Read Online Forever Yours by Daniel Glattauer, Jamie Bulloch - Free Book Online Page B

legs. Not wanting to wake him, all attempts to carefully extract herself from this vice failed. She cursed herself for having put him and herself in this position. Her appraisal of the situation turned to panic, which then blended with a feeling of profound sadness, fuelled by the silence and darkness. Feeling for the switch, her free right hand turned on the filigree ceiling chandelier. At first the glass crystals glistened clearly in their colours, the colours of Judith’s childhood. Then they began to blur into each other and slowly liquefied into tears.
    Finally they were washed away by torrents from her eyes.
    She suppressed the sobbing noises as best she could. She had to endure this stifling grip for only a few hours more without letting on to Hannes. But as soon as they were home it would have to come out. She had to tell him. But more than that: she had to tell him in a way that he understood. She had to separate from him on good terms. The very prospect of it terrified her.

PHASE FIVE
1
    “It’s got nothing to do with you,” she said, starting with a brazen lie. She dropped three cubes of sugar into her coffee. Hannes drowned his expression in a glass of water – she had no desire to know what it looked like. No relationship could ever be so wonderful as to justify the misery of breaking up.
    Judith: “I’m just not capable of having a close relationship at the moment.” For God’s sake, why didn’t he interrupt her angrily? Judith: “Hannes, I… I’m really sorry.” With the tip of his thumb he wiped a tear from the bridge of her nose. She resolved that it would be her last.
    “You’re such a wonderful person,” she said. “You deserve a different woman altogether, someone who’s sure of her feelings, someone who can give you back what you give her, someone who…” It was no wonder he was barely listening anymore. From his large, slim briefcase he took a sheet of paper and put it on the table. “Did you notice?” he asked mischievously, and far too cheerfully, given the situation. While the two of them had sat at a café by the Bridge of Sighs they had been sketched by a street artist on Hannes’ instruction. So that’s why he’d pressed his cheek to hers for several minutes. The artist had captured his face well, though she didn’t recognise the blissful expression on hers. How could a Venetian artist know what she looked like when she was in love?
    “Look, Hannes, I think it would be better if we just stopped…” “Fine,” he interrupted her. “Please keep the drawing as a little memento.” “Thanks,” she said. She was confused. Surely that wasn’t it, their farewell? Hannes: “Maybe we tried to pack in too much in Venice.” Judith: “No, not at all. It was perfect as it was. I’ll always have fond memories of the trip, I promise.” (She could feel the shame coursing through every vein in her body. Not even her father had said such things to her mother.)
    “Do you hate me now?” she asked, hoping to receive a resounding “Yes”. She could not prevent him from taking her hand and raising it to his lips. When you were breaking up with someone you had to allow all this sort of stuff. Hannes: “Hate you?” He smiled. “Darling, you don’t know what you’re saying.” Worse than that, she was worried that
he
didn’t know what
he
was saying. And now he really ought to stop calling her darling, she thought.
    “Well,” she said, when the silence had become unbearably long. “Well,” he said, as if this great word were crying out to be repeated. On her lips were the words: “I’m sure we’ll bump into each other again.” But she boosted it with an anaesthetic dose of calculated optimism: “I’m sure we’ll bump into each other a lot.” Now he laughed with his entire rack of white teeth. “Yes, we certainly will.” She stood up and turned immediately towards the exit to avoid the possibility of a dramatic farewell kiss. “We certainly will, Darling,” he