Seahorses Are Real Read Online Free Page B

the daylight. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said impassively. ‘You’ve got no soul anyway.’
    â€˜And you’ve got no head,’ he responded lightly, kissing the top of it again before adding in a softer tone: ‘I love you, you know, Marly stole some barley Smart! I think you’re magnificent.’
    She lay without responding in the comforting warmth of his arms, listening to his words in the soft cocoon of his weaving, snug as a bug in a small green rug; and her mind crept bit by bit, almost reluctantly at first, out of its cold, dark, lonely place until all at once she was there back with him, her wounds wide open for him. ‘I can’t take any more. I can’t… really can’t… take any more,’ she sobbed.
    â€˜I know, my love, I know.’
    â€˜It’s like I’m on this road,’ she babbled, ‘and I can’t turn back. I’m trapped, cornered at the end of it. That’s what it feels like now, that I’ve come to the end of the road – I really have. I can’t see any future,’ her voice trailed off, ‘any future at all….’
    â€˜Yes you can,’ almost sternly. ‘You’re in a tunnel at the moment, that’s all – it’s a blip. It doesn’t mean,’ he added in what Marly called his wise old Gandalf voice, ‘it isn’t daylight outside.’
    â€˜Maybe not; but I can’t see it. That’s the business of the tunnel, not believing there’s anything else, however many times you’ve been through it. People say get help, but you can’t, you’re a vegetable, you can’t even pick up the phone – you’ve seen me. And even if,’ she went on, drilling it in to him, ‘I did believe I could get through it, even if I did believe that, I still know I’ll be back here again and again and again like some sort of stuck record, some sort of sick joke. That in itself,’ she added wearily, ‘is enough to kill me off, the fact that I’ll be here again, that it will go on like this forever.’
    It kills me too, David said to himself, clinging on to her as if he might hold her up with his own arms, seeing you like this, dying away a little more each day, no matter what I do. But aloud he said: ‘You don’t know that,’ lightly, gently, because he knew she knew or at least thought she did; but he wanted to hold out a little piece of hope for her to latch on to if she would; and surprisingly, tentatively at first, hands out and palms towards the ceiling in an almost prayer-like gesture, she did.
    â€˜We-ell. I suppose I might be alright, one day. It’s not impossible.’
    â€˜Course you will,’ he leapt in, sensing his advantage. ‘You’ll be fine, one day, see if I’m not right.’
    â€˜I’ll always get depressed though.’
    â€˜Ye-es, you’ll always have that tendency, but you’ll deal with it better, that’s the thing. It won’t happen so often and you’ll have better coping mechanisms.’
    â€˜Maybe I’ll have children,’ she cried then, almost wildly, hands clutching the sheet. ‘Live by the sea?’
    He kissed her warmly. ‘Course we will. Think of some names,’ he added, knowing how much she liked thinking of names.
    â€˜John,’ without hesitating. ‘John’s a good, strong, masculine name.’
    â€˜I’m rather keen on Neville myself. Neville’s got a good sort of ring to it.’
    â€˜Neville!’ she spluttered.
    â€˜And Petunia. Petunia’s a good name…’ but he had lost her again to the stillness – that strange stillness that came over her when she was leaving him – and the faraway look in her eyes. ‘Petunia,’ he repeated, nudging her.
    She gave a bitter little laugh. ‘Who am I trying to kid? I can’t even look in the mirror.’ And she added, as if