Landing Gear: A Novel by Kate Pullinger

Author:Kate Pullinger [Pullinger, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2014-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

6

After Harriet lost her job, she concentrated mostly on the things she did badly: shopping for food, parenting Jack, cleaning the house, staying in shape, being married. Some of these things she did more badly than others—being married, for instance. She and Michael were both really crap at that. She reckoned she was probably most proficient at shopping for food, though even then, she was often mesmerized by the special offers and forgot the essentials.

For a while, Michael used to object to her endless trips to the supermarket. “Do you go every day?” he asked one evening, when he opened the fridge and discovered it was so full he had to struggle to close it again. “You’ve got better things to do.”

“No I don’t,” she said.

He turned toward her as though to reply.

They stood in the kitchen, looking at each other. The room filled up with everything there was to say, all the arguments they hadn’t had, all the explaining they hadn’t done, all the anger, the guilt, the recriminations, and the apologies.

Jack walked in. “What can I eat?” he asked, although they’d finished supper less than an hour ago.

“An apple,” Harriet said, and she went back to her computer. Michael went back to the TV.

Losing her job had been cataclysmic for Harriet. After she’d had Jack, she’d spent more than a decade feeling blurry and out of focus in the world, but she’d finally woken up and started to sharpen up, and then—bam!—it was over. The past two years had been lost to supermarket shopping.

Today her focus was on figuring out what to do about the car. After Jack left for school, Michael for work, she stood for a few moments outside Yacub’s door, listening, before opening it as quietly as possible. He was sleeping soundly, snoring pleasantly. She left him a sandwich and a note. Then she walked to the supermarket and, once there, wandered around the car park trying to remember where the car was parked. A plane flew low overhead, coming in to land at Heathrow. Aha, a couple of rows of cars over, farther south. But the car was not there. She was stymied.

She remained long enough for three more airplanes to pass overhead. They lowered their landing gear at the same point and aimed for the runway. Harriet thought about how everyone inside the plane worried for a few seat-belted minutes until the aircraft hit the tarmac and leveled out. Then their worry was transformed into impatience.

She went into the supermarket to see if someone knew what had happened to her crumpled car.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.