Fallen Angel by Brookmyre Chris

Author:Brookmyre, Chris [Brookmyre, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780349143217
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2019-04-24T16:00:00+00:00

2002

Sylvie

Sylvie felt the mattress shift as Calum rolled over, moving closer behind her in the dark. He smelled boozy, despite brushing his teeth. He had been hitting it pretty hard in that short golden period as an adult human being between Niamh finally settling down and the onset of total exhaustion. She couldn’t blame him. It was always tempting to prolong it, to eat some more, drink some more, enjoy conversation that wasn’t about nappies and bottles, but they never knew what was awaiting them in the night, or how early Niamh might wake up in the morning.

She had made that mistake last night and paid the price all day.

‘Hey, do you hear that?’ Calum asked.

She listened closely. There was only silence other than the sound of the waves hitting the cliff wall.

‘What? I don’t hear anything.’

‘Precisely.’

He cupped her breast. She could feel his erection pressing the small of her back.

‘Niamh’s sound asleep,’ he said.

‘Yeah, but my parents aren’t. It’s only just gone eleven.’

‘We can be quiet. Plus it’s not like they don’t know we do this. Or at least think we do this.’

There was an edge to this last remark. It had been a while, she knew that, but that wasn’t all her fault.

‘I just want to get some sleep. Surprised you’re not more tired, after all the swimming you did while I was chasing about after Niamh.’

He ignored this dig, but he rolled away and his tone turned from horny to huffy.

‘I’m trying to work out what I did wrong, Sylvie. You used to be all over me. You wanted to do it all the time. I’m beginning to think what you actually wanted was to be pregnant. You liked the idea of having a baby – until you got one. Now you don’t seem to like either of us very much.’

‘Well, I didn’t exactly land Dad of the Year. You know, if you want to get physical, it helps if you’re actually present.’

The three of them were ‘living’ in what ironically was referred to as the granny flat. Her late grandmother, Max’s elderly mum, had lived there when Sylvie was growing up. It was an extension to the house with its own separate entrance, though the privacy and autonomy that suggested were, she had come to learn, purely symbolic. The current granny – Celia – now lived in the main house, and it was the younger generations who were boxed off.

Sylvie’s accommodation was a physical embodiment of her allotted role. Her feelings, behaviour and decisions were never her own. She was merely an appendage to the greater ideal of the Temple family, with its matriarch the keeper of the sacred flame. Effectively, she had never left home, but nor had Calum. Eighteen months on it still felt as though it was a temporary arrangement, like a series of sleepovers; or be-kept-awake-half-the-night-overs.

He was still getting to go to uni, getting to lay down plans for his life. ‘It’s for all three of your futures,’ was the phrase Mum used.

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