Read Online The Old House on the Corner by Maureen Lee - Free Book Online

started coming home two or three hours late on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
    ‘I hope they’re paying you,’ she said sourly. He gave her an extra ten quid a week as proof, leaving himself seriously short.
    Sundays were more difficult to explain away. There were only so many times he could say he didn’t feel up to it, that he had a headache, that there was something going on at the club. In the end, he just flatly refused to go, causing ructions. Tea with his daughters had become an institution. They took it in turns: Brenda was the first Sunday in the month, Maggie the second, and so on. Steve had never enjoyed them. His four sons-in-law, all in their twenties and with decent jobs, constantly offered him advice on how to turn his life around, make money, train for this and train for that, start up a business of his own, Jean nodding in the background, making derogatory remarks: ‘He’s just an old stick-in-the-mud. You’ll never get our Steve to change his ways.’
    He was fed up being the object of so many people’sattention, being told which way to jump. Kathleen liked him the way he was and she was the only one who mattered. Jean hardly spoke to him because of the Sunday tea business, but he didn’t care. He sang under his breath as he pushed trolleys up and down the hospital corridors, began to use aftershave, showered every night, wore his best shirt for work every Tuesday and Thursday. It might look suspicious, but he didn’t care about that, either.
    ‘Michael knows about us,’ Kathleen said on Easter Sunday afternoon after they’d made love. They’d been seeing each other for two months and it was getting better and better with each time.
    ‘How?’ Steve asked, startled.
    ‘He just guessed. He said I looked different, that he’d never known me look so happy.’ She nestled against him. ‘I am too, so happy I could cry.’
    ‘What’ll happen now?’ He’d die if he couldn’t see her again.
    He felt her shrug against him. ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Nothing!’ The other way around, he would have killed the chap.
    Her breath was warm on his shoulder when she spoke. ‘Michael’s upset, but he doesn’t object to me having an affair.’
    ‘Why not?’ He felt confused. ‘I don’t understand, luv.’
    ‘He’s impotent,’ she said flatly, ‘has been for years, since not long after Conrad was born.’
    ‘Flippin’ heck, Kathleen.’ He sat bolt upright on the bed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
    She shrugged again. ‘There was no point. It didn’t matter. It still doesn’t. Michael loves me in his own way,and I love him in mine, but he realizes he can’t complain if I sleep with another man.’
    ‘But you can still do things for him,’ he said awkwardly.
    ‘I know that and so does Michael, but it’s not the same. He’s too ashamed to accept second best.’ She gently squeezed his arm. ‘I’d sooner not go into detail, Steve, not right now. I just wanted to tell you that Michael knows and that he’s not likely to come barging in and play the injured husband.’
    ‘I’m surprised you didn’t get divorced,’ Steve muttered.
    ‘It may surprise you even more to know that I’ve never met a man I loved as much as I love Michael, not until I met you. He said he’d divorce me if I want. I said I’d ask what you wanted first.’
    ‘This is getting beyond me.’ He got out of bed and began to drag on his clothes. ‘I don’t understand any of it. I don’t want any part of it. It’s unnatural.’
    ‘Where are you going?’ She was sitting up in bed, clutching her knees, as naked as the day she was born, her red-brown hair curled over her white shoulders and her grey eyes misted with love. She had never looked so desirable and he had never wanted her so much.
    ‘Downstairs,’ he gulped, resisting the urge to tear off his clothes and get back into bed. ‘I need to think.’
    He sat on the padded bench in the kitchen, stared at his folded hands. What the hell had he got