Read I Could Love You for Free Online Page A

wrist.
    ‘Please,’ she says. ‘We’re having the Lymans to dinner. Come too. You must. I can’t go on like this.’
    ‘I’ll talk to Henry.’
    ‘If Henry can’t come, come alone. Just come.’
    What can she say? This is a cry from the heart.
    ‘All right.’
    Only then does Diana let her go. And at once, Laura’s agreement secured, she reverts to type. The window that opened briefly onto her inner panic has closed again.
    ‘That TV crew,’ she says. ‘They never got you to sign a release form. They can’t use what you said without your permission.’
    ‘I don’t mind,’ says Laura.
    ‘Golliwogs! Honestly.’
    ‘You can’t talk. You got the golliwog badge. We only collected enough golliwogs for one badge and you said you had to have it even though you never ate any of the marmalade.’
    ‘Nor did you.’
    ‘You made Mummy buy a jar we didn’t even need.’
    ‘So I deserved the badge.’
    ‘Mummy said we were to share it but you never gave me my share.’
    ‘I was going to, but Anne Duncan stole it.’
    ‘You gave it to Anne Duncan. You swapped our golliwog for a tube of Refreshers.’
    ‘My God, don’t you ever forget anything?’
    Diana gazes at Laura with a blend of irritation and wonder. Laura herself is amazed at the way the long-distant past has returned. She remembers Diana’s betrayal as if it was yesterday. So typical of Diana: she never really wanted the golliwog badge for herself, she just wanted her sister not to have it. And that’s how she is, Laura thinks. It’s not personal. In her own way she’s as loyal and loving as she knows how to be.
    ‘You will come tomorrow, won’t you?’
    ‘Yes. I’ll come.’
    ‘I’m doing slow-cooked shoulder of lamb.’ Then, with barely a pause, ‘You don’t think Roddy could be having an affair, do you?’
    ‘I shouldn’t think so. Not Roddy.’
    ‘I know that’s what men do. But if he was having an affair, why stop talking to me?’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘No,’ says Diana, comforting herself. ‘I think it must be a breakdown.’

5
    For a simple job the pipe work is quite tricky. The problem is getting the fall for the drain so that it flows freely to the external soil pipe. Everything would be so much easier if the toilet could be placed against the back wall, but the clients want the bath under the window. The tub is to be raised on a 300 millimeter stand so that when you lie in the bath you can see out of the window, over the railway lines and the water meadows to the Downs.
    It’s a nice idea, and it presents the plumber, Matt Early, with a nice little challenge, which he appreciates.
    ‘If it’s impossible,’ Liz says, ‘we’ll do it another way.’
    Liz Dickinson is an understanding client. She has a partner called Alan Strachan, and two children, one a Dickinson and one a Strachan. That’s how families are these days.
    ‘Nothing’s impossible,’ Matt replies. ‘There’s always a way.’
    The room in which the new bathroom is to be built is a top back bedroom, with a chimney breast and a small working fireplace. Liz and Alan say they want to keep the fireplace, even though they won’t use it. The door is in the wall that faces the fireplace. This leaves only the inside wall for the wash basin and the toilet, which means a three metre pipe run to the drains.
    Matt has been pondering the problem in silence. He’s a big man, just entering his fortieth year; a man of few words. When he meets a client with a view to taking on a job he lets them do the talking, nodding from time to time to show he’s listening, his eyes fixed on the ground. A gentle giant, people say, because people know nothing. They think because you don’t say much you go about your life like a dumb animal, a horse, maybe, content with your lot. Who knows what goes on inside horses? Rage, perhaps, that they have to haul carts heavy with goods not their own. A passion for liberty, thwarted by the barred gates and the electric fences that hem them