Dead Romantic Read Free Page A

sister’s memory, Madeleine’s experience of real love, of love that had worked. But for John’s premature death from leukemia, no doubt Madeleine too would be married, Madeleine too would have children of her own.
    The older sister looked up to see that Aggie was yawning.
    â€˜Sorry, Maddy. It’s been terribly busy in the surgery this week. Some sort of virus going round. Everyone seems to have been in.’ Aggie worked part-time as a receptionist for a local group practice. The money was not good and, for someone as conscientious as Aggie, the hours tended to escalate.
    â€˜Yes, I’ve had a busy week too,’ said Madeleine. ‘The trouble is, however much one tries not to, one does find oneself empathising with one’s students, going through it all with them. The Jean Brodie syndrome, I suppose.’
    â€˜Sorry?’
    â€˜Living through one’s students. Like Jean Brodie. As in The Prime of . . . Muriel Spark.’
    Aggie shook her head. Of course, she had never read much. And, since she had been married to Keith, hardly at all. Madeleine noticed again that there were no books to be seen in the small sitting-room.
    â€˜Oh, never mind,’ she said.
    Just before she left, Madeleine went upstairs to the bathroom. Floating in the lavatory bowl, with a knot neatly tied in it, was a pink condom.
    She flushed it away before sitting down, and put it from her mind. Some things she preferred not to think about.
    Back in her Kemp Town house, Madeleine had a protracted bath. She washed her hair and lay back so that the long tendrils lay tickling on her shoulders. Their redness rippled with the water and she found herself thinking of the death of Ophelia. Gertrude’s report of the suicide from Hamlet came into her mind. The poetry, like the bath-water, gave her a warm feeling. She looked up at the stripped pine shelves from which a profusion of pot-plants dangled. As she half-closed her unlensed eyes, the plants looked satisfyingly like a willow growing aslant a brook.
    And the thought of death brought to life the other thought she had been nursing all day, the warm thought of a new love.
    The electric blanket had warmed her single bed and she slipped blissfully under the duvet. She drowsed, and the warm thought of love was still with her.
    Her hand slipped unconsciously to the greater warmth beneath her nightdress as she dreamed of the day when she would shed the pampered burden of her virginity.

Chapter 3
    Bernard Hopkins was lucky to find a vacant meter a hundred yards away and he parked his five-year-old brown Austin Maxi there. The drive from his house in Henfield had not taken long; he was lucky to be able to come in after the rush-hour. Anyone who watched him getting out of the car would have seen a tall man with an air of privacy about him. His dark brown eyes looked thoughtful, even pained. His brown hair had given in to grey at the temples, but the effect was not unattractive.
    As he strode up the steep incline towards the school, he felt the stiff breeze from the sea behind him, but it was not cold. Definitely autumnal, but one of those glowing, hopeful autumnal days. He felt a little bubble of optimism rising in him. This time it was going to work. This time he could put past failures firmly behind him; this time it would be all right.
    The white portico of the school had been overpainted many times as the salt air flaked off successive layers, and now it had the thick, blurred outline of cake icing. The railings to either side had also been painted many times, but not recently enough; from their feet, through cracked black paint, rust bled its stains onto the stone. The large door, with impressive brass knocker and letter-box, had also been painted too long ago. The white paint was greyish and, since the door was left on the latch all day, there was a patch worn bare by a long trail of students pushing their uninterested way inside.
    At the side of the door a brass