Free Whispers Through a Megaphone by Rachel Elliott Page B

tomorrow night, whether the album playing was Buena Vista Social Club . Then Kristin paused. She looked down at her coffee. Sadie waited.
    “The other night,” said Kristin, looking up. “At Mack’s.”
    She was referring to what happened in the bookshop when Rosanna Arquette read about bedposts, bruises and handcuffs—love that felt like pain and pain that felt like love.
    “What about it?” said Sadie.
    “Something happened between us.”
    “Did it?”
    “Didn’t it?”
    Sadie wavered. She could deny everything, put it all down to the highly charged atmosphere of the bookshop that night, or she could tell the truth. She glanced at the window. It was raining outside. She remembered Suzie’s letter: watch the rain .
    “There was a moment,” said Kristin.
    Yes, there was a moment, thought Sadie, seeing it once more in vivid detail. And I want there to be another. Let’s do it right now, in the park, in the rain. Let’s go .
    “What do you mean?” she said.
    Kristin sighed. She was supposed to be meeting Carol outside Pizza Express in half an hour. “We’ve been friends for a long time,” she said.
    “Almost thirty years.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes.”
    “That makes me feel old.”
    “I know.”
    “Anyway, we’ve never crossed a line, have we?”
    “Crossed a line?”
    “We’ve never flirted with each other.”
    “No.”
    “Until last week.”
    Flirted with each other . Sadie replayed it in her mind. That was reciprocal, wasn’t it? They both flirted. She looked at Kristin’s mouth.
    “And I think we should talk about it.”
    Kristin had always been direct. It was in her nature. You knew where you were with Kristin, even if it wasn’t where you wanted to be, which right now, for Sadie, was in the bandstand in the park. She remembered the two of them walking Harvey, how they were drenched by the storm, how the water ran through Kristin’s long dark hair, how she turned up the collar of her mac and stood there in front of Sadie, laughing. She should have kissed her then, while they were out in the fields. It would have been memorable and dramatic. Carol can do that whenever she likes. She can kiss her in the park, in the fields, in town, at home. Carol the GP, who somehow finds the time to run marathons for charity, who always buys Arthur and Stanley the perfect gifts, who seems so stable and content. Can anyone really be that happy? Perhaps that’s what happens when you’re married to Kristin.
    “Look, you don’t need to panic,” said Kristin, finishing her coffee. “That’s all I wanted to say. It’s no big deal. I think maybe the wine had gone to our heads and the poetry was crazy and everyone wanted to fuck everyone else that evening.”
    Kristin flinched at her own words. Sadie raised her eyebrows.
    “We don’t need to read anything into it. That’s all I wanted to say.”
    “Okay,” said Sadie.
    Kristin moved on to talking about her new screen prints and how Picador had commissioned another book jacket design. Sadie paid for their coffees and cake and walked with Kristin through town, but not all the way to Pizza Express. She wasn’t in the mood for Carol.
     
    “That was an excellent barbecue,” said Marcus, watching Sadie untie her apron and lift it over her head. “You should set up your own business. You could have your own burger van in the middle of town.”
    “Why thank you,” she said, exhausted. “That’s what I’ve always wanted for myself—to work in a burger van.”
    “I meant it as a compliment.”
    A quick half-smile. She had nothing else to offer.
    “I think you need to sit down,” said Marcus. “You look knackered. Did you get time to eat?”
    “Not yet.”
    Sadie took a hot dog from the table, covered it in ketchup and went inside the house. She poured herself a glass of champagne and sat on the stairs. Two teenagers squeezed past, giggling. She had no idea who they were, but the giggling was too loud, she wanted silence and darkness, just for a