A Place of Secrets Read Free Page B

colorful and violent. It looked as if she’d be doing it on her own this time.
    Safe back home now, she kicked off her shoes and went to fill the kettle, relaxed in her own company, though, in this pretty house, she never felt entirely alone. Itwas the home that she and Mark had chosen together when they got engaged, where they’d lived together for the three short years of their marriage, and she still felt a strong sense of him, as though he’d walk back in at any moment. During the last couple of years, various people—her mother, her sister, Mark’s sister, Sophie—had begun to worry about this, suggesting she sell up, implying that it wasunhealthy to surround herself with all these memories; but apart from letting them sort out his clothes she did nothing. It reassured her to be among Mark’s things. The white-painted walls of the living room were still hung with the stunning photographs he’d taken—of the Patagonian wilderness, of Kilimanjaro and the Cairngorms—during climbing expeditions in the long holidays he’d enjoyed as a schoolteacher.Some of their modern furniture, like the wrought-iron bedstead and the bright-patterned sofa, they’d picked together, but the Victorian oval mirror and the William de Morgan tiles in the fireplace were Jude’s choice. Mark liked new, Jude liked old. It was a joke between them. Whenever they went anywhere together—back home to Norfolk or for a day trip to the south coast—Jude would say,“I’m just popping in here” and disappear into some mysterious emporium filled with fascinating treasures, leaving Mark to check out modern gizmos in the camping shop or the chandler’s. He’d laughed at some of her curios, particularly the small trio of Indian elephants, whose beady eyes had pleaded with her from a junk-shop window.
    Drinking her coffee, she walked slowly around the living room,stopping to turn the small antique globe on the sideboard and to pick up one of the ebony elephants, loving the warmth of the wood in her hand. “Elephants should always face the door or you’ll get bad luck,” she’d told Mark.
    “Why the door?” he’d drawled, crossing his arms, the signal that he was putting on his skeptical-scientist act. That was another difference between them. She loved old legendsand superstitions; he was interested in debunking them. But they both enjoyed a lively discussion.
    “It’s something Dad used to say. Perhaps they need to get out easily if there’s a fire or something.”
    “I’ve never heard such a crazy idea,” Mark teased and they’d laughed.
    They were so different from one another, but they were meant to be together. She’d always felt it. Ever since the first timethey met. So why had she been so cheated?
    She dusted the little elephant and returned it carefully to its place.
    The thought that today lay empty before her imparted a marvelous feeling. As she unpacked her shopping she considered what to do with the time. Walk up the hill to study the displays at the Royal Observatory, perhaps, and get herself into the mood for astronomy?
    When she went tostow the milk in the fridge her eye fell on a photograph of her niece, fastened to the door. Summer. The name suited the child’s fine honey-colored hair and blue eyes, her airy-fairy lightness. Extraordinary to think she’d be seven in August. It would be lovely if she could see her next weekend. She reached for the house phone and speed-dialed Claire’s work number.
    “Star Bureau,” came her sister’sbrisk voice. Claire ran a small shop with a friend in the Norfolk market town of Holt. It sold gifts connected with stars and astrology. A nice sideline to this was a service enabling people to name a star. For a modest sum, they received a certificate giving the location and official serial number of the star and a framed poem she’d written called “Stardust,” which Jude thought didn’t quitescan in the third line.
    “It’s Jude. Are you madly busy?”
    “Oh, it’s