Acquired Tastes by Simone Mondesir Page B

the lecture, Jeremy made sure he was the first to congratulate her. With a little coaxing on his part, she accepted a glass of organic wine and despite the disparity in their backgrounds, they discovered they had a lot to talk about.
    Belle lived in a housing estate in Stockwell, but did her gardening on an allotment several streets away from where Jeremy and Vanessa lived. He had taken to dropping by there at weekends to offer her vegetables and flowers from his garden, and they would sit and talk over cups of Celestial Seasonings herb tea. It was Belle's gentle but firm persuasion that had finally decided Jeremy to become a vegetarian. But while giving up flesh was one thing, getting up the courage to tell Vanessa had been another. Since by this time they rarely - if ever - sat down to a meal together, he was able to become a vegetarian without her noticing. However he knew he had to tell her sometime, but when?
    One evening, after several large glasses of organic wine, he shouted the announcement of his conversion through the bathroom door as Vanessa was getting ready to go to yet another media party.
    Just as he decided that she had not heard him and he was about to return thankfully to the kitchen, Vanessa's head wrapped in a towel appeared round the door.
    'This is some kind of a joke, isn't it?'
    'No. I've decided that on environmental and ethical grounds I must take a stand. I wish you'd think about it too Vee, I feel so much better, liberated even, since I've taken the decision.'
    Under Belle's tutelage, he had acquired some new vocabulary.
    Vanessa strode across the room, naked except for the towel on her head, her body pink and glowing from the bath. She rubbed her hair vigorously. 'Whose dumb idea is this? It sounds too idiotic even for those chinless wonders who you work with. Is it some kind of silly, schoolboy bet?'
    Jeremy perched himself on the end of the bed and tried to be patient. He wanted Vanessa to understand and perhaps even to join him. They seemed to have so little in common these days.
    'I don't think you understand Vee, killing animals for our gratification is wrong. If only you'd seen the documentary about factory farming the other night, you'd never touch another steak. Belle says … '
    Vanessa whirled round, suddenly alert. 'Belle, who's Belle?'
    'She's just someone I met at the gardening club,' Jeremy said defensively.
    'Really?' Vanessa sounded disbelieving. She stood in front of him.
    Nakedness made most people look vulnerable, but not Vanessa. Jeremy tried to avert his eyes but it was difficult.
    'Tell me more about this Belle,' she demanded.
    At that time there hadn't been anything to tell, but Vanessa did not believe him and so begun a period of questions and suspicion. Vanessa called him at work, often demanding to speak to him when he was meeting important clients just to prove he was there and not with Belle. She even prodded him awake in the middle of the night to question him about her.
    At first he had tried to keep away from Belle, but Vanessa's pitiless interrogation finally drove him to the sanctuary of the allotments and Belle's little shed, where Belle comforted him while they drank some of her surprisingly strong, home-brewed beer.
    Jeremy groaned and put his head in his hands at the memory. He had not intended to commit adultery, it just happened, and it was Vanessa's fault. She had gone on and on at him until he was almost at the point of madness.
    The unmistakeable sound of a London black cab drawing up outside Vanessa’s flat made him look through his fingers. A familiar pair of legs got out of the cab and strode towards him.
    'Well, if it isn't my long lost ex-husband,' Vanessa said mockingly.
    Jeremy struggled stiffly to his feet.
    Vanessa looked him up and down, shocked by the change in his appearance. He had lost a lot of weight, and his hair which had always been thick and floppy, now straggled long and lifeless, almost to his shoulders. The Jeremy she had known