"Alastair Reynolds - Signal to Noise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

crossing the road to her favorite hair salon; she’d had an appointment to get
her hair done. Knowing Andrea, she had probably been so focused on the
salon that she was oblivious to all that was going on around her. It hadn’t
even been the car that had killed her in the end. When the slow-moving
vehicle knocked her down, Andrea had struck her head against the side of
the curb.

By midmorning on Saturday, Mick’s brother had returned from
Snowdonia. Bill came around to Joe’s house and hugged Mick silently,
saying nothing for many minutes. Then Bill went into the next room and
spoke quietly to Joe and Rachel. Their low voices made Mick feel like a
child in a house of adults.

“I think you and I need to get out of Cardiff,” Bill told Mick, when he
returned to the living room. “No ifs, no buts.”

Mick started to protest. “There’s too much that needs to be done. I
still need to get back to the funeral home.”

“It can wait until this afternoon. No one’s going to hate you for not
returning a few calls. C’mon; let’s drive up to the Gower and get some fresh
air. I’ve already reserved a car.”

“Go with him,” Rachel said. “It’ll do you good.”

Mick acquiesced, his guilt and relief in conflict at being able to put
aside thoughts of the funeral plans. He was glad Bill had come down, but
he couldn’t quite judge how his brother—or his friends, for that
matter—viewed his bereavement. He’d lost his wife. They all knew that. But
they also knew that Mick and Andrea had been separated. They’d been
having problems for most of the year. It would only be human for his friends
to assume that Mick wasn’t quite as affected by Andrea’s death as he would
have been had they still been living together.

“Listen,” he told Bill, when they were safely under way. “There’s
something I’ve got to tell you.”

“I’m listening.”

“Andrea and I had problems. But it wasn’t the end of our marriage.
We were going to get through this. I was going to call her this weekend,
see if we couldn’t meet.”

Bill looked at him sadly. Mick couldn’t tell if that meant that Bill just
didn’t believe him, or that his brother pitied him for the opportunity he’d
allowed to slip between his fingers.

When they got back to Cardiff in the early evening, after a warm and
blustery day out on the Gower, Joe practically pounced on Mick as soon as
they came through the door.