The Silent Wife: A Novel Paperback by A. S. A. Harrison

The Silent Wife: A Novel Paperback by A. S. A. Harrison

Author:A. S. A. Harrison
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780143123231
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2013-06-24T22:00:00+00:00


14

HIM

He leaves the office and navigates the old familiar route. As he takes the ramp to Upper Randolph Drive and sees the condo in the distance, he waits for an onslaught of nostalgia, but it doesn’t come, maybe displaced by the scrap heap of everything else he is feeling. At the top of the heap is apprehension. He has no sense of what to expect. She was friendly enough on the phone, but these are unusual times. Whatever happens he should try to get his hands on a few of his things while he’s there—some sweaters and his winter coat at the very least. He’ll have to leave them in his trunk or Natasha will know where he’s been. She might figure it out in any case. Natasha has the nose of a jackal. Tonight he’s supposedly dining with Harry, going over contracts, but she may find a way to check on that. This will be their first evening entirely apart since moving in together.

Easing the Porsche into parking spot number 32, he grapples for a moment with a lordly sense of possession. Absurd as it is he can’t quite suppress his territorial instincts. These two hundred square feet of pavement are his—he owns them—and he also owns spot number 33, where Jodi’s Audi sits—and for that matter the Audi is his property too.

He travels up the elevator and with pride of ownership still goading him uses his key to enter the apartment. The complex smells of her cooking welcome him before he’s through the door, eliciting the nostalgia he’s been waiting for. Freud is there to greet him, prancing and spinning at his feet. The dog looks well—eyes bright, coat shiny and lush. He moves through to the living room, seeing it with fresh eyes, as if he’s been away for a very long time. The place has an opulent feel that he must have become inured to when he lived here, or maybe he’s already been corrupted by the squalor of his current domicile, where Natasha’s habit of cluttering every available surface with the litter of her daily life is the reigning principle of her housekeeping.

He looks for Jodi in the kitchen and doesn’t find her, but when he turns around she’s there in front of him, smaller than he remembers and different in other ways too—more fragile and with a longer neck, whiter skin, and features somehow rearranged. How can she have changed this much just because he wasn’t looking?

She’s wearing her everyday beige trousers and white shirt. Maybe to her this is a nothing occasion, not the momentous coming together or breaking apart that he’s been alternately envisioning. Her eyes show the glimmer of a question as they touch on his cashmere jacket and longer hair. He meant to kiss her but turns toward the kitchen instead.

“Should I make the drinks?” he asks.

The old routine moves them past the awkward beginning, but as he takes down the glasses and gets the Stolichnaya out of the freezer,



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