The House on Flamingo Cay Read Free

into her dressing-gown and folded the beach suit away. “Angela ... you said the other day that there was only one man you’d wanted to marry. Was it Ross Anderson?” she asked hesitantly, recalling the tall attractive man who had collected her sister from the flat a couple of times the previous spring. Looking back, she remembered that they had a succession of dates, and then he had stopped telephoning, and her sister had been nervy and short-tempered for a while. But there had been nothing to indicate that Angela had taken a severe knock, or that whatever had ended the relationship had also permanently embittered her.
    “I didn’t think you’d remember him,” the elder girl said, without expression. She finished painting on a base-coat. “I suppose you may as well know about it now. Not that one ever learns much from other people’s blunders.” She lay back on the pillows while her nails dried. “I met him when we were putting on that special dress parade last March. He was working for one of the manufacturers whose clothes we were showing. I didn’t know it, but he’d married the boss’s daughter and was picking up a bit of know-how about the rag trade before sitting back in a nice cushy seat on the board.”
    “How did you find out?”
    Angela’s laugh was brittle. “Fortunately someone saw us together and told me—otherwise I might have made an even bigger fool of myself. You see, Ross thought I knew about his wife. I don’t think I’d have minded so much if he’d been deliberately deceiving me. But it’s a little galling to find you’ve fallen in love with a man who rates you as the kind of good-time girl who doesn’t mind having an affair with someone else’s husband.”
    Sara said nothing for some moments. She had thought she knew Angela as well as anyone. But now it seemed that her sister was almost a stranger. Never once had she given away the depths of her humiliation, or the pain she must have suffered.
    “But, darling, all men aren’t like that,” she said gently, after a pause. “It would be silly to ruin your whole life because of one mistake.”
    “I’ve no intention of ruining it.”
    “You might if you married without love.”
    Angela selected a bottle of frosted bronze lacquer and unscrewed the cap. “You’ve never been in love, sweetie. You don’t know anything about it.”
    “Perhaps not: but I know it doesn’t always end badly.”
    “Even if it gets to the point of wedding bells, it doesn’t last for ever,” her sister said cynically. “A couple marry for love, and what happens? Five years later all the gloss has worn off and they’ve probably nothing in common. But if one marries for sensible reasons, there’s no disillusionment because there were no illusions in the first place.”
    Sara didn’t argue. If Angela really believed what she had said, there was only one thing that would change her mind—and that was to find that she had fallen in love again.
    * * *
    The plane left London Airport at one minute to midnight—a strange hour to be setting out on holiday. Most of the other passengers were middle-aged couples, the men paunchy and balding—probably wealthy stock-brokers or the ulcer-ridden chairmen of company boards, Sara thought—and the women expensively dressed with mink stoles and lilac-tinted hair.
    Quite soon after take-off people began to switch out their seat-lamps and compose themselves for sleep. But, long after Angela had adjusted her seat to the reclining position and was breathing deeply and evenly, Sara lay wakeful and restive.
    The long forward section of the great aircraft was now almost in darkness, a few weak blue-toned bulbs giving just enough light for anyone to find their way to the cloakroom. In spite of the little adjustable air vents over each seat, it was very warm, and she was glad that she had a sleeveless shantung blouse under her jacket.
    The stewardess, passing quietly along the aisle, leaned over Angela and said softly,