Adele Parks - Still Thinking Of You

PENGUIN BOOKS

Still Thinking of You

Praise for Adele Parkss previous novels:

Its witty, its warm and fun. With a capital F. Daily Record

Parks depicts the nitty-gritty of relationships with authentic detail and theres a hugely optimistic feel to the story that makes it a satisfying read. Sunday Mirror

Parks has scored another sure-fire hit with Larger than Life. Heat

An entertaining and sophisticated version of the girl-meets-boy story.
Marie Claire

An engaging read. Independent

Entertaining and moving. OK!

Compulsively addictive and involved with sexual passion and bad decisions. Elle

A touching look at infidelity, love, and all the crap that goes with it.
New Woman

A modern fairy tale in the classic sense of the word: a story of wanting what you cant have, filled with perils and beasts, with a moralizing punch to the inevitably doe-eyed ending. Daily Mail

Down-to-earth and very, very funny. OK!

Perfectly encapsulating the zeitgeist a very entertaining read. Heat

Adele Parks was born in the North-East of England. She read English language and literature at Leicester University. Since graduating, she has lived in Italy and Africa. She now lives in London with her son and her soul mate. Her earlier novels, Playing Away, Game Over, Larger than Life and The Other Womans Shoes, were all bestsellers and are published in fourteen different countries.

www.adeleparks.com

ADELE PARKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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Published in Penguin Books 2004
1

Copyright Adele Parks, 2004
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

EISBN: 9780141911083

For my Mum and Dad

It was so easy. Falling in love had, after all, been so easy.

Rich had never been convinced that he had the knack for loving. Shagging, yeah, positively expert, but loving? Hed had a sneaky suspicion that falling in love was something that happened only to people in movies or to the weak-minded. Or maybe hed been born without the necessary gene that enabled a healthy, happy, two-way loving thing because he used to find it impossible to imagine wanting to share everything from your sock drawer to your life. His parents were still together, yeah, but they seemed to exist side by side, in a state of bored tolerance, rather than in perpetual bliss. His mother filled her time with concerns about neighbours hysterectomies, and his fathers chief concern was his golf handicap. Rich doubted that they had ever been young and in love. It wasnt exactly inspiring.

When his mates said that theyd found a girl they wanted to marry, hed assumed that the desire was one largely driven by practicalities. Clearly some people liked the company, or the laundry service, or the security of being a double-income family. It wasnt that he wanted to be callous. In fact, the reverse was true. Hed always wanted to believe that there was something chemical no, something magical that dictated with whom you spent your life. He always wanted to believe that there was a soul mate out there somewhere. But hed given the mysterious falling in love dozens of opportunities and thirty-three years to take hold; it never had.

Until Tash.

Theyd been right. All those people that used to say stuff like, You know when you know. Those starry-eyed blokes, who stuttered their way through speeches at wedding receptions, earnestly trying to communicate their passion and their willingness to subdue themselves to a bigger force than their reason. Theyd been right. Falling in love did make everything lucid, bright and simple. And yet at the same time it was the most mysterious, exotic and different experience of Richs life. An irresistible contradiction.

He loved her, and she loved him. They were lovers. Rich wondered how many people across, say, London no, make it bigger than that say, Britain. How many people were at this precise second telling one another they loved each other? And how many of them meant it as much as he did.

Because he did mean it. He meant it all the time. Not just when they were having sex. He loved her smile; it was broad and frequent. She had fat lips; clearly they were blow-job lips, which was an advantage, but he also admired them because they were happy lips. He loved her laugh; it was low and throaty, like a smokers laugh, even though she didnt smoke. He loved her thoughts and how frequently and openly she expressed them, and how she insisted on bringing everything back to a personal level. He used to hate the type of person who, during a really sensible discussion of whether US and British troops ought to be deployed to some far-flung place, would pipe up to say, Well, all I know is its wrong because my next-door neighbour is in the army and he may see action. That sort of argument used to irritate his intellectual mind. But now he realized that everything was personal at some level; everything was simply about who you cared for. Tash was right. She was also right to want to drink Fair Trade coffee and use Body Shop products. All that girlie stuff was good.

He loved her body. He loved the smell of her hair. He was fascinated by the things that made her angry, and thrilled by the things in which she delighted. He loved the vulnerable curve in the nape of her neck and the way she shivered when he kissed her there. He loved her cum.

Tash finished cleaning her teeth. She put her toothbrush back in the cup and smiled at her reflection. That was her toothbrush, in a cup, in Richs flat. Although theyd only been seeing each other for just shy of two months, she had a toothbrush in his flat, and that felt good. Unlike Rich, Tash had never wondered if shed find true love. Shed expected to. Her parents had been happily married for forty years. Even now she might walk into their kitchen and find them kissing. Not full-on snogs obviously that would be damaging but affectionate, closed-mouth kisses. Her brother and his partner had two robust, amusing, boisterous boys. They laughed and rowed in what Tash considered to be the correct proportions. Love had never been a secret to her. It was easy; it was natural. It was everywhere. Shed been in a number of long and short, and virtually split-second relationships, but the chucking or being chucked had always been relatively painless. Shed never cried about anyone for longer than a week.