A Thousand Paper Birds by Tor Udall

Author:Tor Udall
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408878651
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-04-25T09:06:23+00:00

An afternoon in Victoria Park, reading. The words in Jonah’s novel begin to blur and he has to use all his willpower to stop his shoulders heaving. But still the tears come. When he looks up, Chloe is staring at him, over the top of her book, her own eyes welling up.

‘What’s the matter?’ they ask in sync.

‘Nothing,’ she shrugs. ‘You felt suddenly heavy. I couldn’t see your face but I knew you were upset. What were you reading?’

‘It’s not important.’

She rubs her eyes with the heel of her hand, grinning. ‘I just felt what you were feeling, that’s all.’

In music, he would call it resonance. Or something only a wife can do. As she holds his gaze, he can feel a mesh of empathy thickening the air, but what is he getting himself into? He turns his book face-down, embarrassed that he has been so sentimental. Not now. Not in public.

‘I need to piss,’ he says and goes off to find the nearest toilet.

When he locks himself inside the grubby cubicle, he expects the catharsis of sobbing over the death of a fictional dog. But instead he sits very still, wondering how he’s forgotten what it feels like to have someone know his feelings before he does.

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