The Photographer's Wife by Nick Alexander

Author:Nick Alexander
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: BIGfib Books
Published: 2014-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

***

Sophie heaves the carrier bags onto the kitchen worktop and exhales sharply. Brett appears in the doorway behind her looking, for some reason, pleased with himself. He stretches his arms and hangs there on the door jamb grinning at her. “Food,” he says. “Great! I’m starving.”

Sophie glances sideways at him, raises one eyebrow and begins unpacking. When Brett sidles to her side and peers into one of the bags, Sophie slaps his hand away.

“Someone’s in a bossy mood,” Brett says. “I like.”

“I don’t,” Sophie mumbles, ripping the packaging from a stack of yoghurts and adding them to the refrigerator.

“Did I do something bad, Mistress?” Brett says, which is so, so the wrong reply, right here, right now, that Sophie wonders if Brett has any idea who she is at all.

“You...” Sophie pauses and sighs. “You could actually help me here,” she continues once she has wrestled her voice under control. “And you could even do some shopping of your own from time to time instead of waiting at home with your tongue hanging out like some untrained puppy.”

“Hum,” Brett says, now starting to ineffectually lift things from a bag and place them in a even less practical pile on the counter. “Someone’s not in the best of moods.”

“No,” Sophie says. “Someone isn’t.”

“I can take you out to dinner if you want,” Brett offers. “But shopping’s not really in my DNA.”

Sophie pauses, a tube of toothpaste in one hand. “It’s not in your DNA?”

Brett shakes his head forlornly.

“And how about cleaning?” Sophie asks, brandishing the tube at him. “Is cleaning in your DNA?”

“No, not really. Which is why I pay a cleaner, I suppose.”

“Right,” Sophie says. “I don’t have a cleaner. So if you could just pick up some of your shit from time to time, that would be great.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Brett says.

“And stop with the bloody Mistress business, OK?”

“Yes, Mistress,” Brett mugs.

Sophie groans and shakes her head in despair. When Brett delicately reaches out to touch her shoulder, she shrugs so that his hand falls away.

“Did you not have a good day, sweetheart?” Brett asks, in a more genuine tone of voice.

“No, Brett. I did not have a good day.”

“The National?”

“It was appalling. It makes my teeth hurt to even think about it.”

“OK...” Brett says, now folding his arms defensively. When faced with one of Sophie’s occasional bad moods, Brett moves quickly from concern, through compassion, to irritation. The crossed arms signal his intermediary stage. “So, how about I take you to dinner and you tell me all about it,” he says.

“I have no desire whatsoever to talk about it,” Sophie says. “And I don’t want to go out to dinner either.”

“Would you like me to leave?” Brett asks. “Is that it?”

Sophie shrugs and shakes her head. “I’m not sure what I want, to be honest,” she admits.

“How about a hug?” Brett asks, uncrossing his arms and scratching his ear. “Sometimes hugs are good at times like this.”

And because Sophie can tell from his voice that this is the last

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