![]() ![]() Still, it was easier, wasn’t it? Coming in at the end of the day, when the snot and the pasta sauce and the tears had been wiped away, and the fight over the tooth-brushing, and the frantic shoving of toys into too small cupboards had all been done. She usually chose the shortest story and speed-read it: her children might be forgiven for thinking that every character in literature had been raised in the middle-class south, for all the effort she made with her inflection. Tim was reading slowly, ascribing to each character their own voice, occasionally making animated gestures. The children, damp and clean from their bath, were huddled, one under each arm, listening to their story. He was sitting on the sofa under the window, having been allowed by his kidnappers to remove his shoes and jacket, and loosen his tie. Harriet followed the sound of Tim’s voice to their bedroom. Upstairs, all was quiet for the first time since six a.m. It was a potent and complex emotional cocktail, part rage, part hurt, part frustration, part humiliation, and, still, part suffocating love ![]()
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