Adam and Eve and Pinch Me by Ruth Rendell Page A

write those letters or whatever it was he did.”
    “Job applications, he said. That was in October, nearly five months ago. I can’t eat this lettuce, darling, or any more nuts. I’ve eaten the Ryvita.”
    “You’ve done very well,” said Michelle, taking his plate away and bringing in a kiwi fruit, sliced, the core removed, and half a sponge finger.
    Matthew ate two slices, then a third to please her, though he nearly choked on it. “I’ll do the dishes,” he said. “You sit down. Put your feet up.”
    So Michelle heaved her huge bulk on to one end of the sofa and put her slender legs and dainty feet, in which every delicate bone showed, up on the other end. She had the
Daily Telegraph
to read and Matthew’s
Spectator,
but she felt more like just resting there and thinking. Six months ago Matthew wouldn’t have had the strength to carry out the plates and glasses, stand at the sink, and wash them. If he’d insisted on washing up, he’d have had to sit on a stool to do it. The small improvement in his health and weight was due to Fiona. Michelle had come to care for Fiona, who was a real friend, almost like a daughter. Without envy and nearly without longing—for hadn’t she her darling Matthew?—she could look at Fiona’s slender figure, long, straight, blond hair, and sweet, if not classically good-looking, face with nothing but admiration. Their houses were semidetached, but hers and Matthew’s—though now considered a very valuable property more for where it was than for its design or convenience—was greatly inferior to Fiona’s with its rear extension, large conservatory, and loft conversion. Michelle had no envy about that either. She and Matthew had enough space for their wants, and the value of their house had gone up by a dazzling 500 percent since they bought it seventeen years before. No, it was Fiona’s future happiness that concerned her.
    Jeff Leigh had first been seen in Holmdale Road in the previous August or September. Fiona introduced him to them as her boyfriend, but he didn’t move in until October. He was handsome, Michelle had to acknowledge, healthy-looking, regular-featured, a little heavy for her taste. Thinking like that made her laugh. It seemed in the worst of taste to say she could fancy only
thin men.
Jeff had a sincere and almost earnest face. You could say that he looked as if he really cared about you, what you were saying, and who you were; he was a truly concerned human being. This made Michelle think he didn’t care a toss. And when he offered her one of his Polo mints, as he always did, he smiled to himself as she took it as if saying, Aren’t you fat enough? She loathed his jokes. Though he was out a great deal, he earned nothing, while Fiona, a successful banker, earned a lot and had inherited a sizeable sum when her father died last year.
    Michelle wished she and Jeff would postpone their marriage for a while. After all, they were living together; it wasn’t as if they were sexually frustrated—she recalled with tenderness how she and Matthew hadn’t been able to wait more than twenty-four hours—so marriage surely wasn’t imperative. Would she have the courage or the impertinence to suggest gently to Fiona that waiting a little might be a good idea?

    It was comforting, Michelle thought before she drifted off into sleep, how the worst things that happen to one can sometimes lead to good. For instance, when Matthew had twice fainted in the classroom, when he had to sit down all the time in the science lab and could barely walk the distance to the Senior Staff Room, they had known he would have to resign. What would they live on? He was only thirty-eight. Apart from a little dabbling in journalism, there was nothing he could do but teach. She had long ago given up work to look after him, to occupy herself in the neverending, nearly hopeless, task of attending to his nourishment. Could she go back? After an absence of nine years? She’d never earned