Read Online Tigerlily's Orchids by Ruth Rendell - Free Book Online

again, if he so much as spoke to Claudia, he would ‘do worse’. What did worse mean? That he would damage his face or even kill him? Claudia was putting on her stockings in a seductive way. His dread increasing, Stuart started wondering why she even wore stockings. Few women did. He imagined Freddy walking into the room – he might have had another key cut, he might have innumerable keys – and abruptly he got up and went into the bathroom.
    Freddy must be playing some deep game. Or perhaps, which would be worse, an ordinary sort of shallow game. I’m not going to tell her, I’m not saying a thing to her, Freddy mightbe telling himself, I don’t want to warn her. Warn
him
, as I have done, so that if she wants to see him he makes it plain he doesn’t want to see
her
. So that he sends her away, quarrels with her maybe, what do I care? Now totally covered by his camel-hair dressing gown, Stuart looked at himself in the mirror, then went into the living room where Claudia was sitting on the sofa, one leg crossed over the other to show her stocking tops, looking at the stain on the carpet.
    â€˜Is that blood, darling?’
    Stuart said no, of course not, it was or had been hot chocolate. He had meant to clean it up. ‘Claudia.’
    â€˜Yes, what? I don’t have to go yet, you know. We’ve got at least another hour. You won’t forget to have another key cut for me, will you?’ While he was in the bathroom she must have seen the crate from Wicked Wine. ‘Shall we have one of those bottles of champagne?’
    â€˜They’re for my party,’ he said in a repressive tone, and then, ‘Claudia, we have to talk.’
    â€˜What on earth do you mean?’
    What on earth did he mean? For a wild moment he thought of telling her he had to go away – his mother was ill and he had to be with her … his friend in San Francisco was ill … What sick person would want
him
nursing them? Instead, he managed, ‘This is getting too much for me, this – well, relationship of ours. If I’ve got this degree of emotional involvement I need to be with you all the time.’ He jibbed a bit at telling anyone he loved her when he didn’t but now was no time for niceties. ‘I love you, Claudia. I adore you.’ Why did ‘adore’ sound so much less real than ‘love’? ‘I can’t bear to let you go home to Freddy. If we’re going to go on like this it’s better we should part.’
    â€˜Oh, Stuart,’ she said, pulling her skirt down over her knees. ‘I’d no idea you felt like this.’
    He was beginning to enjoy it. You rat, he said to himself, you heel. ‘If I can’t have you all the time, if I can’t have you to myself, it would be better not to have you at all. It’s going to break my heart, it’s going to half kill me, but it’s better for both of us – don’t you see?’
    She came up to him and put her arms around him, laying her cheek against his. Stuart nearly cried out at the pain of having his bruised back and shoulders squeezed. ‘We don’t have to part permanently, darling. Let’s have a trial separation. We won’t see each other for a – what? A fortnight? We’ll still talk on the phone every day.’
    With that half-measure he had to be content. At least, in the emotion of the moment, she had forgotten about the key.
    O lwen’s father had been a drunk and her mother, to keep her husband company, had been a heavy drinker. But Louis Forgan had held down a job, even led some sort of social life, while showing few signs of his addiction except to those who know about these things. Olwen and her brother accepted that there was always drink about, whisky mostly, but beer and wine as well. They accepted it as the norm and in friends’ houses wondered why no bottles stood about in every room and the friends’