Free The Next Best Thing by Sarah Long

with you than I would be without you. Yes, that’s it, it’s like Cyril Connolly said, if we want to
be happy “we must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion.” And you are my illusion.’ He smiled across at her in triumph, and added in an
American accent, ‘You are my illusion of choice.’
    They drove on in silence for a bit.
    ‘And what about you, Jane,’ he asked. ‘Are you happy with your life?’
    She drove in silence for a while, thinking about everything she had to be grateful for. Her precious daughter, her job, her house. The fragile construction of their family life. You had to be so
careful the whole thing didn’t come crashing down around your ears.
    ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I make it my business to be happy.’ She took her hand off the wheel to squeeze his leg.
    Jane drove the babysitter home to avoid paying for a cab. Will was already asleep when she got back, wearing his British Airways blindfold to keep out the morning light. His
ears were blocked with special wax ear-plugs that he’d bought in France. The normal ones were hopeless, they fell out in the bed like rabbit pellets, whereas Boules Quies could be lovingly
kneaded to size. He lay there, his chest rising and falling, all orifices defended from attack by the outside world.
    Not wanting to wake him, Jane slipped into bed without turning on the light. She stared up at the blackness and thought about their conversation on the way home. It should be obvious,
shouldn’t it? Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so: that’s what John Stuart Mill thought.
    She was happy enough for sure, with her lovely daughter and a man to share her life, and her work to keep her occupied and drive away the demons. Those were the most important things. Then there
was the accumulation of small pleasures that made up the rest of happiness. Cooking and gardening and the occasional treat to look forward to, like her trip to the cinema tomorrow lunchtime.
    It was a habit she had acquired when Liberty started school, and she finally found she had some time to herself. Often on a Friday afternoon, she switched off her computer, turned her back on
her domestic duties and took the tube to South Kensington to see a film at the French Institute. She always went alone, that was part of the pleasure. With no-one to defer to, she was anonymous,
silent, and free to please herself. In three years she had revisited the oeuvre of Bunuel, Godard, Truffaut, and kept up with the new releases. She sat near the back, surrounded by empty
seats, sipping on a min I bottle of Evian and letting the Frenchness of it all wash over her. Dark gallic eyes, suffused with unspoken meaning, the banal stirring of a cup of coffee somehow
conveying the looming shadows of tragedy.
    Tomorrow she was going to sec an old favourite, A Bout de Souffle. It had all the ingredients. A heroine with a Joan of Arc hairdo and authentic striped tee shirt; fantastic black and
white shots of Paris in the days when you could just draw up and park your 2CV on the Champs Elysées; the suggestion that happiness was contained in a simple room with a bare mattress, two
glasses and a bottle of wine. Young people with their lives ahead of them. She couldn’t wait.
    She snuggled into Will’s back, her non-seeing, non-hearing partner, who was now snoring loudly. Thanks to his ear plugs he was sealed in a soundless world, but it didn’t mean he
couldn’t be heard. Jane reached out a hand to pinch his nose and cover his mouth. There was a silence, then the familiar pig-like snort as he wrenched his face away to take a desperate
breath. Then he settled back down to regular, quiet breathing. If there was one thing Jane had learned in ten years of non-marriage to Will, it was how to stop him keeping her awake at night.
    That night she dreamed she was on a safari with Panda and half of Liberty’s classmates. They were wearing their purple