Read Online Dead Lovely by Helen Fitzgerald - Free Book Online Page B

in Scotland she’d wanted to throttle him. She was not the sporty type, and had spent most of her childhood making up excuses to get out of PE. She’d never camped in her life and worried for many nights before they leftabout the logistics of her ablutions. Usually, she packed two suitcases for a break of any length, but Kyle had confiscated her hair-straightening tongs, electric toothbrush, Clarins cleanser, toner, night moisturiser and day moisturiser. He’d whittled her luggage down to one rucksack.
    But walking in the sunshine through the quaint villages south of Loch Lomond, she decided that maybe this was exactly the right holiday for them. As Kyle and Krissie laughed about their old friends, she decided it probably was. After everything they had all been through, the fresh air and exercise and beauty of the trek was just what they needed. On that first day, Sarah was surprised to discover she felt happy, and went for seven hours without making a silent prayer.
    Sarah hadn’t lost her faith like Krissie had. Every Sunday she went to mass and prayed for things to happen or change or be better. She’d then say sorry for anything she might have done that made things not happen or not change or not be better. She truly believed that Mary was a virgin, and that God and Jesus had an elusive relative called the Holy Ghost. And she believed if she prayed hard enough everything would work out. She would be fulfilled.
    Each Sunday after mass, Sarah would go home to Kyle feeling positive and enlightened. She was part of something big and great and this big and great thing would look after her. She’d cuddle up to Kyleon the sofa and touch his collar seductively and try not to think about making a baby. Then she’d accidentally initiate sex, and spend the following week not thinking about her period, and the week after that not thinking about her period, and when she was officially overdue fifteen days after the sexual encounter, she would not think about her period so much that she felt ill with a sickly combination of powerlessness and hope. Of course, her period came. It always did.
    It’s when an overwhelming disappointment like this happens that Catholicism really kicks in. It lets you be angry and unreasonable because as long as you pray, as long as you seek forgiveness, any kind of behaviour is okay. So Sarah would spend at least a week being angry and unreasonable – her prayers became expletive-filled thrashings; her seduction techniques were more like self-flagellations, using Kyle as her whipping rod. In such circumstances, Kyle started to find it difficult to produce the seed his wife craved.
    Sarah knew Kyle was a good man, the first good man she’d known properly, and she’d stopped worrying about his lack of ambition. She’d stopped being angry at him for their childlessness. It wasn’t his fault, apparently.
    But at some point, her love for Kyle had started to wane. It hadn’t happened all of a sudden. Her love faded a little bit more with each piece of bad news –whether it was delivered by a period, a failed fostering attempt, or an unchanged position on the adoption waiting list. Their love for each other was evaporating. They both knew it. And they also both knew that one more piece of bad news would leave them both dry.
    *
    A red sun was setting over Loch Lomond when they arrived at the campsite, which was nestled between the loch and the hills and was full to the brim with muddy, badly-dressed, heavy-drinking walkers.
    Krissie, exhausted but proud of having walked so far, dropped her rucksack on the shore with a satisfied sigh. She noticed Matt setting up his red tent a hundred metres away, and nodded so slightly she wondered if he noticed, so did it again less slightly, then wished she hadn’t as it was obvious he’d noticed both (desperate) nods.
    Sarah had a shower in the camp bathrooms. Her feet were red and her legs were aching and her new rucksack had cut into her shoulders, so a long hot