Read Online Wendy Perriam by Wendy Perriam - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Wendy Perriam
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another universe.
“Elaine! Elaine! Where are you?”
She sprang to her feet. He was back, and looking for her. She darted behind an old workbench as she heard his feet tramping down the steps. Too late. He’d seen her, grabbed her arm.
“Darling, you mustn’t come down here. You know how dangerous it is.”
She shook him off. Of course she knew - all the more so now.
He seized her by the shoulder, trying to usher her back upstairs. Wrenching free, she ran back up unaided. She wanted to escape, now that she had discovered his betrayal.
“Watch out! You’ll trip.
Who cared? If she fell again, there was nothing more to lose - no babies, and no husband. Both were lost already.
He pounded after her, letting out a flood of words, trying to excuse himself, trying to explain. He followed her into the kitchen and sat opposite, still jabbering away. She let the words wash over her, craning her neck to peer up at the SOLD sign through the window. The O was silent now - and rightly so. No point crying. No point speaking, either. She didn’t intend discussing things with Colin. Nor did she intend moving into the flat with him.
This was not the man she had married.
Thin Skin
I t all started with toast - fingers of toast she’d been given as a child to eat with her boiled egg. Nanny used to tell her that every piece not finished might well feel unloved and cry buttery toast-tears. The thought had so distressed her, she never left a single crumb.
Things got worse at school. The other children detested food like Dead Man’s Leg and Frogspawn, but she could hear it weeping when left untouched on their plates, so of course she had no choice but to eat it. And the bits of fat and gristle, the bacon rinds and cheese parings. She never put on weight, though. All the surplus energy was burned off in constant worry - worry about mouldy apples discarded outside greengrocers’ shops, or cracked eggs thrown in waste-bins, or even fragments of chocolate trapped inside a wrapper. Did they cry chocolate tears?
Sometimes, it appeared, the whole world of food was weeping, especially in hot weather: milk on the turn, bananas turning black, ice-cream dripping tragically from cones.
In adolescence, her sympathies roved further to embrace ants, moths, beetles, spiders, flies - anything killed, swatted, trodden on, or flushed cruelly down a plug-hole by other, sterner people, deaf to their shrieks of pain.
“You’re too thin-skinned,” Aunt Freda had reproved.”If you want to exist in the adult world, you’ll have to toughen up.”
She had peered at her skin, which did indeed look thin: the veins too near the surface; knobs of bone, with barely any covering, making strange protuberances in her hands and wrists and feet. Then, when she’d fallen off her bike and had to have her arm stitched, the doctor had confirmed Aunt Freda’s words. “I’ve never seen such thin skin in my entire professional life. It’s like the skin of an old woman, which at your age is ridiculous. I’ll have to use special stitches to get them to hold at all.”
For the next few weeks, she’d been too scared to use the arm, constantly expecting the wound to gape apart. Why couldn’t skin be made of steel, she wondered, to prevent it ripping and tearing? Or people have lemonade pumping through their bodies instead of frighteningly scarlet blood?
And now, at twenty-seven, she still used her left arm in preference to her right, which could make things rather difficult - even minor matters like answering the doorbell. It was ringing at this very moment, insistently, aggressively.
Having picked her way between the piles of clutter, she tugged weakly at the door-handle with her scarred and shaky arm; the bell shrilling a second, louder blast, as if deploring the delay.
A dapper little man, with neatly cropped black hair and a matching toothbrush-moustache was standing on the doorstep. “Good afternoon,” he said.
Was it afternoon? Last time she’d
“Elaine! Elaine! Where are you?”
She sprang to her feet. He was back, and looking for her. She darted behind an old workbench as she heard his feet tramping down the steps. Too late. He’d seen her, grabbed her arm.
“Darling, you mustn’t come down here. You know how dangerous it is.”
She shook him off. Of course she knew - all the more so now.
He seized her by the shoulder, trying to usher her back upstairs. Wrenching free, she ran back up unaided. She wanted to escape, now that she had discovered his betrayal.
“Watch out! You’ll trip.
Who cared? If she fell again, there was nothing more to lose - no babies, and no husband. Both were lost already.
He pounded after her, letting out a flood of words, trying to excuse himself, trying to explain. He followed her into the kitchen and sat opposite, still jabbering away. She let the words wash over her, craning her neck to peer up at the SOLD sign through the window. The O was silent now - and rightly so. No point crying. No point speaking, either. She didn’t intend discussing things with Colin. Nor did she intend moving into the flat with him.
This was not the man she had married.
Thin Skin
I t all started with toast - fingers of toast she’d been given as a child to eat with her boiled egg. Nanny used to tell her that every piece not finished might well feel unloved and cry buttery toast-tears. The thought had so distressed her, she never left a single crumb.
Things got worse at school. The other children detested food like Dead Man’s Leg and Frogspawn, but she could hear it weeping when left untouched on their plates, so of course she had no choice but to eat it. And the bits of fat and gristle, the bacon rinds and cheese parings. She never put on weight, though. All the surplus energy was burned off in constant worry - worry about mouldy apples discarded outside greengrocers’ shops, or cracked eggs thrown in waste-bins, or even fragments of chocolate trapped inside a wrapper. Did they cry chocolate tears?
Sometimes, it appeared, the whole world of food was weeping, especially in hot weather: milk on the turn, bananas turning black, ice-cream dripping tragically from cones.
In adolescence, her sympathies roved further to embrace ants, moths, beetles, spiders, flies - anything killed, swatted, trodden on, or flushed cruelly down a plug-hole by other, sterner people, deaf to their shrieks of pain.
“You’re too thin-skinned,” Aunt Freda had reproved.”If you want to exist in the adult world, you’ll have to toughen up.”
She had peered at her skin, which did indeed look thin: the veins too near the surface; knobs of bone, with barely any covering, making strange protuberances in her hands and wrists and feet. Then, when she’d fallen off her bike and had to have her arm stitched, the doctor had confirmed Aunt Freda’s words. “I’ve never seen such thin skin in my entire professional life. It’s like the skin of an old woman, which at your age is ridiculous. I’ll have to use special stitches to get them to hold at all.”
For the next few weeks, she’d been too scared to use the arm, constantly expecting the wound to gape apart. Why couldn’t skin be made of steel, she wondered, to prevent it ripping and tearing? Or people have lemonade pumping through their bodies instead of frighteningly scarlet blood?
And now, at twenty-seven, she still used her left arm in preference to her right, which could make things rather difficult - even minor matters like answering the doorbell. It was ringing at this very moment, insistently, aggressively.
Having picked her way between the piles of clutter, she tugged weakly at the door-handle with her scarred and shaky arm; the bell shrilling a second, louder blast, as if deploring the delay.
A dapper little man, with neatly cropped black hair and a matching toothbrush-moustache was standing on the doorstep. “Good afternoon,” he said.
Was it afternoon? Last time she’d
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