Alligator Playground Read Free

eating, though might give it a try one day – or night – just as almost every woman wanted to have a baby once in her life. ‘It’s a bit far to get to from the BBC.’
    ‘If ever you feel like it, let me know.’ Wasting no time, she strode between rose bushes and across the lawn to blonde and secretive Emmy Brites, said to be writing her first novel, and whose peach coloured cheeks turned vermilion when the hand went forward.
    Languid, dark and late thirtyish, Tom, when chatting at a party (except to a woman) looked continually over the man’s shoulder to see who it might be useful to meet next. He did it without shame, on the understanding that since who he was talking to would know what was in his mind, and was probably doing the same anyway, he could leave without either being embarrassed. He also assumed that those under his scrutiny were talking about him, which was sometimes the case. Glad that Diana had given that lesbian the pushoff, he walked across to talk to her, as she had hoped he would.
    He leaned on the arbour post. ‘I had a lot to say to you, and now I’ve forgotten it all. At the table I thought the block would vanish as soon as we were face to face.’
    ‘And won’t it?’
    ‘I’ve never felt such an electric connection in my whole life. It was absolutely amazing. It’s still there, even more now that you’re close and there’s nothing between us.’
    Fair, for a beginning, especially since he could have been stealing her words. Maybe that was how he had become a millionaire, though these days you could be fab-rich one week and living in Cardboard City the next. ‘I thought it was wonderful, the way Jo Hesborn dealt with that emotional cripple.’
    ‘Norman? I suppose he did ask for it. But maybe it’s rather admirable, the way he lives like an open wound.’
    ‘Sewer, more like.’ His envy of Bakewell foxed her for a second, because she hated his misogynistic novels, and didn’t think him worth any talk at all. ‘How come you know Charlotte?’
    Such a laugh made it hard to know what he thought, as he leaned close and lowered his voice. ‘I like her. She’s one of the old sort, totally misguided. She can’t go to Russia since Perestroika because the planes don’t run on time, and she might get mugged. It was the only country she felt safe in, but now she sticks to this old rectory, though she hates the place. Complains all the time to poor old Henry, so that she can seem the calm and all wise earthy hostess to everyone else.’
    ‘I wouldn’t like to be your wife.’ Yet she thought she might, for an hour or two.
    Even the overalls didn’t hide her figure, the lovely fruity breasts, body going in at the waist and coming out to delectable hips. ‘I’ll curb my tongue, but if you ask me whether I’d like to be married to you the answer’s yes, any time of the week.’
    ‘You sound like the perfect husband. I hope your wife thinks you are.’
    ‘In my experience, only the fatally flawed try to be perfect. I just saw you, and knew we had to talk.’
    It was the moment to move on to someone else, easy enough to do. She’d always told herself never to have any truck with a married man, but he had given her no reason to walk away, and she didn’t care to think of one. ‘I’d love to live in a house like this, on such a marvellous day at least.’
    ‘I’d die here,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with London?’
    ‘Oh, not much, I agree. But I wake up in the morning plagued by pneumatic drills, or car alarms going off, or a burglar alarm, or a police car screaming to get to the station before the tea gets cold. Then there’s the awful smell, and the traffic.’
    Charlotte stood at the door. ‘Who’s going to volunteer for washing up? I only need two.’ She thought it educational to make her guests work after a meal. ‘When it’s done we can go on a nice long walk to the river.’
    Tom saw a way to imprison her in talk for the next half-hour. ‘Let’s do it.’
    She