That Man Simon Read Free Page A

had returned to the house and put the primroses in water, the front door bell rang.
    The caller was Fenella Waring. She was wearing a scarlet dress with a white leather jacket slung over her shoulders.
    Her toy poodle, Pascal, was sitting at her feet on the end of a scarlet leash.
    ‘Hello, Jenny, may I come in for half an hour?’ she asked smilingly.
    ‘Yes, do. How are you? I heard you were back.’

    ‘Oh, so-so. Rather limp after a hectic winter. I’m taking a week or two off before my next engagement.’ She followed Jenny to the sitting-room.
    The two girls had attended the same school, but Fenella had left when Jenny was still in the fourth form. She was twenty-four, and was an actress. Her parents – her father was a bank manager in the town - spoke as if she were a second Sarah Bernhardt. But actually Fenella’s theatrical career had been confined to one or two small parts in provincial runs, some equally small parts on television and one three-minute appearance (as a harem girl) in a rather bad film.
    ‘There’s a gorgeous silver Jag parked down the road. I wonder who it belongs to?’ she said, letting Pascal off his leash, and arranging herself gracefully on the sofa.
    ‘To the man who’s bought our land,’ Jenny told her.
    Fenella lit a cigarette. ‘Have you met him? What’s he like?’
    ‘I don’t like him. You might. He’s quite good-looking, I suppose.’ Jenny changed the subject by asking Fenella how her mother was.
    Presently she made coffee, and the older girl chattered about her hectic life in London, and the fashionable restaurants and night-clubs where her many admirers wined and dined her.
    ‘What about you?’ she asked eventually, having talked about herself non-stop for nearly an hour. ‘I suppose you’re still at the kindergarten, and going about with James Langdon?’
    Jenny nodded. She knew Fenella thought her life was incredibly dull, but she had a suspicion that the other girl did not lead quite as gay a life as she made out. She was a paragon of glamour by Farthing Green standards; but London was full of lovely girls.
    ‘No ring yet, I see. When are you and James going to make it official?’ Fenella asked. ‘One assumes you will get married eventually?’
    ‘I don’t know. James hasn’t asked me,’ Jenny said evasively. Her relationship with James was not something she wanted to discuss.
    ‘Why on earth doesn’t he have something done about his face? People in the theatre are always having their noses bobbed or their bosoms lifted. I’m sure a good plastic surgeon could get rid of that scar of his.’
    ‘Skin-grafting takes time. James can’t spare any. People need him, especially his mother. You know how delicate she is. They were going to deal with the scar when he was in hospital after the accident. But just as his other injuries were mending his father died. James insisted on coming back to take over the practice.’
    ‘Don’t you mind his face being like that?’ Fenella asked curiously.
    Jenny’s lips compressed, and she shook her head.
    Fenella shrugged. ‘Oh, well, love is blind, so they say.
    And you have always hero-worshipped him, haven’t you?
    Very different from me. I like variety. Sooner or later I get bored with people.’ She took out her compact and began to scrutinize her make-up.
    Most of the older people in the village did not approve of Fenella. But although Jenny herself was not wholly in sympathy with her, there were moments when she could not help envying the older girl’s flamboyant looks and unfaltering self-confidence. She would never have been thrown into confusion by a man like Simon Gilchrist. If he had tried to unnerve Fenella, she would have given him a limpid stare with her large and deceptively soft dark eyes, and then purred an audacious riposte and left him standing.
    But, watching her as she retouched her lips, Jenny knew that she could never emulate Fenella’s sophistication. Slinky dresses and skilfully applied false