Excerpt from Laura Blundy by Julie Myerson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Holding my breath, one hand still on the mantel, I use it to feel for the outline of his face and then I shift it across, lean hard on it and dig it in like a gardener does.

A definite juicy crunch, like going into raw potato. Another sigh, a rushy liquid sound. I am faintly surprised to feel my face wet with tears. As the seconds fall away, so do his fingers and my ankle is released. He does not move again.

Now the silence in the room is deathly and the taste in my mouth is ashes. I lower myself to the floor and crawl as fast as I can back towards my crutches.

Men are very hard indeed to manage. Even if you offer your whole self up on a plate to one of them, still he will dawdle and prevaricate and find a reason to say that what you are offering is not quite right.

So I go to Billy. I tell him that Ewan is out of the picture and now we must skedaddle as fast as possible to France.

He stares at me and scratches his head and then his groin. He looks extremely bothered, yet does not ask me any questions. Then he kisses me long and deep and I feel him shiver into life down there. Then he says that his family needs him.

I am your family, I tell him stoutly. And I kiss him again.

He draws back. Looks at me.

No, he says, You know what I mean -

He does not know what I mean but I do not enlighten him.

You are mine, I tell him, I love you and we must be together -

Christ, Laura, he says, Don't look at me like that -

Why not?

You're putting me off with your strange face - I love you too -

But - ?

But what?

You tell me, Billy. Sounds like there's a but coming -

He bends his head. Poor lad. He is a noodle, stumbling around for reasons. I could eat him whole, but I won't.

I don't know, he says, I don't know what to say. I mean, I thought -

What? What did you think?

That we'd got ourselves clear on this. I thought you understood. About me and Cally, the kids -

Oh, I say rather sharply, Forgive me, Billy, of course, I had forgot -

He looks at me warily, checking. His look says it all.

Do you understand what I have done? I ask him.

Silence from him.

Do you?

It is only now, as I say it, that I realise how tired I am. My eyes are dry and hard in their sockets, my teeth sinking so far down in my head. I am wiped out with it.

Billy says nothing. Stares at me. He has the neatest face of anyone I've ever known, especially when he's worried or confused. Wide, roguish eyes. Cheekbones and dimples that make everyone else's faces look dreary and flat. He is glorious, a perfect specimen. I am so gone on him.

So I tell him the whole thing - what I have just done, though I never meant to, and what it means for us. Yes, for us, Billy. I spell it out, in case he still does not understand. He is a young boy, after all, twenty-three is no great age. So I tell it slowly. I am careful to leave nothing out. I even tell him the bad bit at the end with the ankle and the kitchen poker. But a happy ending, nevertheless.

I feel suddenly lifted by the thought.

I did it for you, I tell him, pressing my deed on him, freshly done. For now the thing feels oddly like a gift - something carried a long time scrunched in the palm of my hand, and then released into the world, unravelling.

Maybe I expect him to be angry now. Or at least, let's say I wouldn't blame him, for the lad has a good heart and would not willingly hurt anyone. (I hesitate to say `a fly' for actually I believe we would all kill a fly, would we not?)

But no, not anger. That's not it at all. He seems instead almost to struggle for breath. I wait.

Well?

Reprinted from Laura Blundy by Julie Myerson by permission of Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright (c) 2000 by Julie Myerson. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.