What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty [156]
“We’re separated.”
“Yes, but we’re trying.” Alice giggled. “Sorry. I don’t know why I find it funny. It’s not funny. It’s not at all funny. I might actually need a glass of water.”
She stood up, and as she walked by Nick, she suddenly plonked herself down on his lap like a flirty girl at a party.
“Are you going to try, Nick?” she gurgled into his neck. “Are you going to try really, really hard?”
“You’re tipsy,” he said, and then he kissed her, and at last everything was as it should be. Her body melted against his with exquisite relief. It was like sinking into a hot bath after being caught in the rain, like sliding under crisp cotton sheets after an exhausting day.
“Daddy?” said a voice from behind them. “What are you doing here?”
Nick’s legs jerked up so that Alice was catapulted onto her feet.
Olivia stood in the kitchen in her pajamas, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles, her cheeks flushed with sleep. She yawned hugely, stretching her arms above her head. She frowned, perplexed, and then an expression of pure delight crossed her face.
“Do you love Mummy again?”
Frannie’s Letter to Phil
Kissing! At my age! Is it allowed? Is it unseemly? I feel as though I’ve broken a rule. I’ve gone full circle and I’m fourteen again.
We had a lovely night at the Chinese restaurant. It’s been so long since I’ve eaten Chinese. (I used to take Elisabeth and Alice when they were little for a special treat. They adored it. Of course now they would be horrified at the thought. Too many calories. Or “carbs” or something.)
We shared a nice bottle of white wine and the steamed dim sums were fabulous. Mr. M. was his ridiculous self. After we paid the bill, he asked the waitress if we could go to the kitchen and “pay our compliments to the chef”!
The little girl looked alarmed. (She probably thought we were undercover health inspectors.) I was saying to her, “Just ignore him, darling,” but next thing, Mr. M. marched out to the kitchen and dragged out three young Chinese men dressed in white. There he was, clapping them on the shoulders, loudly telling them a long story about a meal he’d eaten at a fancy hotel in Hong Kong in 1954, and how this was even better than that meal, while all the other diners put down their chopsticks and stared.
I got such an attack of the giggles watching those poor young chefs with their polite, bemused smiles, nervously bobbing their heads up and down, obviously thinking this man was quite deranged. In the end, Mr. M. convinced the whole restaurant to give them a round of applause. (The food wasn’t that good!)
I giggled in the cab the whole way home until finally Mr. M. said, “I think there’s only one way to shut you up,” and next thing he was kissing me.
I’m very sorry, Phil.
Do you mind?
Well, bad luck if you do. It’s your fault anyway! Why did you need a camping trip “with the fellows” just before our wedding? You were forty years old! You shouldn’t have had any wild oats left to sow. And then you happily, idiotically, dive headfirst into a river without checking the depth first. You silly fool.
Tonight a handsome man (I may not have referred to his handsomeness previously) kissed me and it was heavenly.
Do you hear that, Phil? HEAVENLY.
Am going to bed, my dear. May have drunk a little too much sauvignon blanc at dinner.
Chapter 30
It was the “big day.” Alice felt like a small piece of clothing, a sock perhaps, in a large load of washing, on the spin cycle. People pulled her this way and that. At one point she literally had a person on each arm (neither of whom she recognized), trying to pull her in different directions. Worried faces, excited faces, smiley “ooh, this is it!” faces floated by and vanished. People gathered around her in worried clumps, firing questions, telling her about problems, about things that should have been delivered by now. “Where are the eggs meant to go?” “Where are the pastry ladies meant to be standing?” “The news crew wants to confirm they’ll be here by twelve. They want to interview