Dancing in the Dark Read Free Page B

menstrual cramps, longing to get back to my Cotswolds home.
    The flight attendant passed round newspapers. Headlines flashed in and out of my head like summer lightning – BUSHFIRES IN SYDNEY, FLOODS IN OHIO, RAIL DISASTER IN BENGAL . I read a piece about the joys of being a mistress (
‘How the Other Half Loves’
), an article on the giant panda, the well-connected wife of a banker going public about her cheating lover. I’m in too much discomfort to concentrate. There are more reassuring noises from the cockpit, more dull aches in the pit of my stomach, temperatures soaring.
    And, to top it all off, my car developed a flat on the way home from Heathrow and the AA man took ages to come and change it.
    Not a good day at all. But at least it’s now raining. There’s a towel in the downstairs cloakroom and I wrap it round my hair before I pad into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine.
    In the office, I check the answering machine. There’s a message from Regis Harcourt, with yet another brilliant new idea she wants me to incorporate into the design for her town garden. There are three commissions for a Decoration, one of the miniature tabletop container gardens which I’ve developed into a lucrative extension of my garden design business. A couple in Kent wants a change of date for a meeting I’ve set up with them. A man from Yorkshire asks me to go up and advise on revamping his garden. Bob Lovage, my contractor, has rung to say he’s hurt his back. And Jenny Hill wants me to call her urgently, the absolute minute I get back; it’s a matter of life or death. She’s my best friend and probably just wants my recipe for strawberry shortcake.
    The mail consists of notifications of already-paid bills, a postcard of the Acropolis from a client telling me when she’ll be back and hoping we can get together over her garden, a letter from someone I’d known at university, an excitable communication from
Reader’s Digest
informing me that I’ve been specially selected to win at least two million pounds and, failing that, a set of steak knives. There’s nothing much else, except an invitation to a gala night in Stockholm, at which a trio of specially commissioned interlinked modern dance ballets choreographed by Lucia Cairns would be performed. Choreographed? Has my mother finally turned respectable? It’s hard to believe. Since the event had taken place two weeks earlier, I drop the invitation into the wastepaper bin.
    I go upstairs, dry my hair and finally, I go into the sitting room and look up at the portrait hanging above the fireplace.
    â€˜I’m back,’ I say.
    As I speak, the doorbell rings. Visitors, Jehovah’s witnesses, double-glazing: whichever it is, I don’t need it. All I want is a small whisky, a hot bath, an early bed.
    I open the door and, to my irritated surprise, find Liz Crawfurd, one of my clients, standing there. She holds an umbrella over her head, and there is a tentative smile on her face.
    â€˜Hello,’ I say. Coldly.
    â€˜I do hope you don’t mind me dropping in,’ she says.
    I do. ‘That’s OK,’ I say, not attempting to sound gracious. I hate the unexpected, the unplanned, being caught unawares. And why has she come to the front door, when a sign on the wall of the house quite plainly directs visitors to the office at the back of the house? Why is she here at all, when it’s way past office hours?
    Behind her, the rain is tipping down. I can almost hear my thirsty plants sucking up the moisture. I remind myself that Liz and her husband have recently bought an Arts & Crafts-designed manor house down in Somerset and have lucratively commissioned me to help them restore the gardens. That certainly doesn’t bestow on them the right to barge in unannounced. What it
does
mean is that I have to be nice – not something I’m particularly good at. ‘I’ve just got back from