Free The Light of Amsterdam by David Park Page B

from the shower area and with no trace of self-consciousness or embarrassment strutted towards her locker. She was showing off her body and she tried not to give her the satisfaction of letting her see her glances. But she’d already registered enough to know that everything was toned and tight and she had a tan that left the only whiteness on the tips of her breasts as if someone had delicately pressed champagne glasses to them. Let her have three children, she thought, and see then where her firmness goes. Work hard to raise a family and make a business a success and see then how everything slips into softness and unwanted abundance. She waited until the young woman had her back turned and was fully focused on getting dressed before walking quickly to the showers with her towel wrapped round her like a cocktail dress.
    As she stood under the water she hoped that she would have gone before she’d finished showering and her heart sank as she realised that this was an experience that Richard would expect her to repeat at least once a week and possibly even more. A man who liked to get value for his money and perhaps he would judge that not only by the frequency of her visits but also by the physical change he saw in her. At first he might enquire if she was enjoying it and then she imagined him asking if it was doing her any good, as if he’d paid for a course of private medical treatment. What would she say? How could she tell him the truth that he had wasted his money, that it was going to cause her nothing but embarrassment to come here? She was not going to change into this young woman who preened and paraded herself in a peacock display of perfection. And then she hurt herself by thinking how pleased he might be if she did.
    The water splurged and splashed over her and she held her face close to the shower head as if it might soothe away the burn of that thought. A man who enjoyed women, what enjoyment had he found in her over these last years? Perhaps if she worked really hard on these machines change might be possible and then he might look at her as he did a very long time ago. A lifetime away and she was glad it was so rare now because when it happened it felt no more than a momentary need, like food that had to be taken to prevent dying of starvation, or not much more than an itch that had to be scratched. And she suspected that she played no real part in it any more, so she was only involved because she was there as she always was and she couldn’t talk to him about it because she was frightened that if she did they would both use words that might shake whatever scaffolding held together the life they lived. The water was warm and she let it fountain over her hair and down her back as her hands clasped her stomach which felt both empty and full. Soon, she thought, he would cheat on her. With one of the customers perhaps but more likely with one of the Polish girls they now employed in the planting sheds. She believed it hadn’t happened yet but wasn’t sure and didn’t want to think about it. There was the age difference but he was a handsome man who knew how to make people laugh and his money and the employment he provided would sooner or later minimise this difference and, for a little while at least, be no longer important to some lonely and vulnerable girl who cried each night for home. She knew that he cared enough about her to be discreet and not humiliate her, that he would take whatever it was he needed and then return to the normal cycle of his life.
    It was the waiting she hated most. It was the waiting she found unkind. If it were possible she would tell him to get it over with and put it behind them. Perhaps she should do it to him first and somehow equalise the pain but the thought was as ridiculous and repugnant to her as making this place part of her life for at least a year. She had no interest in it, no desire left that had much to do with the body, and now thought the