Read Before She Met Me for Free Online Page B

make an impact. Hence the litter of paper, magazines, brown envelopes and last season’spools coupons. ‘They need to feel there’s some point in being born,’ Jack had explained. ‘It’s like those aboriginal tribes where the women parturate on to piles of old newspapers. Same principle. Same newspapers, probably.’
    As Jack took his chunky form off to the kitchen extension he pivoted slightly on one leg and farted, quite loudly.
    ‘Not I, But the Wind,’ he muttered, almost to himself, but not quite.
    Graham had heard that one before. He’d heard most of them before; but didn’t really mind. As Jack had gradually become a better-known novelist, as his fame permitted him self-indulgence and eccentricity, he’d taken to farting quite a lot. Nor were they the embarrassed exhalations of a senescent sphincter; they were rowdy, worked-at, middle-aged farts. Somehow—Graham didn’t even understand the process—Jack had made it into an acceptable mannerism.
    And it wasn’t just that he made it acceptable once it had happened. Graham sometimes thought he planned it. Once, Jack had rung up and insisted that he help him choose a squash racquet. Graham protested that he’d only ever played squash three times—once with Jack, when he’d been sent scurrying around the court towards a heart attack—but Jack refused to accept his disclaimers of authority. They met in the sports department of Selfridges, and though Graham could quite plainly see the squash and tennis racquets over to their left, Jack had dragged him off on a tour of the whole floor. After about ten yards, though, he suddenly stopped, did his pre-fart pivot so that his back was towards a slanting row of cricket bats, and sounded off. As they walked on, he muttered sideways to Graham,
    ‘The Wind in the Willows.’
    Five minutes later, when Jack had decided that maybe after all he’d stick with the racquet he’d got, Graham wondered if it hadn’t all been planned that way; if Jack hadn’t simply found himself with time and a joke on his hands, and telephoned Graham to help him get rid of both.
    ‘Okay, boyo.’ Jack (who wasn’t Welsh) handed Graham a mug of coffee, sat down, took a sip of his own, plucked the cigarette from his beard and puffed on it. ‘Sympathetic novelist lends sensitive ear to worried academic. Fifteen pounds—make that guineas—per hour; unlimited sessions. And make it something I can, with all my transformational powers, turn into a two hundred quid story minimum, and that’s my little joke. Shoot.’
    Graham fiddled with his glasses for a few seconds; then took a sip of coffee. Too soon: he felt some taste-buds getting burned out by the heat. He wrapped his hands round the mug and stared into it.
    ‘It’s not that I want you to give me specific advice. It’s not that I want you to confirm to me a certain line of action that I’m too timid to adopt without a second opinion. I’m just worried, I sort of can’t get over how I’m reacting to … to what it is I’m reacting to. I, well, I didn’t know about this sort of thing. And I thought, Jack’s got more experience of the whole caboodle than I have, may even have had attacks of it himself, probably knows someone who has, anyway.’
    Graham looked up towards Jack, but the steam from the coffee had misted his glasses; he saw only a brownish blur.
    ‘Old matey, you’re about as clear as a bugger’s back passage so far.’
    ‘Ah, sorry. Jealousy,’ Graham said suddenly. Then, trying to be helpful, ‘Sexual jealousy.’
    ‘No other kind in my experience. Hmmm. Sorry to hear it, old darling. The little lady been playing with fire, has she?’ Jack wondered why on earth Graham had come to him—him of all people. His tone became even more familiar. ‘Never can tell, that’s what I say. Never can tell what you’ve got until it’s too late, and by then it’s tweezers round your tassle.’ He waited for Graham to continue.
    ‘No, it’s not that. Good God,