wants to see the photos she took in Morocco.
    ‘Of course,’ he says.
    Outside he puts up the umbrella. They have to squeeze together to fit under it. They have not been in such proximity all evening and he smells the faded scent of the perfume—­so familiar a smell, lingering in woollens—­that she put on in the morning when she went to work. It is only a short walk to her flat. They have made this ingress together many times. They know what to do. He shakes out the umbrella and takes off his shoes. She turns on some lights and starts to make mint tea. When he puts his arms around her, however, she looks at him quizzically, as if it is something he has never done until that moment. ‘Why won’t you kiss me?’ he says.
    ‘I just won’t.’
    ‘What do you mean you just won’t?’
    She leaves the kitchen with the mugs.
    ‘What do you mean you just won’t?’ he says, sitting down next to her on the sofa. When he tries to, she sucks in her lips and shakes her head. She laughs, and lets herself flop over to the side, so that she is half-­lying there. ‘I don’t understand,’ he says, leaning over her. ‘What is it?’
    Looking up at him, her