E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten
Harvey Long Division
14002. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-3-492-96862-1
Verlag: Piper ebooks in Piper Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-492-96862-1
Verlag: Piper ebooks in Piper Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Sarah Harvey, geboren 1969, lebte viele Jahre in einem alten Herrensitz in Cornwall. Vor Kurzem ist sie wieder zurück in ihre Heimat Northhampton gezogen, wo sie heute gemeinsam mit ihren Hunden in einem Cottage wohnt. Mit ihren atmosphärischen Romanen, die häufig den Schauplatz Cornwall haben, feiert sie seit vielen Jahren große internationale Erfolge.
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Chapter One
Life is a peppered steak, I muse, toying with the charred remains of cow on my plate. You think you want all the crap on top, all the garnish, but does it actually make the thing taste any better?
I look up, up and across at my fiancé Richard sitting opposite me.
He is talking down to the waiter.
Richard talks down to everybody, an excellent trick for someone who is such a small person. Small in stature, small-minded, and dare I say it small … Well, let’s just say small in other rather important departments.
Richard is my pepper sauce, my garnish, my piece of curling Lollo Rosso lounging on the side of the plate. Looks appetisingly good to the eyes, but tastes remarkably bitter. As a small person Richard likes to surround himself with large things. Large apartment (penthouse, of course), large car, large wallet, and large matching ego.
He is a prat, but my mother loves him. It has taken me exactly one year, eight months, six days to realise that I do not. I look at my watch. Make that one year, eight months, six days, three hours and thirteen minutes. I won’t go into seconds, I’ve wasted enough time already. I stand up, and reach for my handbag.
Richard looks away from the waiter and smiles briefly, anticipating another trip to the Ladies’ in order to titivate for his pleasure. He is what I would describe as an ego-hedonist, interested only in his own pleasure. A pleasure-seeker not a pleasure-giver, Richard’s main aim in life is …well, Richard.
He has dedicated a lifetime to pleasing himself, and expects those around him to follow his example and please him. Tonight, I do just that. He has decided that I am looking rather voluptuous.
Titivate: the word pleases him, arouses him. This whole scenario, the candlelit restaurant, the expensive wine, is the charade he believes is his key to the latter part of the evening, the important part of the evening, the sex part of the evening, his reward for enduring the rigmarole, the boredom, the tedious niceties of courtship.
I open my handbag. Amongst the flotsam of used tissues, loose change, keys, half-eaten lipsticks, and dried-up wands of mascara, lies a packet of condoms.
Ribbed.
My mind also moves forward to the latter part of the evening. The sex part of the evening, where I usually have to attempt to coax Richard’s small prick into being Richard’s slightly bigger prick while he lies back with the same smug look on his face, as though he is bestowing a great favour by allowing me to do this.
My resolve deepens. I take a deep breath, feel in my bag for the keys to Richard’s place, the keys to Richard’s life.
‘Richard,’ I rehearse in my head, ‘I don’t love you, and I’m leaving.’
I open my mouth.
‘Richard …’ I can hear myself speak, but my voice sounds somewhat detached. ‘I don’t … er … I don’t.’
‘You don’t what?’ he snaps at me, annoyed by my dithering interruption of his complaint about his meal.
I open my mouth but this time no words come out at all.
‘Well?’ he presses irritably, anxious to get back to berating the poor harassed little French waiter.
‘I don’t want any dessert, and I’m going to the Ladies’.’
The words come out in a breathless rush as I push back my chair and stride across the restaurant like my backside is on fire, although in reality the only cheeks burning are the ones on my face.
Inside the Ladies’, I press my hot forehead against the mirror, and watch my breath form warm pools on its smooth immaculately clean surface. Through the vaporous reflection I can see my face, familiar yet totally alien. Why does one never look as one imagines oneself to look? Sometimes I will walk past my own reflection and smile because the person looking back at me seems vaguely familiar. I stare at the strange dark eyes, which stare rather hazily back at me. Is that really my face? The only thing I recognise is my own fear. A fear of being single. As part of a couple one is regarded as a normal human being. As a single person one suddenly becomes a statistic.
What would life be like without Richard? Was there ever life without Richard? Sometimes it doesn’t feel as though there was. Is there life after Richard? Like life after death, this is an unknown phenomenon, although what I am certain of is the fact that I’m too young to die. There may well be life after Richard, but if I attempt to explore this unknown terrain, then my mother will kill me.
I think I have the standard disease of the decade.
I know I want something, but I don’t really know exactly what that something is. Something better? Something different?
I ponder for a moment. Somebody better, something different … definitely something bigger!
I snigger aloud at this thought.
The Ladies’ attendant, having replenished the loo roll in number two cubicle, is now sitting in her dainty paisley-upholstered Queen Anne replica chair, engrossed in her favourite Barbara Taylor-Bradford novel.
She glances up upon hearing my snort of laughter, disturbed from her tale of street girl made good, and looks disapprovingly at the dark-haired girl loitering in her scrubbed and lemon-scented domain. The attendant has an inferiority complex longer and more structured than the Severn Valley Bridge. When somebody laughs, she automatically thinks they are laughing at her. Her world is in this tiled corner of this ladies’ loo in a smart restaurant in a smart part of town. If it weren’t for the row of four white cubicles upon the right-hand wall, you would think that you had wandered into someone’s private parlour by mistake.
She glares at me from behind a rather funereal arrangement of hedonistically creamy lilies. I rummage in my voluminous handbag for a lipstick as a ruse to appear unaware of the attendant’s disapproving gaze. Life is so restrictive, I muse as I run Beautiful around my mouth. You can’t even laugh out loud nowadays without someone looking at you like you’re mad. Perhaps you are mad, my reflection mocks me, mad to want to give up a comfortable secure future for the unknown, give up something familiar in the hope of finding something better. But then again, any future is unknown, even the anticipated one. I ostentatiously place a £5 note in the attendant’s small white saucer. For some reason, this makes us both feel a lot better.
I return to the table. My pepper sauce has cooled and congealed, just like my love life really. It’s now or never. I take another swig of Burgundy, steel myself, brace my back and open my mouth.
‘Richard …’ I begin again.
‘Richard? Richard Trevelyan!’
A sleek brunette dressed head to toe in Versace, in the process of being shown to her table by a waiter, stops mid-sashay and peers across the dimly lit room towards our table.
‘Why, it is, isn’t it?’ With a toss of her raven head, she pushes past the waiter, who steps backwards on to another diner’s foot, and practically stampedes across the restaurant towards us, dragging a rather goodlooking, obviously embarrassed man in her wake.
‘I thought it must be you. Didn’t I just say, that looks just like Richard Trevelyan, Alex, didn’t I?’ she gushes to her companion. ‘Well, long time no see …’
She swoops down upon Richard and kisses him firmly just to the left of his mouth, leaving a big red lip imprint. She’d have caught him full on the lips except for the fact that he moved his head slightly. I know he only did this because he’s been eating garlic. It’s OK to blow it all over me, but never another member of the female sex.
‘How are you, darling? Still a dangerous shark in the sea of corporate law?’
She laughs, one of those cultivated laughs that’s supposed to sound all light and melodious, like the tinkling of a glass bell, but is as false as the nails on her slender elegant hands. Richard laughs too. He also has a false laugh, a sort of boom, one of those deep, hearty, I’m-a-jolly-good-chap-really laughs, the kind that resonates around a room like a rubber ball, and has been known to break the odd glass on occasion with its velocity.
‘Well, I never, Katherine the Great – what a wonderful surprise. You look bloody marvellous, but then again you always did.’
Richard makes a show of getting to his feet and kissing her hand. (The garlic again, he’s not at all chivalrous usually.)
‘And, Alex. How are you, old man?’ Richard turns to her companion, taking his outstretched hand with both his own and pumping it vigorously, convinced as he is that the strength of one’s handshake reflects the strength of one’s personality.
‘So good to see you both. It’s been far too long.’
The man called Alex is smiling at me, waiting to be introduced, but Richard isn’t that polite. He’s been known to hold a lengthy conversation with an acquaintance with me standing right next to him, and not so much as mention my name.
Curiosity is obviously too much for Alex’s wife, however.
‘Who’s your little friend then, Ricky?’
Ricky! Despite the fact I’ve just been interrupted at a pretty important moment in my life, I only narrowly suppress an outburst of laughter.
‘This is Felicity,’ he says.
The woman’s elegant hand is extended graciously. I notice she has rings on all of her fingers. I once read that this is a sign that a woman wishes to be dominated by a man. There are so many diamonds on...
