Read Online Falling in Love Again by Sophie King - Free Book Online Page A

staring the mirror full in the face, had David seen every night when she’d undressed? What had he observed and maybe internally recoiled from when he’d kissed her on her cheek, rolled over and gone to sleep? Surely she was entitled to clues? Some hint of a reason that had made him want to leave.
    Just look at her breasts, or boobs as Jules called them! Not bad, considering. So it couldn’t have been their fault. Flattish stomach thanks to pilates. Sloping shoulders which had always been one of her best features (she used to swear they tanned through the car window during the school run phase) and, if she turned and squinted backwards in the mirror, a smallish pear-shaped bottom plus a certain sparkle in her eyes which looked much better when she smiled.
    So why didn’t David find her attractive any more? Perhaps she was boring. That would be the worst insult. Far worse than if he’d gone for a trivial reason such as her body going to seed.
    Opening the wardrobe (one of the new ones they’d just had made at great expense), she selected a bra and mis-matching pair of knickers. What a waste! Of the wardrobe, that was. It would have to go, along with the house; not of course, that that was important in the scheme of things. ‘If that husband of yours had done this a few years ago, when the kids were all at home, you would legally have been entitled to stay there,’ Caroline had bossily pointed out.
    Frankly, thought Alison, she’d have lived in a rented council flat provided David’s head was on the pillow next to hers instead of that flat, smooth pillow case and the cold half of the bed. And how was she going to cope without a husband OR children? Part of her envied that youngish mum, Lizzie, in the group. At least she had her little ones to distract her.
    ‘I thought we’d grow old together,’ she’d whispered on the phone when he’d rung the day after leaving. At first, when she’d heard his voice, she had felt a flutter of hope in her chest. He had called to say he had made a terrible mistake. That he’d been upset about Jules going. That . . .
    ‘I rang to say I need to pick up some more things next week.’ His voice sounded so normal, so ‘everyday-ish’ that she’d burst into wild uncontrollable sobs during which he had said nothing. Just waited for her to finish exactly as he had done when Jules had had one of her teenage tantrums.
    ‘Is there someone else?’ she asked when she’d finally forced herself to calm down.
    ‘No.’ His voice was low. ‘I promise.’
    Thank God! If there had been, she didn’t know if she could have coped. It had happened to two of her friends, poor things. One had thrown her husband out after his affair but never got over him. The second had kept him but never forgot it, reminding him of his ‘mistake’ at every available opportunity. It made for extremely tense dinner parties.
    ‘And what about Jules? How are we going to tell her?’
    ‘She knows already. I explained the situation a few days before she left.’
    He’d told their daughter before her?
    ‘Don’t blame her, Alison. I asked her not to say anything. But I needed to tell her face to face, before she went away.’
    ‘How could you? No wonder she was so upset when we left. What a terrible way to start her degree.’
    ‘Actually, she thought we were doing the right thing. Said she’d known – like Ross – that we weren’t suited and that now they were gone, we could do our own thing.’
    She’d put the phone down then which was, as Caroline later said, the only thing to do in the circumstances.
    ‘Appalling! Absolutely appalling, I call it.’ She’d waved the ‘How To Survive Divorce’ leaflet in front of her. ‘Now will you go to this or not? I went to something similar after Carl and it helped. Honestly.’
    So Alison had gone to the first meeting and it had been surprisingly consoling to find that she wasn’t the only one in her position. She’d even felt sorry for that young man who