Harriet by Jilly Cooper Page A

working in the movie business; always plenty of pretty girls hanging about. Then you wake up in the morning, and it’s the wrong head on the pillow beside you, and you can’t get them out quick enough.’
        He put his head in his hands, feeling gingerly at the bump on his forehead.
        ‘I could have Noel back tomorrow if I wanted, but it’s like being an alcoholic, one drink and I’d be lost.’
        ‘It’s that bit about shunning "the heaven that leads men to this hell",’ said Harriet. She felt she was having a very adult conversation.
        ‘That’s right,’ said Cory. ‘If she came back she’d be all over me the first week or two. Then she’d get bored and start looking for distractions. I couldn’t even work properly when she was around. If she was at home she wanted constant attention. If she was out, I couldn’t concentrate for worrying where she was. Show business’s happiest couple indeed!’
        He laughed, but the laugh had a break in it. She could see the chasm of his despair.
        ‘Today’s our tenth wedding anniversary,’ he went on, his voice slu r ring. ‘The bloody bitch was the beat of my heart for ten years. Being married to her meant drifting along from day to day on the edge of despair. Do you know what I did this afternoon? I went out and sent her six dozen roses. Imagine the smirk on her face when she gets them. My lost love is so utterly, utterly lost, but just the same I did it. All tough guys are hopeless sentimentalists. Jesus I’m wallowing in self-pity. I’m sorry.’
        He was shivering now. I must get him into bed, thought Harriet.
        He shot her a sideways glance. ‘I’m keeping you up,’ he said.
        ‘No, no,’ she said, gritting her teeth to hide a yawn.
        She heard a faint wail from upstairs. ‘I’ll just go and see who that is.’
        ‘Sometimes they go to bed with no supper,’ muttered Cory.
        Upstairs Chattie was lying out of bed, Ambrose curled up in her arms, her long white legs sticking out. Harriet tucked her up and replaced her blankets. William was sleeping peacefully too, and when she got downstairs she found Cory asleep as well, his elegant narrow-hipped length sprawled across the sofa, his half-smoked cigarette in his hand. She put it out, loosened his tie and took his shoes off, then got the duvet and a blanket from his bedroom and covered him up.
        ‘It’s you and me babe,’ she said to Tadpole, and suddenly felt very responsible and grown up, as she looked down at Cory’s face. In sleep it had lost all its anguish.
        CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE next day was catastrophic. After two hours sleep, Harriet was walking round like a zombie. Matters grew worse as William regurgitated sieved carrot and cabbage over everything, the washing machine gave up the ghost, and in the usual rat race of rounding up homework books, pinnies and gymshoes, she realized there wasn’t any dinner-money left for Chattie in the housekeeping. Mrs. Bottomley was away for the night and therefore not available for a touch. After rifling every pocket in her wardrobe, the only solution was to wake Cory - who was not best pleased at being roused from a heavy slumber to one of the worst hangovers in recorded history. His temper was not improved by the embarrassment of finding himself still in evening clothes and lying on the sofa.
        ‘Why the hell can’t you organize the bloody housekeeping?’ he howled.
        It was hardly the moment, Harriet decided, to remind him that he had filched the last of it himself.
        When she got back from driving Chattie to school, he had changed into day clothes, was trying to keep down a glass of alkaseltzer, and in the sort of picky mood that soon reduced her to screaming hysteria.
        How was he to find a pair of socks, he demanded, when the hot cupboard looked as though a bomb had hit it. Why didn’t she ever put anything back where she’d found it? Was it really necessary to have toys