Ready or Not? by Grace Wynne-Jones

Author:Grace Wynne-Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

T OM ARMSTRONG SAUNTERED HAPPILY towards a café. He was looking forward to a large mug of coffee, and he was pleased about a photograph he’d just taken. It was of a man cutting a garden hedge with a pet parrot perched contentedly on his shoulder. It was just the kind of unexpected suburban detail he liked to record, and he even wondered if the image might be included in his exhibition – if he ever had one. Tom hadn’t spent much time on photography lately. He was very much caught up in the world of mobile phones, because he was going to marry a woman called Samantha.

How wonderful it was to feel this passion! And how sad it was that he’d postponed it for so long. If only they’d met earlier…but perhaps then he mightn’t have recognised how wonderful she was. Because Tom was starting to see how callow and superficial he’d been in many ways, and how far he had wandered from the truth of his own heart.

Samantha had somehow handed him back to himself, and he had to marry her. She didn’t know he felt this way, but he was wooing her assiduously. Eventually she would, of course, realise that they were meant for each other. In the meantime he would adore her and try to earn the kind of income she deserved. He wanted to provide her with a nice house and a big garden in a pleasant area, but he hadn’t mentioned it. This was because Samantha was something of a feminist and already owned a flat, which had a considerable place in her affections.

Tom’s intense, attractive face broke into a broad smile as he thought of his beloved. He was dressed in a very smart Italian suit, because selling mobile phones required him to look as plausible as possible. In fact, he cut quite a dashing figure as he walked, with long, lithe steps, towards his appointment with breakfast. When he caught his reflection in a shop window he couldn’t quite believe he was seeing himself. It was like a moment from a song by Talking Heads – he’d always been a fan of David Byrne.

For most of his adult life Tom had worn jeans and let his slightly curly brown hair follow its own bohemian inclinations. Sometimes he hadn’t even shaved – freelance photographers were allowed as much designer stubble as they wanted – but now that he was a salesman he paid more attention to grooming.

And grooming took far more time than he’d realised. Regular and dutiful shaving was, in particular, a pain in the arse. So was hanging up his suit carefully, and delivering his crisp new shirts to the dry-cleaners. He’d even bought a special roller to remove lint. He’d never really noticed lint before, but it seemed to adore his suit; it clung to it with the kind of fervour that he himself reserved for Samantha.

Samantha… His step lightened just at the thought of her. The world seemed a different place now that he knew she inhabited it too.

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