Carol Prisant - Catch 26 - A Novel

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Harper Impulse an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper Impulse 2016

Copyright © Carol Prisant 2016

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Cover design by Holly Macdonald

Carol Prisant asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780008185367

Version 2016-08-11

FOR DAPHNE

and

FOR CAROLAN

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page Catch 26 CAROL PRISANT A division of HarperCollins Publishers www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright Harper Impulse an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by Harper Impulse 2016 Copyright © Carol Prisant 2016 Cover images © Shutterstock.com Cover design by Holly Macdonald Carol Prisant asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780008185367 Version 2016-08-11

Dedication FOR DAPHNE and FOR CAROLAN

Before BEFORE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

One Year

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Epilogue

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale

Her infinite variety.”

William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2 Scene 2

“Burn with me!

The only music is time,

The only dance is love.”

King of the River, Stanley Kunitz

Standing at her closet, still naked from her shower and wondering what to wear to lunch, Frannie heard Stanley’s key scratch at the front door lock. A draught of biting winter air sliced through their bedroom. Frannie hurried to close the door.

“It’s pretty cold,” she thought she heard him say. “May snow.”

But he managed to catch the bedroom door before it fully closed and he caught her standing there. Oh, God. She tried to cover herself with her hands and arms. He shouldn’t see her like this.

Her husband barely glanced at her as he pushed past to retrieve his glasses from the top of the chest of drawers.

“Why bother?” he said mildly, dropping the glasses into his breast pocket and closing the door behind him.

Moving away from the chill left in the air, Frannie moved slowly towards the bathroom’s full-length mirror. Arms at her sides, she stood. And looked. To see what Stanley had seen.

Her mottled, freckled chest, he’d seen. But they hadn’t known about sun back then, so it was something of a surprise, although she’d never expected these pancaked breasts, either, nor the small mushroom farms growing beneath their awkward, sloppy, weight. And what about the puffy hill of her pale, defenseless stomach that ended in a scraggly patch of pubic hair – some of which was gray, she saw now. How had she not known that pubic hair turns gray? In fact, when Arlene had mentioned it the other morning, she’d been stunned. Although it made a certain sense, she thought. The hair on her head was mostly gray (beneath the dye). Her eyebrows – what was left of them – were gray. She touched them up, but they were gray. Yet how, at sixty-six, could there still have been something so basic she didn’t know? Age was supposed to bring wisdom.

She ran damp palms down her thickened body. No waist, wide hips, fat thighs. When she got to those lumpy thighs, she folded her hands into fists, and her reluctant gaze slid past hairless shins to her sad, bunioned feet with their overlong second toes.

It couldn’t have been many years ago when she’d been slim and supple as a whippet, her hipbones like paired knives and a stomach, not just flat, but absurdly concave. Her skin had been satin back then; her breasts … alright, they’d been unexceptional. Not perky not plush, just a nothing-to-brag-about B cup. But these days – these leftover days – she was into – and even a little out of – a DD. But at twenty, there’d been none of these flesh-colored moles, had there? No veinous freeways, no pinkly larval skin tags. (Who thought up words like “skin-tags” anyway?) With an involuntary groan, Frannie turned toward the window and the late-winter treeline beyond.

Why had she looked?

She sat heavily on the bed and reached for the remote, but it wasn’t there. She felt around the floor, and finding it under one of Stanley’s socks, pushed herself up to one elbow and clicked.

Elizabeth Taylor. There she was.

Frannie leaned gratefully back on the pillows. They smelled of his hair.

Oh yes, there was Elizabeth. Elizabeth, with her perfect, provocative, perfect and large, perfect and movie-star breasts. Elizabeth in Suddenly Last Summer yet again.