Imperfect Women by Araminta Hall

Author:Araminta Hall [Hall, Araminta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409196112
Google: o6SnDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1409196089
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2020-06-24T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

Nancy shook herself out of her reverie. The wine was finished and the clock told her it was nearly 2:00 a.m. She was aware suddenly of the pain in her head and how scratchy her throat felt. Her memories fell in waves about her, breaking whatever spell they had, so the clarity of the situation was laid bare. She had spent the past year having an affair with the husband of one of her best friends, an act that made her more repulsive than she could fathom. She wondered desperately if there was any way back and how you lived with this kind of knowledge about yourself.

As she stood, the small of her back tugged, the way it had started to do when she sat on hard chairs for too long, and she tried not to let the despondency of aging smother her. But at least the wine had worked its magic, and she felt tired as she made her way up to bed, simply letting her clothes fall to the floor and climbing in next to the sleeping body of her husband.

She woke with Robert’s 6:00 a.m. alarm the next morning and rolled into his warm, sleep-filled body. They made love slowly and delicately, and when Robert got out of the bed, she lay where he had been all night and felt the indentations his body had made in the mattress.

“I wish you didn’t have to go in today,” she said as he dressed.

“Me too,” he said, although she thought he seemed distracted.

“I can’t stand how life gets in the way.” She felt an aching desperation for something she couldn’t name, which felt as scary as a monster under the bed.

He laughed. “God, it’s complex inside your head, isn’t it.”

After Robert had gone, Nancy got up and made coffee, which she took to her desk, and switched on her computer. She was translating a beautiful book by a female writer she admired, and it worried her that she wouldn’t ever be able to get the correct nuance of the words. She was agonizing over almost every sentence, her deadline drawing near, and she found it too easy to be distracted. She shut the door of her study, and even though the radiators were pumping, she turned on the heater by her desk, making the room warm up cozily, as it always did. She loved her study out of all proportion to what it was because it represented something to her, some moment where she had taken at least partial control of her own destiny and done something positive.

After two hours, her back ached, so she stood, without any real purpose, her head filled with the lyrical sentences that had wrapped themselves around her brain. Her study was next to Zara’s bedroom, so she went and sat on her daughter’s bed. Zara had returned to university after the Christmas break a week earlier, and the air was still heavy with her. Nancy lay back on the striped pillows, inhaling the scent of peachy shampoo.

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