Read Online The Playdate by Louise Millar - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Louise Millar
Tags: Fiction
Ads: Link
to sound cheerful.
“You think she likes spas?” she says, doing a giant comedy wink. If I did that I’d look stupid. When Suzy does it she looks like a model in a Vogue spread, all elfin blond bob, long pale lashes, and sexy full lips.
I stay on the doorstep watching her.
A strange sensation comes over me. I feel the way people describe feeling when they sense their loved one’s plane is going to crash. As Suzy lifts her foot off the road and onto her side of the pavement I have an urge to shout at her that I won’t go to work. That we’ll go to the Sanctuary next week after all, and lie on our fronts having sandalwood and lotus oil rubbed into our skin.
But I don’t.
Because I have to let her go, just a little. It is time.
So I stay fixed to the spot as she enters her gate. The front door opens and she is gone.
I look up. The silver sky has oxidized into black. A breeze makes me shiver. The weather forecast said rain was coming.
10
Suzy
Suzy opened the door of her house and walked in. As soon as she shut it behind her, her shoulders slumped and she pulled her cardigan round herself.
So it wasn’t a mistake. A ball of pressure shot up inside her chest like a high-speed elevator. She held her breath for a second, trying to contain it. There was no noise.
Tiptoeing upstairs so as not to wake the children, she passed the blown-up studio photo of her three boys hanging on the wall. Ruefully, she turned away. Just the other day her new cleaner, Clara, had mentioned how nice the photo was. Suzy had nodded, keeping the truth firmly to herself: that Henry’s grinning face had been Photoshopped onto his body from the last of fifty shots after he’d screamed in all the others because Jez hadn’t turned up at the studio. Traffic, Jez claimed. She hadn’t been so sure. She knew he’d hated the idea anyway. “Bit tacky, isn’t it?” he’d grumbled when she told him she’d booked the session. So instead of the five of them, there were just three. Ofcourse, she could have been in the photo, too, but the image of a single mother with three boys was tempting fate too much. If you looked closely you could see the swollen redness of Henry’s cheeks above a smile paid for with a bar of chocolate the photographer had brought out of a drawer without asking her, clearly having reached the limit of his patience.
Suzy reached the top of the stairs, picked up the cordless phone she had left by the open doors of the boys’ bedrooms, and pressed the “end call” button, immediately terminating the call to her mobile. She turned that off, too, and quickly checked the sleeping bodies. The faint cry she had heard on her mobile at Callie’s must have been one of them calling out in their sleep. She sat down, wrapping her arms round her waist and rocking forward and backward. Callie. Oh no. Callie.
The thought of empty days as well as empty evenings ahead was more than she could take right now. To her shame, she’d kept Henry up till 9 P.M. tonight just to avoid being alone for another evening, risking the inevitable tantrum when he became overtired.
How long had Callie been planning this? She mulled over the last few months in her head. Of course, she’d noticed Callie becoming restless, even before Rae started school last September. That’s why she’d planned so many things for them to do together. And when Callie looked worried or miserable, she had done everything she could to be a good friend—listening, hugging, making her laugh. Once, just once, when Sasha had rung and left a flirtatious message on Jez’s business phone when Suzy was looking for a pen on his desk, she’d nearly confessed to Callie about her marriage troubles, but she could see from Callie’s eyes there was only so much more stress her friend could take. Instinctively, she knew Callie needed her to be strong. So what had gone wrong?
She groaned quietly. Now this—on top of what was happening with Jez?
Her husband, the enigma. Out
“You think she likes spas?” she says, doing a giant comedy wink. If I did that I’d look stupid. When Suzy does it she looks like a model in a Vogue spread, all elfin blond bob, long pale lashes, and sexy full lips.
I stay on the doorstep watching her.
A strange sensation comes over me. I feel the way people describe feeling when they sense their loved one’s plane is going to crash. As Suzy lifts her foot off the road and onto her side of the pavement I have an urge to shout at her that I won’t go to work. That we’ll go to the Sanctuary next week after all, and lie on our fronts having sandalwood and lotus oil rubbed into our skin.
But I don’t.
Because I have to let her go, just a little. It is time.
So I stay fixed to the spot as she enters her gate. The front door opens and she is gone.
I look up. The silver sky has oxidized into black. A breeze makes me shiver. The weather forecast said rain was coming.
10
Suzy
Suzy opened the door of her house and walked in. As soon as she shut it behind her, her shoulders slumped and she pulled her cardigan round herself.
So it wasn’t a mistake. A ball of pressure shot up inside her chest like a high-speed elevator. She held her breath for a second, trying to contain it. There was no noise.
Tiptoeing upstairs so as not to wake the children, she passed the blown-up studio photo of her three boys hanging on the wall. Ruefully, she turned away. Just the other day her new cleaner, Clara, had mentioned how nice the photo was. Suzy had nodded, keeping the truth firmly to herself: that Henry’s grinning face had been Photoshopped onto his body from the last of fifty shots after he’d screamed in all the others because Jez hadn’t turned up at the studio. Traffic, Jez claimed. She hadn’t been so sure. She knew he’d hated the idea anyway. “Bit tacky, isn’t it?” he’d grumbled when she told him she’d booked the session. So instead of the five of them, there were just three. Ofcourse, she could have been in the photo, too, but the image of a single mother with three boys was tempting fate too much. If you looked closely you could see the swollen redness of Henry’s cheeks above a smile paid for with a bar of chocolate the photographer had brought out of a drawer without asking her, clearly having reached the limit of his patience.
Suzy reached the top of the stairs, picked up the cordless phone she had left by the open doors of the boys’ bedrooms, and pressed the “end call” button, immediately terminating the call to her mobile. She turned that off, too, and quickly checked the sleeping bodies. The faint cry she had heard on her mobile at Callie’s must have been one of them calling out in their sleep. She sat down, wrapping her arms round her waist and rocking forward and backward. Callie. Oh no. Callie.
The thought of empty days as well as empty evenings ahead was more than she could take right now. To her shame, she’d kept Henry up till 9 P.M. tonight just to avoid being alone for another evening, risking the inevitable tantrum when he became overtired.
How long had Callie been planning this? She mulled over the last few months in her head. Of course, she’d noticed Callie becoming restless, even before Rae started school last September. That’s why she’d planned so many things for them to do together. And when Callie looked worried or miserable, she had done everything she could to be a good friend—listening, hugging, making her laugh. Once, just once, when Sasha had rung and left a flirtatious message on Jez’s business phone when Suzy was looking for a pen on his desk, she’d nearly confessed to Callie about her marriage troubles, but she could see from Callie’s eyes there was only so much more stress her friend could take. Instinctively, she knew Callie needed her to be strong. So what had gone wrong?
She groaned quietly. Now this—on top of what was happening with Jez?
Her husband, the enigma. Out
Similar Books
