Husbands by Adele Parks Page B

‘sex’ causes my penis to shudder a fraction. This feels nice but vaguely inappropriate.
    ‘Regrettably no,’ I admit honestly.
    Laura looks relieved. ‘That’s good.’ She catches sight of my disappointed face. I make a point of blatantly wearing my disappointment, as experience has shown that wanting a woman is the best way to get one. ‘I mean, I’d like to have remembered it if we had,’ she adds.
    I grin. ‘You would have, I promise.’
    She blushes again and grabs at the neckline of her robe, which is actually my robe. It feels good to see her wrapped in my robe. She thinks about it for a moment and then puts her hands at her sides, trying not to let me see that she opened the neckline a fraction while doing so in order to flash some cleavage. I really want her.
    ‘We talked,’ I add.
    ‘I remember that,’ she grins. ‘Most of it. Was I talking absolute bollocks?’
    ‘No. You were fascinating,’ I tell her and we both know this isn’t a line.
    ‘What’s for breakfast?’
    ‘Sausage, bacon, eggs, beans, the works; even some dodgy mushrooms.’
    ‘Great.’ Laura grins.
    ‘Great,’ I confirm.

13. Girl of Mine
    Philip
    I surface from a peculiar dream about being at a race track and betting on a dog, who – happily – won. But then I noticed that it had the body of a dachshund and
my
head, which was somewhat disconcerting, even for the most rational type of guy who doesn’t pay any attention to dreams; no one likes to see themselves as a mutant. I stretch out my hand and feel for Bella. She likes to know my every thought, both conscious and unconscious, so she likes me to tell her my dreams. She thinks they’re significant and applies poppycock amateur psychoanalysis to them. Total nonsense, of course, but if it makes her happy then who am I to object? Besides, she sees the ones about Naomi Watts as a direct challenge and more often than not insists that we reenact whatever I’ve dreamt. A man can’t lose.
    We had good sex last night. Unexpected. Charged. Youthful. I
love
my wife.
    I slowly stretch, wondering how it can possibly be the case that I notice when I feel youthful; is it the exception rather than the rule? I
am
much nearer fifty than twenty-one; a sobering thought. Not one I share with Bella, despite her longing to always know what’s on my mind.
    Her side of the bed is cold, suggesting she was up andabout some time ago. I pull myself out of bed and wander downstairs, hoping she’ll be in the kitchen or the conservatory. Both rooms are empty and a cursory search of the house tells me that she’s gone out. I check the calendar, which hangs in the pantry, and I scan the breakfast bar for a note. I’m not too surprised that I don’t find either source at all fruitful; Bella is not the sort of woman to leave reassuring or even informative notes detailing her whereabouts. Sometimes she seems perpetually stuck in her rebellious teenage years. It’s one of the things I find attractive about her.
    I brew some coffee and consider breakfast. Bella would prefer it if I ate half a grapefruit and some of the muesli she prepares each Monday, with precise quantities of oats, nuts, raisins and stuff, to last the week; she’ll know if I skip it. She won’t hear of shop-bought muesli – too much salt and sugar. She worries about cholesterol (mine) and body fat (mine and hers).
    The concern is at first glance endearingly mature but on closer inspection could be seen as a succinct embodiment of her almost split personality. A concern about fat intake is clearly very responsible, the fact that it was precipitated by an article in a women’s monthly magazine that said 70% of all married couples put on over half a stone in the first year of their married life, is less mature. I begged her not to believe the statistic. I made her laugh by telling her that 87% of statistics are made up on the spot. Still, we lived on salads for weeks.
    It concerns me how seriously Bella takes advice from not