Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered. Rosie Thomas

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Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered - Rosie  Thomas

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leg will always be slightly stiff,’ he told her. ‘But otherwise as good as new. Look at us.’ They stopped for a moment on the crowded pavement and the shoppers streamed past them in the sunlight. ‘We’re lucky. Remember?’

      Annie looked at the light and the colours, and at the reassuring roaring traffic, and at Steve’s face, and uncomplicated joy flooded through her. Their eyes met for a moment, and then they began to walk towards the restaurant again.

      It was a small, discreet place, with tables occupied by prosperous-looking lunchers well-separated from each other so that conversation was no more than a low hum. One waiter pulled out Annie’s chair, another unfolded her napkin for her. The menu was placed in her hands by the head waiter. She glanced at it and saw that it was very short and very distinguished.

      After they had ordered, Annie sat back in her chair with a sigh, looking around the room. ‘I like it here.’

      Steve raised his glass to her. ‘I like it because you are here.’

      It was a meal that Annie always remembered.

      She forgot the details of the food, but she never forgot the sense of being wrapped in calm, unshakable luxury, or the way that the exquisite food and wine went together, or the happiness of being with Steve. She knew that her skin was glowing and her eyes were shining, and she knew that she was beautiful and clever. Everything that was good and important had come together, as it had only ever done before in dreams. As they ate and talked and looked at one another Annie stepped outside her ordinary self and became somebody magical, and superhuman; a woman in love.

      Steve sat across the table from her, oblivious of everything but her face and voice, his own face reflecting his happiness and his pride in her.

      Nothing could go wrong. Nothing must go wrong.

      And then, so quickly, their coffee cups were empty for the last time, and Annie had eaten the last of the tiny, exotic sweetmeats that had come arranged in their dish like jewels in a casket. She blinked, and looked around the restaurant, and saw that it was empty except for themselves.

      ‘Shall we go home?’ Steve said softly.

      ‘Yes, please.’

      As they went outside they felt that they were separated from the crowds around them, and the high red buses grinding past, by the secure nimbus of their happiness.

      ‘Thank you,’ Annie said. ‘I’ve never eaten a meal like that before.’

      ‘Neither have I,’ Steve said, not meaning the food. ‘It was important, the first time that we sat down to eat together.’

      He took her hand securely in his, and guided her back through the ordinary people.

      In the bare flat there was nothing for Annie to look at, nothing to remind her. The afternoon sun shone through the slats of the blinds, laying bars of brightness on the grey floor. When Steve held the tips of her fingers and turned her gently to him the light and dark played over their faces too, and it was like moving through water. She was floating, weightless in the waves, and then the current caught her. It was easy to move with it, unthinkable not to.

      Their mouths touched, lightly, and the watery light rippled in long rays, spreading away from them. There was a moment of sweet, dreamy stillness and then the current was much stronger. Annie’s mouth opened as the waves caught her breath, crushing her ribs until her heart pounded against them. The kiss opened up unthought-of submerged caverns of love and longing. Annie was trembling, her skin burned and she heard her own voice, a low cry, drowning.

      I love you.

      ‘I want you,’ Steve said, and Annie answered, ‘I’m here.’

      They walked together through the patterns of light and dark, and there was no leader or follower because their need was equal.

      And in the bedroom, where the blinds shut out the light except for thin, broken beams, they undressed each other. There was no hurrying, because they were certain of one another now. Their clothes dropped around them, forgotten.

      Even as a girl, Annie had never been proud of her body and after the birth of her children her flesh had begun to fall in loose, softening folds. During the weeks in hospital and afterwards the compensating roundness had melted away to leave the skin stretched too tightly over her bones and showing the net of blue veins beneath.

      But now, as Steve looked at her, Annie stood upright, natural and strong. Gently he touched the raised, angry pucker of the scar across her belly and the pink junctions of new skin over her arm and shoulder. She saw the fan of fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and the tenderness in his face. She knew that she was beautiful, as beautiful as she had been in the restaurant, and now she was powerful too, because they were like this together.

      In her turn, she looked at him. She touched the flat of her hand to the hair on his chest, seeing the blackness of it over the white skin. There were the ladder-marks of lacerations over Steve’s arms and chest too. At the top of his leg the flesh had reformed, knobs of it over the old gash, but the muscles were shrunk and wasted. He was thin, and she saw the pull of muscles across his chest and back as his arms encircled her.

      The length of their bodies touched together, hard and soft, unfamiliar and imperious.

      She kissed the corner of his mouth and he turned his face to meet hers, his tongue seeking hers out. Annie’s hair fanned lazily over his bare shoulders. She felt him arch against her and she put her hand down to touch him, gently at first and then insistently until he breathed sharply and lifted her off her feet. He laid her down across the bed and knelt beside her.

      He parted her legs and put his hand between them and then, with infinite gentleness, his mouth. The pleasure was like a knife, turning inside her, and she cried out to him.

      They had been slow and patient before, but they were helpless in the current now. Steve lifted himself to look at her and then his mouth touched her thighs and the curve of her waist, then her breast. The waves seemed to break over them, deafening them with their roar. Annie’s mouth formed a word, inaudible, as she reached her arms up to him. There could be no holding back any longer. He came blindly up against her and she guided him until he found the place and joined them together at last.

      There was an instant of shivering stillness.

      Annie opened her eyes and saw the bare grey walls and the gold threads of sunlight spanning them. The gold light seemed to spill outwards to lap over them. It was hot and sweet over her skin and inside it and she rolled in Steve’s arm, finding him as he found her, question and answer. She was hungry now, ravenous with hunger, as Steve was, and they were the only way to feed one another. If he had seemed strange to her in that moment of stillness, Annie forgot the strangeness at once. He knew her, and he opened recesses within her that she had forgotten, or had perhaps never known. As her body moved against his, as she leaned over him so that her hair brushed his face, or as they lay side by side so that they could look into one another’s eyes, Annie was as supple as a girl again, but she was as knowing as a grown woman too.

      At last they had taken each other as far as they could go. Annie’s head tipped back and her legs wound tighter around his. Steve was still for a moment, holding her there, and then he thrust again until she cried out and he felt the butterfly flutter of her muscles against him.

      ‘My love,’ he whispered. ‘Oh yes, my love.’

      He

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