Read Online Eat My Heart Out by Zoe Pilger - Free Book Online

cushions and all the curtains and all the sheets. On closer inspection, I saw that the insects were cut-outs of vintage porn. This was confirmed by the framed text next to the picture. There was a stack of magazines on the coffee table: Frieze , Monocle , Dazed & Confused .
    I turned on the TV. Come Dine with Me . A brunette was laughing and pointing at a mound of collapsed cream and banana.
    James appeared, full of the joys of spring. I was full of something; not spring. The champagne had failed to go to my head. He looked about twenty years younger than he had in the bar. His comb-over was freshly oiled.
    Now he opened the box of truffles on the pillow and pushed one into my mouth. It tasted too sweet. He unfastened my pencil skirt and rolled it over my legs. He rolled down my tights too. He rolled down my knickers. He was squatting in front of me like a toad.
    I shifted away from him and turned the volume up loud. ‘I think it’s the voice-over,’ I said. ‘That’s what makes this programme so funny.’
    The brunette was leading a conga line around her front room. A man who looked like an accountant was circling his hips, unevenly. The song changed to ‘Hey Macarena’.
    James pawed at me.
    I said in a loud, assertive voice: ‘Sebastian’s parents would never let their kids watch TV. That’s why they grew up so creative. When Sebastian first came to my school, I’d only ever read The Baby-sitters Club and Sweet Valley High .’
    â€˜Who’s Sebastian?’ said James.
    â€˜But then he introduced me to all these books. Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin.’ I turned to James. ‘Have you read them?’
    He shook his head.
    â€˜I thought Sebastian was a genius like Miller,’ I went on. ‘He said he wanted to make my ovaries incandescent like Miller. But when we did it the first time, they didn’t go incandescent. So Sebastian.’ I laughed. ‘Got really angry and started punching the wall and going mental. It was funny. Because he wasn’t really like that – he wasn’t mental.’
    James lay back on the bed. Then he sat up again.
    â€˜He wasn’t really a genius either,’ I said. ‘When we were about thirteen he told me that I wasn’t in love with him – I was in love with love itself. He said it was a privileged form of mania because apparently a lot of artists and writers had it. He said he didn’t have it, and he seemed really angry about that. But I was sure it was a curse – whatever he said I had. It must have been a curse because it meant my heart didn’t belong to – myself. It belonged to someone other than myself. It belonged to him.’
    â€˜So you like being owned?’ purred James.
    â€˜No,’ I said. ‘That’s not what I meant.’ I laughed. ‘We ran away to Paris after our SATs. When we were fourteen. We left in the middle of the night and got the coach to Dover. Sebastian had stolen the money from his parents. Then we got the ferry. It was amazing – we went out on the deck in the pitch black darkness and you couldn’t see the horizon. Everything looked black. We got wet from the water.’ I laughed again. ‘Obviously. It was the sea. We stayed away for three days. My mother went fucking crazy but his parents didn’t even notice that he’d gone. They thought he was on a school trip that they’d forgotten about.’
    â€˜Hmm.’
    â€˜When we came back, there was this awful meeting with my mother and his parents. His mother said that we should give our children roots and wings, but my mother said that ambition is the best form of contraception and the French are notoriously sex-mad.’
    â€˜Yes, you are.’
    â€˜She said that France is a sex-mad country but Sebastian’s father said: But a lovely place for a romantic weekend away at this time of year . Sebastian said his father wanted him to die because he